#nyaff15 | FSLC and Subway Cinema announce initial details for THE 14th NYAFF

June 26 – July 11, 2015

Director Ringo Lam will be presented with the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award, superstar Aaron Kwok with the 2015 Star Asia Award, and Japanese actor Shota Sometani with the 2015 Screen International Rising Star Award

***
Film lineup to include the North American premieres of Nobuhiro Yamashita's La La La at Rock Bottom and Yim Soon-rye's The Whistleblower and the international premiere of Namewee’s Banglasia, which was banned in Malaysia
***
 A spotlight on Myung Films and Korean women filmmakers and a joint film tribute to Japanese legends Ken Takakura and Bunta Sugawara are among the notable sidebars

***

The New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF), North America’s leading festival of popular Asian Cinema, is back for its 14th edition. Co-presented with Film Society of Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema, the festival will run from June 26 to July 11. The festival takes place from June 26 to July 8 at the Film Society and July 9 to 11 at SVA Theatre (333 W. 23rd Street). Initial details include notable awards to be presented to director Ringo Lam, superstar Aaron Kwok, and actor Shota Sometani. The festival will also host a slew of North American film premieres, as well as spotlight the works of Korean female directors and honor the memory of Japanese legends Ken Takakura and Bunta Sugawara with a joint tribute.

Hong Kong’s legendary director Ringo Lam (City on Fire) will receive the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award. One of Hong Kong’s most influential directors, Lam was directing comedies when City on Fire was released in 1987, fusing the social-protest movie with kinetic action filmmaking. It was followed by the massive hit Prison on Fire later that year, and then School on Fire, a movie so unblinking that nervous Hong Kong censors sliced it to ribbons. Lam became one of the city’s best action filmmakers, and one of the few local directors to be so deeply concerned with the price of progress, the corrosive influence of money on human relationships, and the lives of the little people crushed beneath the wheels of change. In 2003, he directed what was to be his final feature and went into semi-retirement, only to be lured out again in 2015 with Wild City, in which Lam’s tooth-and-claw vision of modern urban living remains untamed.

Hong Kong’s superstar actor-singer Aaron Kwok (Divergence, After This Our Exile, Cold War) will receive the festival’s 2015 Star Asia Award on June 26. One of Hong Kong’s Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop, Kwok has won dozens of awards for his chart-topping albums. For over 30 years, he has performed steadily both on television and in movies and is respected for his box-office star power as well as his outstanding acting chops. Kwok has worked with some of Hong Kong’s finest directors, like Johnnie To, Jacob Cheung, Andrew Lau, and Patrick Tam. His self-described Method acting was rewarded in 2005 and 2006 when he won back-to-back Golden Horse awards for Best Actor, a feat previously achieved only by Jackie Chan. Kwok was awarded his first Best Actor prize was for his performance in 2005’s Divergence, but it was his work in the 2006 After This Our Exile, for which he won his second award, that blew audiences away. In that film, Kwok’s fearless portrayal of a gambling addict exhibited a serious commitment to his craft as well as a complete lack of vanity. He then went on to give a series of startling performances in films like Yim Ho’s Floating City, the blockbuster Cold War, as well as his upcoming tour de force, Port of Call.

Japanese actor Shota Sometani will attend the festival on July 4, on the occasion of the New York premiere ofKabukicho Love Hotel, to receive the Screen International Rising Star Award. Director Ryuichi Hiroki will also be in attendance. This marks the second year of a partnership with Screen International, with whom the NYAFF will honor an emerging talent in the East Asian film world each year. At age 22, Sometani is already a leading man in both blockbusters and indie gems and has earned critical acclaim on the international film festival circuit. In 2011, he received the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance in Himizu, along with his co-star Fumi Nikaido (last year’s recipient of the Screen International Rising Star Award).

Notable NYAFF titles this year will include the North American premieres of Nobuhiro Yamashita's La La La at Rock Bottom and Yim Soon-rye's The Whistleblower and the international premiere of Namewee’s Banglasia, which was banned in Malaysia, its home country.
The festival will also feature a section on Korea’s production company Myung Films, highlighting a few of their major works—Cart, The President’s Last Bang, The Isle, and Waikiki Brothers—as part of a greater focus on women who work behind the camera. Producer Shim Jae-myung and directors Yim Soon-rye (The Whistleblower) and Boo Ji-young (Cart) will be in attendance.

Japanese film legends Ken Takakura and Bunta Sugawara, both of whom passed away last November, will be the subject of the first joint tribute outside of Japan, which will feature the brand-new digital remaster of the 1973 classicBattles Without Honor and Humanity—screened for the time in North America—among others.

