For more information, call: JULY 29, 1997
Quentin Lee (213) 382-8022 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
decominc@aol.com
SHOPPING FOR FANGS
UCLA Film Students Quentin Lee and Justin Lin's
GenerAsian-X Indie Feature Film Debut
Will Screen at Toronto International Film Festival
LOS ANGELES: Quentin Lee and Justin Lin's darkly satiric film, Shopping For
Fangs, a Canadian-US independent feature has just been selected to screen
at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Following Toronto,
Fangs will be screened as part of the NAATA (National Asian American
Telecommunications Association) sidebar at this year's Independent Feature
Film Market in New York
A first feature directed by Quentin Lee and Justin Lin, Shopping For Fangs
is a "GenerAsian-X" psychological thriller about the criss-crossing
misadventures of a young man turning into a werewolf and an eccentric
waitress hotly pursuing a lonely housewife. Beyond its off-beat premise,
Producer Quentin Lee describes it as "a metaphor and oblique vision by and
about young Asians in North America-more broadly-this 20-something
generation-our generation."
Quentin Lee and Justin Lin are graduate students at UCLA's prestigious film
school. They met at school and collaborated on a short Fall 1990, winning
the Spotlight Award at UCLA. Born and raised in Hong Kong, 26-year-old
Quentin Lee is a Hong Kong/Canadian transplant presently based in Los
Angeles and Montreal. 25-year-old Justin Lin is a Taiwanese transplant to
Buena Park (Orange County) since he was a boy.
Impressed by Quentin's first film Flow (a feature complilation of his UCLA
student shorts) at the Vancouver International Film Festival 95, Camelia
Frieberg, producer of Atom Egoyan's Cannes hit The Sweet Hereafter, and
video artist Richard Fung recommended Fangs for a film production grant at
Canada Council.
With the initial funding from Canada Council, Quentin Lee and Justin Lin
began shooting Shopping For Fangs during their summer break last year
entirely outside UCLA's support. Lensed in the Los Angeles and San Gabriel
Valley, Fangs was made with an ensemble cast of newcomers, and a small crew
of passionate film students and young professionals.
Following a successful world premiere at the San Francisco International
Asian American Film Festival this year, Shopping For Fangs was invited to
screen at the Toronto International Film Festival. "We're exhilirated
because about a year ago we were just film students with a couple of
shorts, and now we have a feature in Toronto," says Justin.
"We're also very level-headed about our film; it's really a new kind of
Asian American film with an uncharted market," says Quentin. "We want to
target the young hip 18-30 audience, which is quite different from that of
Joy Luck Club and the older crop."
Besides getting Fangs around film festivals, Quentin has started Margin
Films, a distribution company that markets independent films with an edgy,
queer and Asian/American perspective.
Later this year, Margin Films will release Bugis Street, an off-beat drama
from Singapore about the coming of age of a young girl (Hiep Thi Le from
Oliver Stone's Heaven and Earth) in a brothel of transsexuals and
transvestites, and 4 Faces of Eve, a feminist experimental comedy from Hong
Kong best described as "MTV on Acid."
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FOR MORE INFORMATION & INTERVIEWS:
U.S. Press Contact before Toronto
Quentin Lee
Margin Films 213 382-8022
Press Contact at Toronto
Martin Waxman
Martin Waxman & Company 416 504-2198
Valerie Wint / Gabrielle Free
Toronto International Film Festival 416-967-7371
(
geocities.com/westhollywood/heights) (
geocities.com/westhollywood)