TGIF Feature: SF film festival honors director Wayne Wang

WAYNE WANG

FILMMAKER Wayne Wang will be honored during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival with a special tribute, followed by a screening of his 1995 film Smoke, newly remastered and recolored.

"Wayne Wang has consistently been among the most interesting and engaging filmmakers at work in the American independent and Hollywood scenes," said SFFILM Executive Director Noah Cowan. 

"A pioneer and giant in telling Asian/American stories but with a career that sprawls from Hong Kong to Florida and back again, he continues to inspire us as he rethinks and reinterprets his work for the digital age. We are delighted that he has held back the new version of his masterpiece Smoke for our Festival."  

After the tribute there will be ascreening of Wang's 1995 film Smoke, newly remastered and recolored.  

Wayne Wang has always followed his own path in a career that's jumped between genres and countries, working at both independent-budget and Hollywood scale. 

One of the most important Asian/American directors living today, Wang was born in Hong Kong and named after his father's favorite movie star, John Wayne. He moved to California in the late '60s and studied film and television at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. 

Wang's first feature film, Chan Is Missing (1982) was financed through grants and set in San Francisco's Chinatown. 

Wang is often identified with films about the Chinese diaspora including, Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985), Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989), and The Joy Luck Club (1993) but has also made such studio features as Maid in Manhattan (2002) with Jennifer Lopez and Last Holiday (2006) with Queen Latifah, and independent features such as Blue in the Face (Festival 1994) and Center of the World (Festival 2001). 

His most recent feature, While the Women Are Sleeping, was loosely based on Javier Marias's short story and shot in Japan. 

If you're going: Tickets to "A Tribute to Wayne Wang: Smoke" are $13 for SFFILM members, $16 for the general public. Box office is open to SFFILM members now online at sffilm.org and opens for the general public.

True to its name, the festival will show 183 films. Among the 45 countries represented, motion pictures or documentaries from Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Japan, South Korea, Hongkong, Malaysia and China will be featured during the two-week festival starting April 4 and concluding April 17.

A documentary about the ascendence of Filipino cuisine in the United States, Ulam: Main Dish, will be presented April 7. Directed by Filipino/American Alexandra Cuerda, the film interviews several Filipino American chefs. "Through pioneering Filipino-American chefs and restaurateurs, we discuss the issues inherent in the Fil-Am crossover; also, we celebrate the newfound success of the thriving culinary community that is the Filipino food movement," says Cuerda.  

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