Tickets will go on sale on June 9 for Film Society Members and June 11 for general public, both at the box office and online. Discounts are available for Film Society members.

Screenings will be held at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam and Broadway), and SVA Theatre (333 West 23rd Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues).

For more information, visit:

FSLC:

Subway Cinema:

Documentary Short Film on Rising NYC Fashion Designer Niiamar Felder

Short Documentary Film Shares Challenges Faced By Young NYC Designer Poised to Break Through in the Fashion Industry

***

NIIAMAR…It Is What It Is, a documentary short, takes viewers on an emotional journey with an ascending talent determined to make his mark in the highly competitive world of fashion. The film is a cinematic look into the creative mind and an insider’s view of what it takes to create a capsule collection, from concept to reality. 

The 26–minute film can be seen at: http://www.niiamar.com/documentary/ 

Whether dealing with finances, fabric choices or wardrobe malfunctions, NIIAMAR…It Is What It Is shows that meeting challenges, paired with vision and focus, are parts of the process in making a great designer.  “There are many obstacles to overcome whenever you aspire to do great things, and this is the case with each collection that I design,” says the designer.  Tasked with producing seasonal collections, and the rising costs associated with each, Niiamar sees this film as an opportunity to highlight the details of what the process entails while helping to educate others interested in working in the fashion industry.  The familiar saying ‘it is what it is’ may sound like a cliché, but it is a very true mantra that the designer lives by. 

Niiamar, his line of women’s ready-to-wear, avoids trends in favor of a focus on elegance and enduring style.  His designs have been worn by Hollywood personalities to red carpet events, including the Academy Awards.  As a contestant on Lifetime Channel’s “24 Hour Catwalk,” he impressed the panel of celebrity judges with his attention to detail and exceptional design aesthetic.  An AUDELCO Award nominee for Best Costume Design in theatre, he has served as Principal Costume Designer for the off-Broadway productions of August Wilson’s acclaimed Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Cheaters Club, Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, and The Doll Confessions, directed by Tony Award winner Trezana Beverley, among others.

A Florida native, Niiamar resides in New York City, where he is the resident Fashion Design Specialist at the prestigious Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy, instructing and inspiring students with a recognized aptitude in fashion design.  Prior to joining the Academy, he served as Assistant Costume Director for five years at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, America’s first acting conservatory.

NIIAMAR…It Is What It Is will strike a chord with its entertaining yet realistic depiction of what designer hopefuls should expect from the world of fashion. The film’s creative team is comprised of Executive Producers Niiamar Felder and Marlynn Snyder; Producer Lisa Chance; Director Austin J. Henderson; and Editor Erin Marie Davis. 

***

NIIAMAR FELDER – BIO 
Inspired by the brilliance of legendary style icon Valentino, rising young fashion designer NIIAMAR avoids trends in favor of a more enduring style that has become a signature of his coveted designs.  Those designs have been featured in several publications, fashion shows, theatre productions, marketing campaigns and on national television.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Niiamar (Sudanese for ‘King’) Felder discovered his love for artistry at an early age.  While attending Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, he realized a true talent and passion for fashion design.  He draws inspiration from paintings, architecture and nostalgic glamour to construct timeless designs.  He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in design from Florida A&M University (FAMU) in 2007.  During his undergraduate studies, he worked as a design assistant to renowned designer, Kevan Hall.  He was nominated for the Marvin Sims Design Fellowship in Costume Design, awarded by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  A sought after instructor in fashion design, Niiamar conducts various workshops at schools and colleges on the east coast, including a 2013 Summer Intensive Workshop at his alma mater. 
In addition to designing stylish and wearable collections each season, Niiamar’s designs have been worn by Hollywood personalities on nationally syndicated television shows and to red carpet events, including the Academy Awards; featured in Ebony magazine; and impressed judges with his exceptional design aesthetic as a contestant on Lifetime Channel’s “24 Hour Catwalk.”  His list of accomplishments includes nominations for his work in the theatre and on the runway.  Most notable was his 2012 AUDELCO Award nomination for Best Costume Design for the off-Broadway production of August Wilson’s acclaimed Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.  The theatrical community has continued to take note of his impressive skills via principal costume design work in Sowa’s Red Gravy, The Cheaters Club, Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate andThe Doll Confessions, directed by Tony Award winner Trezana Beverly.
Niiamar currently resides in New York City.

For more information, please visit: http://www.niiamar.com/

@CW_TheFlash: Fast Enough (4/4)

The season finale of The Flash was really "Fast Enough". It also was awesome enough and cool enough. It was more than enough. It was great! 

