Film Society of Lincoln Center Announces North American Premiere of Umin Boya's KANO

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema, in association with the Japan Society, announced today that Umin Boya's Kano has been selected as the Centerpiece selection for this year's New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF), June 27 - July 14, 2014. Returning for its 13th edition, the New York Asian Film Festival is one of North America's leading festivals of popular Asian Cinema.

Umin Boya's Kano, produced and co-written by Taiwan's hitmaker Wei Te-Sheng (Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, Cape No.7), is an epic sports tale, based on A True Story from Taiwan's colonial past, about an underdog mixed-race high-school baseball team that beat the odds and earned the right to travel to Japan in 1931 to compete in a national tournament. In order to succeed against their elite competition, the team had to overcome their ethnic differences and find a way to utilize their individual strengths in order to come together as a true team. The screening will mark the film's North American Premiere.

NYAFF's Korean Actor in Focus program will welcome Lee Jung-jae to New York City and present some of his most notable films as well as two exciting recent releases: Han Jae-rim's historical comedy-drama The Face Reader, and Park Hoon-jung's epic gangster thriller New World.

Early highlights among the first group of titles announced include Philip Yung's explosive female-juvenile-delinquent drama May We Chat; Benny Chan's resurrection of the heroic bloodshed genre The White Storm; Lee Kung-lok's porn-industry comedy 3D Naked Ambition (NYAFF's first 3-D movie!); superstar Andy Lau in Allen Yuen's heart-busting police thriller Firestorm; Juno Mak's hopping-vampire homage Rigor Mortis, along with the classic that inspired it, Ricky Lau's Mr. Vampire; and Chow Yun-fat reuniting with director Wong Jing in the gambling comedy From Vegas to Macau.

The legendary Takashi Miike will also be represented at NYAFF once again with his outrageous gangster comedy based on a popular manga, The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji. Korean cops take on a criminal mastermind in Jo Ui-seok and Kim Byung-seo's thriller Cold Eyes; Takashi Yamazaki's Japanese WWII kamikaze pilot drama The Eternal Zero; and Anna Broinowski's Aim High in Creation, a behind-the-scenes look at the North Korean film industry, are also set to screen.

We're deeply grateful for the support of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office New York, the Korean Cultural Service New York, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, Kenneth A. Cowin Foundation, and The Celebrity magazine.

We would also like to thank our sponsors: The Kitano Hotel, Anthology Film Archives, Møsefund Farm, Manhattan Portage, Well Go USA, Epic Proportions, Flaskingtree, and Kirin; and our media partners: Screen International, Film Business Asia, and Noonchi.

Keep up with the latest festival news at:
www.facebook.com/NYAFF, www.subwaycinema.com, www.filmlinc.com, twitter: @subwaycinema (#NYAFF14)

Tickets will go on sale to Members of the Film Society of Lincoln Center on Tuesday, June 3 and to the General Public on Thursday, June 12. Single screening tickets are $13; $9 for students and seniors (62+); and $8 for Film Society members. A three-film package is $30; $24 for students and seniors (62+); and $21 for Film Society members. Discount prices apply with the purchase of tickets to three films or more. Visit www.FilmLinc.com for complete film festival information.

Screenings will be held at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (located at 165 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway), Japan Society (333 East 47th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues), and Asia Society (725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street).

The complete lineup and press screening schedule will be announced shortly. Press screenings, to be held at Walter Reade and Japan Society, will be announced in late May.

About the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF)
Now in its 13th year, the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) is North America's leading festival of popular Asian cinema, which The New York Timeshas called "...one of the city's most valuable events..." Launched in 2002 by Subway Cinema, the festival selects only the best, strangest, and most entertaining movies to screen for New York audiences, ranging from mainstream blockbusters and art-house eccentricities to genre and cult classics. It was the first North American film festival to champion the works of Johnnie To, Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, Takashi Miike, and other auteurs of contemporary Asian cinema. Starting in 2007, Festival's Japanese film selections have been co-presented in association with Japan Society's Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema. Since 2010, the Festival has been produced in collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Film Society of Lincoln Center
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year's most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, LatinBeat, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, The Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award. The Film Society's state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, the Kobal Collection, Trump International Hotel and Tower, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.

SUBWAY CINEMA
Subway Cinema (New York Asian Film Festival, Ltd.) is America's leading non-profit organization dedicated to increasing exposure and appreciation for Asian popular film culture in all its forms. Before launching NYAFF in 2002, Subway Cinema was the first in America to recognize the works of directors Johnnie To and Tsui Hark with retrospectives, and to bring major attention to New Korean Cinema with the first New York Korean Film Festival in 2001. Subway Cinema's other events and initiatives include the annual Old School Kung Fu Fest (showcase for the best of classic martial arts films) and the Asian Film Preservation Fund.

For more information, visit www.subwaycinema.com, www.facebook.com/NYAFF and follow @subwaycinema on Twitter (#nyaff14)

Japan Society
The Japan Society Film Program has offered a diverse selection of Japanese films, from classics to contemporary independent productions. The Program has included retrospectives of seminal directors, thematic series and special screenings of international, U.S. and NY premieres. Several original film series curated by Japan Society have traveled to other U.S. venues in tours organized by the Film Program. The Film Program has provided English subtitles for films, which have never been screened outside of Japan. Accompanying lectures help place the films in their aesthetic and social contexts, and filmmakers often introduce and discuss their work.

To post a comment, you must register and login.