INhonolulu Magazine Issue #16 - April 2014 | Page 6

Guide / HIFF Spring Showcase

Getting HIFFy
Gary Chun
Photo by Jeff Hitchcock

T

he Hawaii International
Film Festival (HIFF) will
once again serve up its
Spring Showcase appetizer this
year. The showcase, scheduled before the main HIFF shindig in the
fall, runs April 4–10, with special
screenings April 14 and 28.
On tap are 37 films from around
the world, including several Filipino films that will be shown at the
Honolulu Museum of Art’s Doris
Duke Theatre for the 6th annual
Filipino Film Festival. This year
marks the beginning of a yearround partnership between the
museum and HIFF, with the Filipino Film Festival program coinciding with the Spring Showcase.
While you can see the whole
lineup at hiff.org (and purchase
tickets as well), here are some curated highlights:
Don’t miss a special free screening on the central lawn of Honolulu Community College of the
Oscar-winning documentary 20
Feet from Stardom at 7:30 p.m. on
Sat., April 5. The event starts at 6
p.m. with food and pre-show entertainment.
If you missed last year’s HIFF
screenings and the subsequent
ones at the Kahala multiplex
and Doris Duke, you get another chance to see this captivating
film. It’s a veritable history of pop
music, as seen through the eyes
of its most vaunted backup singers. It’s a great mixture of new,
archival and interview footage
with the likes of Bruce SpringPage 6

Our picks for Spring Showcase
Once Upon a Time in Vietnam (8:30 p.m. Friday, April 4 & 12:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 5, DC): Actor-turned-filmmaker Dustin Nguyen does it
all in this labor of love. The film is the first action, sci-fi, fantasy film to
be produced in the Southeast Asian country. Nguyen plays a supernaturally powered, motorbike riding, wandering warrior monk whose travels
takes him to a village where local thugs are harassing a humble baker and
his wife.
Rigor Mortis (9:15 p.m. Friday, April 4 & Thursday, April 10, DC): Advance word is that this is a terrific, atmospheric homage to the classic
Chinese “hopping vampire” movies of the 1980s, co-produced by Japanese horror icon Takashi Shimizu (creator of the Ju-On franchise, made
famous in America by 2002’s The Grudge). The film is set in a creepy
Hong Kong public housing tower whose occupants run the gamut from
the living to the dead to the undead, in assorted ghost, vampire and zombie guises.
Obvious Child (9:30 p.m. Friday, April 4 & 12:15 p.m. Sunday, April 6,
DC): One of my favorite comedy actors is Jenny Slate. She’s appeared in
TV series Bored to Death, Parks and Recreation, Hello Ladies, House of
Lies and Kroll Show. Some of my favorite comedy projects from her are
the breakout Marcel the Shell with Shoes On on YouTube (Slate always
does great voice-over work), and the wonderfully underplayed Catherine, a mini-web series created for the JASH YouTube comedy channel.
This particular film, originally created as a short in 2009 is near to her
heart. She plays an irreverent stand-up comic who has to decide whether
or not to get an abortion after her boyfriend dumps her and she ends up
pregnant off a one-night stand.
Ask This of Rikyu (6:30 p.m., Saturday, April 5 & 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April
6, DC): One of the most prestigious Japanese films of last year, Rikyu is a
16th-century thriller based around, of all things, the evolution of the tea
ceremony. A tea master—who grew to his exalted position from simple
origins as the son of a fish shop owner—is ordered to commit suicide by
the emperor. But why?
The Double (9:15 p.m., Saturday, April 5 & 8:45 p.m. Monday, April 7,
DC): Jesse Eisenberg plays dual roles in this darkly comic adaptation of
Doestoevsky’s novella by the same name. The life of a timid office clerk,
Simon James, turns upside down when his exact physical double, James
Simon, becomes his new co-worker. And since James Simon is also our
protagonist’s exact opposite in temperament—exuding confidence and
charisma to Simon James’ timorousness—he starts making moves on the
lovely copy room woman (Mia Wasikowska) Simon James pines for.
Continued on page 8

steen and Sting, while veteran
talents such as Darlene Love,
Merry Clayton and Lisa Fischer
tell their fascinating stories.
Keeping in the music vein,
one special guest coming for the
showcase this year is noted rock
photographer Bob Gruen, the
subject of Rock ‘N’ Roll Exposed:
The Photography of Bob Gruen
(6:30 p.m., Tue., April 8 at Dole
Cannery multiplex).
Gruen will participate in a
post-screening discussion with audience members. The history this
one man has documented with his
camera with portrait and performance shots, “from Led Zeppelin
to the Rolling Stones, Elvis to Madonna, Bob Dylan to Bob Marley,
John Lennon to Johnny Rotten,”
will dazzle you. Some of the documentary’s interviewees include

Yoko Ono, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper,
Tommy Ramone of the Ramones
and Blondie’s Debbie Harry.
Filmmaker Mona Lisa Yuchengo will talk about her documentary Marilou Diaz-Abaya: Filmmaker on a Voyage after the film’s 4
p.m., Sun., April 6, screening. Her
film is a tribute to her late friend,
considered “the first lady of Philippine cinema,” for her unflinching honesty throughout a career
in feature films that began in the
1980s.
Both the April 6 and Fri., April
11 (1 p.m.), screenings will also
include an example of Diaz-Abaya’s later work: 2001’s Bagong Buwan (New Moon). “Hailed as the
first feature film to focus on the
long-standing conflict between
the Philippine central government and Muslims in the south,”

its synopsis reads, it “was pioneering in its treatment of Muslim Filipinos (Moros) with sympathy and sensitivity.”
The Filipino Film Festival will
also include th &VRvV