***spoilers***

There were some interesting unexpected turns. Although Barry not changing the past, not so much. That was expected. And it would have been too complicated to define the timeline if Barry changed the past. Is that why future Flash told him not to change the past? This is definitely easier too. But Eddie killing himself to save the day, that was the BIG unexpected but pretty cool. And that too after Eddie gets his self confidence back and happily gets back with Iris (and I felt good about it this time, Barry is too much of cry baby sometimes and Eddie's been cool). So is Reverse Flash really dead? Or Eddie Thawne will become the Reverse Flash as he goes into the wormhole? The open and unresolved wormhole at the end is quite a cliffhanger too. Although most certainly Barry will win. Let's see what else interesting angles they add to it. The interaction between Dr Wells and Cisco was again fun, and now we know (more & better) that he'll be the Vibe, thanks to Wells. Interestingly enough Ronnie got married to Caitlin and is going to stay. So what happens to Firestorm? And when does Caitlin becomes Killer Frost?

***spoilers end***

Everything happens for a reason. Don't miss the season finale of ‪The Flash‬ Tuesday at 8/7c! SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/TheCWSubscribe About The Flash After a particle accelerator causes a freak storm, CSI Investigator Barry Allen is struck by lightning and falls into a coma.

The performances were quite good too. Grant Gustin adds a lot of humanity to the character (although quite a cry baby) and does justice to both Barry and Flash. This episode was another landmark for him. His dilemma was quite well played, although kinda stretched. Tom Cavanagh always brings lot of interesting shades to the Reverse Flash and Dr Wells, if he's really gone, he'll be truly missed. Rick Cosnett had a good episode as Eddie Thawne, finally became truly lovable (at least for me). And it's a joy to see Victor Garber as Martin Stein. I hear we'll see him as regular in 'Legends of Tomorrow', which I can't wait for.

So all in all, it was a great ending to first season of a wonderful show. Can't wait for Season 2 already and see what more is cooking!

P.S. DC is doing great with there TV shows, no wonder it's expanding all over the place, But I don't get why they want to keep movie universe separate from TV universe. And also recast all these wonderful actors for movies. Why?!?!

Note: These ratings and review are personal opinion of the author.

THE 2015 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL from June 11-21, 2015

Co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center 
***
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival will be presented from June 11 to 21, 2015 with 16 films from across the globe that celebrate the power of individuals and communities to effect change, said Human Rights Watch. Now in its 26th edition, the festival is co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center.

This year’s film festival is organized around three themes: Art Versus Oppression, Changemakers and Justice and Peace. The festival also features a series of special programs, including a discussion around the ethics of image-making in documenting human rights abuses, a master class on international crisis reporting and digital storytelling, and a multimedia project on the women activists of the Arab Spring.

“This year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival is all about challenging the status quo,” said the festival’s creative director, John Biaggi. “From fighting government corruption in Guatemala, to fighting to bring back the female voice in Iran, to fighting against the stereotyping of young African-American men in the US, the films this year showcase both the need and determination of individuals to reform unjust social, cultural and political systems worldwide.”

The festival will begin on June 11 with a fundraising Benefit Night for Human Rights Watch featuring Matthew Heineman’s harrowing look into Mexico's drug war, Cartel Land. Winner of the US documentary directing and cinematography awards at the Sundance Film Festival, the film exposes two contemporary vigilante movements, one on either side of the US-Mexico border.

Director Marc Silver and special guests will be at the June 12 Opening Night screening of another Sundance award-winner, 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets. This documentary centers on the 2012 shooting death of a black teenager, Jordan Davis, at a Florida gas station and the trial of his killer, Michael Dunn.

The Closing Night screening on June 21 will be the renowned documentarian Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, a history of the Black Panther Party in the US, featuring rare archival footage, from the Party’s beginnings to its ultimate dissolution. The director and some of the film’s subjects will be on hand for a discussion afterward.

Art Versus Oppression

The Iranian filmmaker Ayat Najafi's musical journey No Land’s Song follows his composer sister Sara’s attempts to organize a concert in Tehran despite restrictions prohibiting female solo singers from performing before a mixed audience. The festival is pleased to present Najafi with its 2015 Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking.

Winner of the Toronto Film Festival’s audience award for documentary, Hajooj Kuka’s Beats of the Antonov immerses viewers in the world of the Sudanese farmers, herders and rebels of the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain regions, who defiantly continue to tend their lands and celebrate their musical heritage in the face of a government bombing campaign.

Filmed before, during and after the Arab Spring, Francois Verster’s kaleidoscopic The Dream of Shahrazad uses the metaphor of Shahrazad—the princess who saves her life by telling stories—to explore the ways in which creativity and politics coincide in response to oppression.

