LATEST NEWS:

~ The Motel wins the "Best Narrative Feature Award" from the The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. NAATA is one of the premiere organizations supporting Asian American cinema. This is the first year that they have had a competition. It is a great honor to be the first ever to receive the award.

~ Producer Gina Kwon received the eighth annual Bravo/American Express Producers Award at the 2005 IFP Independent Spirit Awards, which honors producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity, and vision required to produce quality independent films.


April Fool's Day is not just for fools. Fresh off the tails of "The Motel" becoming officially an award-winning film, the movie will be featured as the Opening Night Film of The 10th Annual Chicago Asian American Showcase. There will be an opening night reception / gallery opening preceding the screening. Director and cast will be in attendance. Please join us. No joke.

Screening:

8:15pm Friday, April 1, 2005
The Gene Siskel Film center
164 N. State Street
Chicago, IL
info:

Opening reception / art show opening:

"Here And Now"
6:00 - 8:00pm
The Gene Siskel Film center
164 N. State Street
Chicago, IL

Tickets available through Ticketmaster ~ 312.575.8000 or ticketmaster.com.

Please visit the FAAIM site for more information.


ABOUT THE FILM: This first feature by New Yorker Michael Kang comes with a pedigree: the script was workshopped at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab, was honored as the US recipient of the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award, and boasts Miguel Arteta, Matthew Greenfield, Gina Kwon and Karin Chien as producers.  The result is one of the truest portraits of emerging male adolescence we’ve seen in a long time (perhaps, even, since Arteta’s own breakout “Star Maps”). Ernest Chin (Jeffrey Chyau) is a chubby, thirteen-year-old Chinese-American kid whose family owns and runs a hot-sheet motel.  After school but before homework, Ernest works, changing sheets and cleaning the rooms, making for comic confrontations that also bring Ernest face-to-face with a side of life he’s just beginning to understand.  When a charismatic Korean-American guy  (Sung Kang) reeling from a broken marriage checks in, Ernest finds in him something of a mentor: but is this a case of the blind leading the blind-sided?

-JW+A


OLD NEWS:

MARCH 2005: "The Motel" featured as the Closing Night Film of The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The film is given the first ever "Best Narrative Feature Award" by the festival.

FEBRUARY 2005 : "The Motel" was invited to screen as part of the Independent Feature Project's "Best of the Fest" series at the European Film Market at the 55th Berlin International Film Festival.

JANUARY 2005: "The Motel" made its World Premiere at The 2005 Sundance Film Festival in The American Spectrum category.

~ DON'T FORGET TO SIGN UP ON OUR E-MAIL LIST ~