Posted on: Tuesday, March 13, 2001
New site focuses on Asian films
By Burt Lum
With so much attention being placed on Asia, it comes as no surprise that there’s a Web site focused on contemporary Asian films. What does surprise me is that it has taken this long to happen. On March 21, the Asian Film Connections Web site will make its official debut. But at www.asianfilms.org you can get the preview now.
I suppose these things take time. Back in 1999, a few friends of mine got together and actually brainstormed about a site with the potential to be a portal to Pacific Rim film projects. Experience has proven that talk and ideas are cheap. Success is in the implementation. Or as some folks might say, “the devil is in the details.” For a site like Asianfilms.org to happen, lots of things needed to converge.
When Jeannette Paulson Hereniko wrote me about Asianfilms.org, I immediately thought, “What a perfect match.” Here is someone who was the founding director of the Hawaii International Film Festival and has all the right stuff to launch a project like this. At the University of Southern California, Hereniko directs the Asia Pacific Media Center at the Annenberg Center for Communication; she’s also president of NETPAC/USA, the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema.
Titles and affiliations aside, you still need information and technology to get the job done. USC provides both. At the heart of Asianfilms.org is the Asian film database, maintained by the Asia Pacific Media Center. Although the site does not provide access to the films themselves, they do offer a substantial amount of information about each project through synopses, interviews, photos, film clips and reviews. Covering contemporary films from China, India, Korea, Japan and Taiwan is a feat in itself, but they also plan to have Web versions in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
This is a monumental undertaking, and anyone who is interested in the latest film projects emerging from Asia will find this invaluable. I only wish I could watch these films online. ;-)
Burt Lum, cyber-citizen and self-anointed tour guide to the Internet frontier, is one click away at burt@brouhaha.net |
