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Rowena Aquino
Authors
AsiaPacific Arts has a team of authors who have contributed original material to the publication.
Articles by Rowena Aquino
LA Film Festival 2009: My Dear Enemy
My Dear Enemy takes the audience on a long day's journey into the type of relationship where direction and longevity are unimportant.
Published on: 7/3/2009
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LA Film Festival 2009: Paper Heart
Is your love glass half-full or half-empty? Charlyne Yi and director Nick Jasenovec attempt to play with our emotions in the mockumentary, Paper Heart.
Published on: 7/3/2009
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LA Film Festival 2009: United Red Army
Can you have your Revolutionary Cookie and eat it, too? And must one sit through a three-hour trek to a snow lodge to find out? Koji Wakamatsu's United Red Army is thrilling, provocative, but probably a bit too much.
Published on: 7/3/2009
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Eros and Civilization: Review of Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes, 3 Films by Shohei Imamura
Civilization may be in shambles, but at least we have Criterion's Imamura DVD box set to comfort us.
Published on: 6/5/2009
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Hara Kazuo and his "Renegade Cinema"
Out in Los Angeles to promote Camera Obtrusa, a companion book to his 1987 film The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On, director Hara Kazuo looks back at the film that made him a legend in documentary circles.
Published on: 5/22/2009
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LA Asian Pacific Film Festival 2009: Commentary
Writer Rowena Aquino's filmic journey through LA Asian Pacific Film Festival includes stops at Manilatown is the Heart, Left Handed, The Convert, and the four-hour-long Love Exposure.
Published on: 5/22/2009
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Waking Life and Death: Children of the Pyre review
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, Rajesh S. Jala's Children of the Pyre takes a direct approach to documenting the lives of children born to work at the Makarnika Cremation Grounds.
Published on: 5/1/2009
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On the Road and Off the Beaten Path: Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu
Writer Rowena Aquino leads us on the journey through Eclipse's Hiroshi Shimizu box set -- from Japanese Girls at the Harbor, Mr. Thank You, The Masseurs and a Woman, to Ornamental Hairpin.
Published on: 3/20/2009
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Ready for his Close-up: An Interview with Lee Isaac Chung
After a screening of Munyurangabo at the City of Angels Festival, director Lee Isaac Chung discusses filmmaking in Rwanda and encourages our readers to support African cinema.
Published on: 3/6/2009
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AFI Film Festival 2008: Extreme viewing
At October's AFI Film Festival, Asian cinema lovers were treated to some brave new worlds and some not so new. Here are some impressions of the Asian films at AFI 2008.
Published on: 11/14/2008
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Fallen, but not Forgotten: Mizoguchi's Fallen Women box set
Eclipse's new Fallen Women DVD set chronicles a lesser-known, but certainly not lesser, Mizoguchi.
Published on: 10/17/2008
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Anecdotally Yours
The recent translation of Tadao Sato's 1982 monograph on filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi is a welcome addition for English-reading film enthusiasts but would have benefited from more editorial contextualization.
Published on: 10/3/2008
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Remembrance of a Cinematic Past, Redux
Wong Kar-wai's enthralling digital restoration of his 1994 film Ashes of Time revitalizes the cinematic fragments of love, desire, rejection and exile.
Published on: 9/19/2008
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The Ties that Blind and Bind Us
Canary is a great showcase for young actress Tanimura Mitsuki, but the film somehow makes cults and family disintegration seem uncompelling.
Published on: 8/22/2008
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Military Man: Yukio Mishima's Patriotism
With the Criterion Collection's release of the shocking short Patriotism (Yukoku), Yukio Mishima is immortalized on DVD.
Published on: 7/11/2008
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Eros and Heroism: Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters
Paul Schrader's 1985 autopsy of novelist-filmmaker Mishima Yukio is as enigmatic as the man himself. The Criterion Collection's latest DVD clarifies things, but offers few answers.
Published on: 7/11/2008
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(L)imitations of Life: The Latest in Philippine Cinema
This year's Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival showcased a record dozen works from the Philippines. Unfortunately, most were indistinguishable from each other.
Published on: 5/16/2008
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Both Sides Now
Cynthia Lin revels in her multiple musical selves in her new album doppelganger.
Published on: 1/25/2008
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Drunken Master Meets Yakuza Apprentice
The war is over, and that means filth, crime, sickness, prostitution, booze, heroism, sacrifice, Shimura, Mifune, and Kurosawa.
Published on: 12/14/2007
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Indirect Testimony
Winner of AFI Fest 2007's Grand Jury Prize, Lee Isaac Chung's unforgettable Munyurangabo is a directorial debut for the ages.
Published on: 11/16/2007
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A-cute Love Triangle
Right by Me toys with sophisticated explorations of young gay life in Thailand, but the story ultimately boils down to landing the cute boy. Is there more to life?
Published on: 7/27/2007
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Miike’s Big Bang Theory: Making Human Contact
Time, space, linearity, and banal illusions of logic brilliantly fall to the backseat in Miike's stunning new film Big Bang Love, Juvenile A -- which instead focuses on minute, bewildering moments of connection that speak volumes.
Published on: 7/27/2007
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Visuals and Rituals
Tuli, Auraeus Solito's much anticipated follow-up to The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, overwhelms our senses, our notions of tradition, and our tolerance for melodrama.
Published on: 7/27/2007
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Treasures in the Sand
Criterion's latest box set, Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara, has viewers sifting through sand, faces, and identities, below which are some of the jewels of 1960s Japanese art.
Published on: 7/13/2007
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Ozu & the Cycles of Life
Criterion sub-label Eclipse makes good on their third collection, Late Ozu, less a five-film boxset of the master's sunset years, than an opportunity (or is it an excuse?) to see his films in succession, letting them ferment in lovely red teapots.
Published on: 6/29/2007
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