Film



The British, Invaded
Mutiny and the Rise of the Asian Underground
ColorLines
State of Bengal's "Flight IC408" opens, predictably, in the air. The single was originally part of Talvin Singh's Anokha: Sounds of the Azian Underground, a compilation released in 1997 that documented a small scene of wistful, forward-thinking South Asian fusionists who applied a punky yet tradition-minded sensibility to British dance music. At the center of this feverish world was the charismatic Singh, but one of the scene's most imaginative moments was "Flight IC408" and its simple, almost innocent, opening sample: "Your attention, please, Indian Airlines announces the departure of their Flight IC408 to Calcutta"
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Eastward to the World
Review of Morning Sun
Village Voice
China's Cultural Revolution endures as an ugly symbol of the human psyche's weakness in times of groupthink. Between 1964 and 1976, Mao Tse-tung's experiment in nation building took on a life of its own, plunging China into a period of spectacular cultural reprogramming marked by the greatest of ambitions-to effectively reboot Chinese history and culture-and the lowest forms of suffering. The skepticism of the few surrendered to the swelling deification of Mao and the savage logic of the party line. Few people, short of the Chairman himself, understood how catastrophic the revolution was to the millions suffering in secluded silence; the country-starved, anxious-was preying on itself
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In Between Days
The NY AAIFF in the Realm of the Senses
Village Voice
Between the suicide of Hong Kong omni-star Leslie Cheung and Justin Lin's movie-as-movement Better Luck Tomorrow forcing a toe in Hollywood's door, this 26th annual congregation of Asian and Asian American interests arrives amid considerable community clamor.
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Making Luck:
Justin Lin on Asian Hollywood
Village Voice
A surprise Sundance hit last year and the first acquisition for MTV Films, Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow is a stylish rumination on teen violence that wonders if overachievers also feel the pressure to overachieve at crime. While there's nothing original about dispossessed nerds having their day, Lin's decision to make the film an all-Asian American affair has turned it into a community cause.
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Beautiful Alone:
Leslie Cheung, 1956-2003
Village Voice
The suicide of Hong Kong Cantopop star and actor Leslie Cheung seemed like a bad April Fool's joke. That evening, the 46-year-old Cheung, one of Asia's most loved entertainers and one of the few Chinese actors willing to play openly gay characters, leaped to his death from the 24th-floor gym of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong.
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