NYAFF Winter Showcase: Actress Han Ji-Mae Hailed As Ambassador For This Season’s CRAZY BROKE ASIANS/A TOUCH OF OLD SCHOOL Selections

New York City residents can now get their tickets handy for the Winter Showcase, hosted by none other than the New York Asian Film Festival. Showings will be held for the first two three-day weekends of February with ticket prices varying from $5 to $15, and membership prices also listed.

The film series is being hailed with award-winning actress Han Ji-Mae following her performance in Lee Ji-won’s 2018 South Korean drama, Miss Baek, which will serve as the opening gala for the showcase on February 1. Going forward the line-up will showcase a variety of tastemaker titles from the last half-century, as well as a surprise screening for the second weekend.

The showcase will take place at the School Of Visual Arts, located at 333 West 23 Street. Read on, and then click here to get your tickets accordingly!

For the inaugural edition of the New York Asian Film Festival Winter Showcase, we’ve chosen a very timely theme. Everyone’s talking about “Crazy Rich Asians”, but what about the other side of the tracks? The showcase offers an alternate perspective on the continent with films that range from pure entertainment to profound introspection, stories about the 99% and the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, which might be from halfway across the world but are more relevant than ever in our troubled times. A deeply moving epic of despair, raw tales of the streets, crime thrillers, redemptive boxing dramas, a comic period piece, darkly humorous animation, action extravaganzas; all make up the salient motif we’ve dubbed “Crazy Broke Asians”. Weaving a rich fabric of Asian cinema, the films from years past (including a few NYAFF alumni) deserve fresh eyes, while the premieres hint at much more to come this summer in NYAFF 2019.

The final day of the showcase includes the “Iko Uwais Double Punch”: Merantau (a NYAFF alumnus) and The Raid: Redemption, the first two groundbreaking martial arts films starring the silat champion, who was discovered by director Gareth Evans and is now taking Hollywood by storm.

As an added treat we’re continuing our tradition of showing great martial arts films of yore (as we’ve done in our monthly series at Quad Cinemas) with a sidebar titled “A Touch of Old School”. Here we present three beat ‘em up and chop ‘em down features by Taiwan kung fu movie maestro Joseph Kuo, resurrecting two grindhouse favorites, one of which was immortalized in a hiphop anthem by megastar rap band Wu-Tang Clan, as well as premiering a new 4K restoration of a rarely screened wuxia classic. And to top it all off, there will be one of our legendary “Secret Screenings” featuring as always a wild, mind-numbing surprise.

HAN JI-MIN, FIRST NYAFF AMBASSADOR

In her latest film Miss Baek, released in the fall of 2018 in South Korea, the actress portrays a tough convict, swearing, spitting and smoking on a grubby street corner. With the challenging role, which contrasts with her previous starring turns in lighthearted romantic films since her 2003 debut All In, Han has turned a corner in her career. Already a household name, her star rose to new heights when her breakthrough performance in Miss Baek won her the coveted Blue Dragon award (South Korea’s equivalent to the Oscars) for best actress.

Miss Baek will open the Winter Showcase on February 1.

We are proud to name Ms Han our first ever Ambassador, a title that appropriately refers to a high-profile envoy that represents a polity and a specific set of values: in this case, dedication and commitment to great cinema, values that she shares with the festival. Rather than giving out yet another award, the festival is conferring this new title as a way of highlighting a certain spirit, and Ms Han represents best the curatorial view and vision of Asian film that the organization champions and showcases year after year

Lee B. Golden III

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Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!