SF Stories

Regent Square Theater: May 8 @ 4:30 PM, May 11 @ 6:30PM & May 14 6:30PM

Passes not accepted on Opening/Closing Night. Please arrive at least 15 minutes ahead of start time to ensure availability of seating. Film schedule and Q & A's are subject to change.

2010/USA/Director: Raul Jocson/112 min
Cast: Michael Cheng, Tiffany Yoshida, Michael Xiang, Josh Pollock (Language: English)
Festivals and Awards: Winner Best Screenplay LA Asian Pacific Film Festival 2010; Winner Best Narrative Feature Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival 2010
No matter the city and no matter size, strange and separate lives meet and intersect in inexplicable ways. While there is the potential for love, fate can only do so much.
Pittsburgh native Raul Jocson makes his impressive directorial debut with nine intricately interwoven tales that transcend the quintessential rom-com emptiness into an intelligent and mature human drama, ripe with humor and a fresh ride through the hills of a local’s melancholic San Francisco.
Through an intimate lens, SF Stories weaves its nine vignettes and focuses on the relationship between Michael and Wendy. Michael is a heartbreakingly awkward 30-something Chinese American man with charming depth while Wendy, a strong-willed 25-year-old Japanese American woman, (and self-proclaimed stalker magnet) struggles with her fear of the world.
The longing to connect to each other, whether through family, friendship, love or lust, is felt by every character in each story as they participate in a documentary examining their lives. Their hope, their loneliness and their dreams burst on screen while they experience and observe the tumultuous yet fated relationship between Michael and Wendy. While the circumstances bringing them together are both comic and tragic, the two must battle their own separate neuroses.
Included in the documentary are Brad and Luk, a stoner and an immigrant, one with serious aggression issues towards the local food deliveryman, and the other carting around some serious baggage.
Told with the ease of a true storyteller, SF Stories is full of surprises as it journeys into the souls and heartaches of its characters. While the puzzle fits together perfectly, the sine qua non is a noticeably impressive soundtrack, recorded entirely by Asian-American and Bay area artists that accent the breathtaking images of San Francisco and the colorful complexities of its characters.

 

>