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- San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase
A week-long presentation of Asian cinema
A Production of Pacific Arts Movement, presenters of the San Diego Asian Film Festival
Schedule of Events:
5:00 pm - 100 mins - Soldier of Love
To the beats of the classic Kazakh rock band A’Studio comes director Farkhat Sharipov’s lavish moral tale of Beybut, a lead singer caught up in the seductions of fame. First comes the promise of going solo. Then comes the youthful dancer who catches his eye. With everything on the line, he takes the plunge into the limelight.
What sounds like a Kazakh “making the band” is actually a full-blown musical extravaganza, with the entire city of Almaty coming alive in color, dance, and spectacle. The 80s and 90s songs get a contemporary twist, and the choreography keeps pace with Beybut’s rise with the ease of a music video and the inventive contemporary flair of La La Land.
7:15 pm - 96 mins - Between Goodbyes
Born in South Korea as Miok, Mieke was raised in the Netherlands by her Dutch single adoptive mother, a continent away from a family she never had the chance to know. Mieke’s birth parents didn’t have the resources to take on another child, so they, like 180,000 other Korean parents, were nudged by the South Korean government’s population policies to put their child up for international adoption.
In the years since, Mieke has overcome loss, found community in church, and discovered queer love, all while her birth parents have dreamed, from an ocean away, about the woman she may have become. So one Christmas, they send their Dutch child a Christmas card to say hello, and to apologize, beginning a decades-long process of reunion.
BETWEEN GOODBYES follows Mieke on a trip to South Korea to celebrate her marriage and reflect on parents and siblings who have, with each goodbye, etched an indelible hole in her heart. Director and fellow Korean adoptee Jota Mun reveals the difficult but transformative process of reunification, giving hope to those on both sides of the sea, as they discover their own identities between self and family.
