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2015 San Diego Asian Film Festival

Masters

Fresh from Cannes, Berlin, and other prestigious international film festivals, these are premieres and rediscoveries of works by the world’s best directors.


  1. AN

    Naomi Kawase / Masters / France, Germany, Japan / 2015 / drama, food / 113 mins
    The neighborhood pastry chef gets an unusual applicant to be his assistant: a 76-year-old woman with a surprising knowledge of how to improve the red-bean sweetness of his pancake confections. But with the secret recipe comes secrets about the woman’s background, and the chef is brought to rethink his inspiration.
    AN

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Tuesday, November 10, 2015 6:15 pm

    AN

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Thursday, November 12, 2015 5:30 pm


  2. THE ASSASSIN

    Hou Hsiao-hsien / Masters / China, Hong Kong, Taiwan / 2015 / drama, experimental, martial arts / 104 mins
    The great Hou Hsiao-hsien’s long-awaited martial arts adaptation is a masterpiece of the wuxia spirit. An assassin is ordered to kill her cousin but then scales away from a life of violence. Intricately ordered and immaculately detailed, but always profoundly naturalistic, Hou stuns with a treatise on beauty and justice that is beyond words.
    THE ASSASSIN

    UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
    Sunday, November 8, 2015 4:15 pm Buy Tickets

    THE ASSASSIN

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Wednesday, November 11, 2015 8:35 pm Buy Tickets


  3. THE CASE OF HANA & ALICE

    Shunji Iwai / Masters / Japan / 2015 / animation, drama / 100 mins
    In this animated prequel to Shunji Iwai’s 2004 hit, we find out that the titular high schoolers first met when they whimsically started looking into the famed murder surrounding a classmate. Their amateur sleuthing becomes a teenage dance of friendship, illuminated by the gentle hues of youth.
    THE CASE OF HANA & ALICE

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Sunday, November 8, 2015 4:30 pm


  4. CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR

    Apichatpong Weerasethakul / Masters / Thailand / 2015 / experimental / 122 mins
    Apichatpong Weerasethakul casts another spell on his characters and audience, this time watching over a hospital full of soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness. Past worlds – a school, ancient ruins – animate strange states of longing and dreams held in suspension.
    CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Friday, November 6, 2015 5:35 pm

    CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Saturday, November 7, 2015 5:55 pm


  5. COUP D’ETAT

    Kiju Yoshida / Masters / Japan / 1973 / 110 mins
    Kiju Yoshida depicts the 1936 attempted coup against the Japanese government by Ikki Kita, played by the late Rentaro Mikuni. Equal parts political and sensual, the film ties the past to modern Japan in haunting ways.
    COUP D’ETAT

    Museum of Photographic Arts
    Thursday, November 12, 2015 6:30 pm


  6. EROS + MASSACRE

    Kiju Yoshida / Masters / Japan / 1969 / 202 mins
    Kiju Yoshida's legendary biopic of anarchist Sakae Osugi and his sensually-complicated relationships with three women. Epic in size and ambition, Yoshida tells the story of a man who is the image of modern Japan.
    EROS + MASSACRE

    Museum of Photographic Arts
    Wednesday, November 11, 2015 6:30 pm


  7. FLOWERS OF TAIPEI: TAIWAN NEW CINEMA

    Hsieh Chinlin / Masters / Taiwan / 2014 / documentary / 109 mins
    Some of the world’s most famous directors and curators debate, reminisce, and celebrate “Taiwan New Cinema,” the film movement that reshaped cultural dialogue in 1980s Taiwan and introduced groundbreaking new talents like Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang.
    FLOWERS OF TAIPEI: TAIWAN NEW CINEMA

    UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
    Sunday, November 8, 2015 2:10 pm


  8. LA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM

    Yamashita Nobuhiro / Masters / Japan / 2015 / drama, musical / 103 mins
    An amnesiac awakens knowing nothing about himself except that he can sing! His process of self-discovery, enabled by an ambitious teen at a recording studio, brings him face-to-face with buried demons and a talent that can lift him to redemption. From the director of Linda Linda Linda.
    LA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Saturday, November 7, 2015 8:50 pm