New York’s own The Yes Men team with the filmmaker Laura Nix for The Yes Men Are Revolting, which follows the activist-pranksters as they pull the rug out from under mega-corporations, government officials and the media in a series of stunts designed to draw awareness to climate change.


Changemakers

Joey Boink's intimate documentary Burden of Peace follows Claudia Paz y Paz, Guatemala's first female attorney general, as she prosecutes the former dictator Efraín Rios Montt for his role in the genocide of nearly 200,000 Mayan Guatemalans. 

Andreas Dalsgaard's Life Is Sacred reveals how the unorthodox presidential candidate Antanas Mockus and his enthusiastic young activist supporters attempt to reverse the vicious cycle of violence that is part of everyday life in Colombia.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gini Reticker’s The Trials of Spring, which will be shown in its world premiere, tells the stories of three Egyptian women who risk everything to fight for change in their country. This feature documentary anchors a larger multimedia project at the festival about women activists from the Middle East and North Africa.

Beth Murphy’s What Tomorrow Brings, which will be presented as a work-in-progress screening, chronicles a year in the life of the first all-girls school in a remote, conservative Afghan village. 

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, the closing night film, is also featured in this theme.


Justice and Peace

Joshua Oppenheimer's multi-award-winning The Look of Silence, the companion piece to hisThe Act of Killing (HRWFF 2013), focuses on a village optometrist who confronts the men who murdered his brother during Indonesia's anti-communist purges of the 1960s.

The psychological toll of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is laid bare in Laurent Bécue-Renard’s Of Men and War, which looks at a group of combat veterans at a group therapy center as they struggle to overcome their Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and rebuild their lives.

Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s (T)ERROR puts the filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation as they follow “Shariff,” a black revolutionary-turned-informant, in his attempt to befriend a suspected Taliban sympathizer and build a case against him.

The Israeli-born director Tamara Erde’s This Is My Land takes viewers inside six independently run schools in Israel and the occupied West Bank to investigate how history is taught in this contested region.

Through stop-motion animation, drawings and interviews, Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan’s The Wanted 18 recreates the true story of the Israeli army’s pursuit of 18 cows whose independent milk production on a Palestinian collective farm was declared “a threat to the national security of the state of Israel.”

The Benefit Night’s Cartel Land and Opening Night’s 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets are also featured in this theme.


Special Programs

A Right to the Image 
By examining various bodies of work from the worlds of human rights filmmaking and photography, documentarian Pamela Yates, photographer Susan Meiselas and Charif Kiwan, co-founder of Abounaddara Collective, will explore the notion of “a right to the image” that protects the dignity of subjects, as well as the integrity of the journalists, image-makers and researchers who work in these situations.

The Trials of Spring: A Multimedia Initiative 
The Trials of Spring is an initiative that aims to elevate the stories of the women who were on the front lines of the uprisings that swept the Arab world in 2011. The project includes six short films profiling women from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, a feature documentary focused on Egypt, and an outreach campaign that will bring these stories to stakeholders, educators and grassroots organizations around the world. This program will feature a selection of the short films and a discussion with the multi-disciplinary team. 

The Unravelling: Human Rights Reporting and Digital Storytelling
During this master class, the Human Rights Watch emergencies director, Peter Bouckaert, and leading photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale will focus on their multimedia project The Unravellingto show how Human Rights Watch used the techniques and strategies of international crisis reporting and digital storytelling to reveal the little-known humanitarian crisis in the Central African Republic. Bleasdale was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal by the Associated Press in 2015 for his work for Human Rights Watch in the Central African Republic.

In conjunction with this year’s film program, the festival will present Turkana, an exhibition by the photographer Brent Stirton that documents the challenges that the Turkana people of Kenya face in accessing their rights to water, health and livelihood. It will be featured in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater for the duration of the festival.

TICKET INFORMATION: Tickets are available online at filmlinc.com for the screenings at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and ifccenter.com for the IFC Center, as well as directly from each of the organization’s box offices. Film Society of Lincoln Center: $14.00 General Public, $11.00 Seniors & Students, $9.00 FSLC Members. IFC Center: $14.00 General Public, $10.00 Seniors & Children, $9.00 IFC Center Members. A discount package is also available for screenings at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Ticket On Sale Dates: May 19 – Pre-sale to Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center Members; May 21 – General Public. For discounted tickets and festival updates, sign up for the mailing list at www.hrw.org/filmconnect. Follow the festival on Twitter @hrwfilmfestival.

 For Complete Program and Schedule Information: ff.hrw.org

For more information, call the Film Society at 212-875-5600 or IFC Center at 212-924-7771 or visit ff.hrw.org.