HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
COURTESY HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
"The Princess of Nebraska" is part of a special double bill of low-budget independent films.
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Filmfest success returns
Hong Kong-born Wayne Wang was one of a handful of directors whose early work was featured at the Hawaii International Film Festival and who has since gone on to carve a solid career in filmmaking for himself. Local audiences might remember seeing some of his films during the festival's run in the 1980s, such as "Chan is Missing," "Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart" and "Eat a Bowl of Tea." He made his name in the studio system with his adaptation of "The Joy Luck Club" in 1993, and has gone on to make other broad-appeal movies like "Maid in Manhattan," "Because of Winn-Dixie" and the 2006 project starring Queen Latifah, "Last Holiday."
"A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" "The Princess of Nebraska"
Part of the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival's Centerpiece; double feature, starting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Hawaii Theatre
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His two latest films return him to his independent, Chinese-American roots, and will be shown back to back at the Hawaii Theatre Tuesday evening.
"A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" and "The Princess of Nebraska" are both adapted from the writings of Yiyun Li. The former is about a Chinese father, Shi, who goes to America to take care of Yilan, his recently divorced daughter, while the latter features Sasha, a troubled young woman who visits San Francisco from the Midwest while contemplating the future of her pregnancy.
In "Good Prayers," Wang wrote via e-mail that "Yilan's loneliness is obvious and visible from the moment Shi is reunited with her. As they are eating dinner and the phone rings, Yilan rushes to answer it, crestfallen when she realizes it's a telemarketer. Her love life is not really hers -- it's directed by others. It's a mystery to Shi that he feels compelled to solve.
COURTESY HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Director Wayne Wang's low-budget independent films will be shown at the festival.
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"That's the basic structure I crafted for this film: I want it to be a mystery that Shi comes to solve. Learning of the dissolution of her marriage and immediately assuming she's an abandoned wife in need of help, he prowls through her veiled life to learn the true story. That true story, when uncovered, also solves the mystery of his past as well. Their stories are intimately, irrevocably linked since they are father and daughter and neither can escape their legacy of Cultural Revolution-era China."
With "Nebraska," Wang changed the main character slightly, "making Sasha the most current representation of new China, part of the young, brash, and fearless generation. ... (while) Yilan in (the other film) is burdened by the constraints of her family and cultural history, Sasha, on the other hand, is totally unencumbered; (she has) no history, no moral guideposts and no spirituality or religion. ... nothing restrains her."