    LA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Monday, November 9, 2015 8:50 pm


  9. LOVE & PEACE

    Sion Sono / Masters / Japan / 2015 / comedy, musical / 117 mins
    From the warped mind of Sion Sono comes one of his most entertaining films to date. An office nerd has glam-rock dreams but only his pet turtle gives him any encouragement. Things blow up (literally) when a magic spell turns the sewers and the city into a musical fantasy-world.
    LOVE & PEACE

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Monday, November 9, 2015 6:00 pm

    LOVE & PEACE

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Wednesday, November 11, 2015 5:50 pm

    LOVE & PEACE

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Thursday, November 12, 2015 9:50 pm


  10. MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

    Jia Zhang-ke / Masters / China, France, Japan / 2015 / drama / 131 mins
    A poignant epic spanning decades and continents, Jia Zhang-ke’s latest masterpiece follows a love triangle from its dance-infused beginnings to its jet-set millennial melancholy. Jia explores China’s past, present, and future as only he can: with a canto-pop heart and a bleeding love for ordinary people strewn apart.
    MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Friday, November 6, 2015 8:55 pm

    MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Monday, November 9, 2015 5:30 pm


  11. NO NO SLEEP

    Tsai Ming-liang / Masters / China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan / 2015 / experimental / 35 mins
    Tsai Ming-liang’s walker drifts from the Tokyo streets into the lush quiet of a bath house. No one truly sleeps alone under Tsai’s somnambulistic spells.
    Plays In:
    NO NO SLEEP

    UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
    Sunday, November 8, 2015 1:00 pm


  12. NO NO SLEEP + THE PALACE ON THE SEA + CURTAINS

    Masters / 53 mins
    Three shorts by outsiders (a Malay Chinese in Taiwan, a Taiwanese in America, and a Burmese Chinese in Taiwan) peer with active eyes into lives and settings unseen.

    In This Program: CURTAINS, THE PALACE ON THE SEA, NO NO SLEEP

    NO NO SLEEP

    UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
    Sunday, November 8, 2015 1:00 pm


  13. OFFICE

    Johnnie To / Masters / China, Hong Kong / 2015 / musical / 117 mins
    Megastars Chow Yun-fat and Sylvia Chang engage in power-plays, sideline deals, and other dubious games of high finance. In any other hands, this would be a routine takedown of corruption. In Johnnie To’s, it’s a high-flying musical with pop stars and living legends spinning corporate intrigue to dizzying heights.
    OFFICE

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Sunday, November 8, 2015 8:50 pm

    OFFICE

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Tuesday, November 10, 2015 5:45 pm


  14. TAXI

    Jafar Panahi / Masters / Iran / 2015 / experimental, hybrid documentary / 82 mins
    Jafar Panahi’s third film while banned from filmmaking is a shocker of unwavering mastery. With an almost cheeky love of the camera, Panahi mounts several camcorders in a taxi he drives around town, interacting with passengers and brazenly putting to the test the ethics of cinema in urban Iran.
    TAXI

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Thursday, November 12, 2015 6:45 pm


  15. THANATOS, DRUNK

    Chang Tso-chi / Masters / Taiwan / 2015 / drama, LGBT / 107 mins
    The aptly-named Rat crawls through a subcultural, emotionally subterranean world left to him by an alcoholic mother and shared with a brother who has just returned from the United States. Chang Tso-chi’s despairing, shockingly-felt drama plays like a woozy dream interrupted by bouts of emotional acuity.
    THANATOS, DRUNK

    UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
    Saturday, November 7, 2015 5:10 pm

    THANATOS, DRUNK

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Monday, November 9, 2015 8:30 pm


  16. THE WHISPERING STAR

    Sion Sono / Masters / Japan / 2015 / science fiction / 100 mins
    A delivery-robot travels from planet to planet dropping off packages for human clients. Perched behind her intergalactic console, she starts to wonder about the worlds of humans, so far apart in space, so far away in each other’s memories.
    THE WHISPERING STAR

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Friday, November 6, 2015 7:10 pm

    THE WHISPERING STAR

    UltraStar Mission Valley
    Saturday, November 7, 2015 5:15 pm