Our friends at KAFFNY (Korean American Film Festival New York) will be holding their annual festival at the Anthology Film Archives this week from June 5-10.

Marking its sixth run this year, KAFFNY promises a “bold” line-up this year with 9 features, 6 premieres, and over 20 short films. Among the films featured are: Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe, Should’ve Kissed, Magic and Loss, and Dol, a short film by Andrew Ahn, which we wrote about earlier this year. The festival will also be commemorating the 20th anniversary of the L.A. Riots with shorts and films told in the voice of the second-generation Korean Americans. KAFFNY’s L.A. Riots 20th Anniversary Program will be free and open to the public on Sunday, June 10.

Susie Lim, the festival’s director says that “[t]he 6^th annual KAFFNY celebrates the transformative power of independent visions and character-driven stories, unafraid of crossing seemingly fixed boundaries of culture, nation and identity.”

To buy tickets or passes, click here.
For more information, go to http://kaffny.com/

Anthony Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10003

Here’s the full schedule:

TUESDAY (June 5)
7PM Should’ve Kissed - Opening Double Feature (Q&A w/ director and actors)
9PM Magic and Loss - Opening Double Feature (co-presented with Japan Society)
11PM Opening Party @ Hotel Chantelle

WEDNESDAY (June 6) – White Box
8PM Girl Walk // All Day (Q&A w/ director and producer)
10PM Dance Party

THURSDAY (June 7)
7PM Shorts Selection (Q&A w/ directors)
9:30PM Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe (DVDs for sale)

FRIDAY (June 8)
7PM Ultimate Christian Wrestling - Centerpiece (Q&A w/ directors)
9PM Shorts Competition (Q&A w/ directors)

SATURDAY (June 9)
12PM Faces of Seoul
2PM Helena’s Flushing (work-in-progress for Cast and Crew)
3PM Magic and Loss
4:30PM Shorts Selection (Q&A w/ directors)
7PM One Day on Earth - Spotlight (Q& A w/ director and producer)
9:30PM Should’ve Kissed

SUNDAY 6/10
12PM LA Riots 20th Anniversary Program (FREE)

The LA Riots: Reflections on Our Future

(USA/2012/10min/Documentary)

director Keun Pyo “Root” Park

writer Carol Kwang Park

executive producer Carol Kwang Park and Edward Chang

Clash of Colors: LA Riots of 1992

(USA / 2012 / 81 min / Documentary)

director David D. Kim

Pokdong

(USA / 2006 / 24 min / Documentary)

director Alex Dongwan Ko

I Got My Mind Made Up

(USA / 1992 / 4min / Music Video)

featuring rap group 429: Billy Chun, Regan Farquhar, and Rashad West

Scenes from LAR20

(USA / 2012 / 6 min / Documentary work-in-progress)

director Kathy Choi, Hosik Kim and Dae Hoon Kim

3PM Shorts Competition (Q&A w/ directors, Awards announced)
5:30PM Wedding Palace: Behind the Scenes documentary (FREE)
6PM Ultimate Christian Wrestling (Q&A w/ directors)
8PM Perhaps Somewhere - Closing (Q&A w/ director)
10PM Closing Party hosted by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky @ White Rabbit

L.A.-based filmmaker Andrew Ahn will premiere his much-awaited second narrative short, Dol (First Birthday), at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Ahn, who previously won acclaim for his first narrative short, Andy, which played with societal gender roles, tackles a more personal topic in Dol (First Birthday). Written and directed by Ahn, Dol revolves around Nick, a gay Korean American man living in Koreatown, Los Angeles, who attends his nephew’s traditional dol (first birthday celebration) and finds that he “yearns for a family life just out of reach.”

In his director’s statement, Ahn clearly states that he had one main purpose for making the film: “I made this film to come out to my parents.” And as a part of The Huffington Post‘s “Sundance Diaries” series, Ahn revealed why it was important for him to “come out” to his family as a gay man through the medium of filmmaking:

I was relying on the medium to articulate something difficult. I wanted to show my parents a complex portrayal of a gay Korean-American man, someone they could sympathize with. And I needed them to sympathize with him so that they would sympathize with me. I wanted them to understand who I am and what I am dealing with: that I struggle with my gay and Korean identities, that I wish I could have a family the way my father had a family, and that despite all this, I am a proud gay man.

After months of enormous pressure and delay in showing his parents the film, Ahn finally showed it to them. Like many Korean and immigrant parents, they were naive about his gay identity, but they also sought to understand and console him. Although his parents were unsure at first when he told them his film was selected for Sundance, they became ecstatic after he told them it was “10 times easier to get into Harvard” than to have his film shown at the prestigious film festival.

Watch the trailer for Dol below:

To read the full article at HuffPost, click here.

For more information on Andrew Ahn, visit his website here.

[Photos: Andrew Ahn's website]