Eric Byler

A group of young Chinese American professionals -- mostly in their 20s and 30s -- is gathered around Eric Byler as he hands out colored postcards for the opening of his first feature film, "Charlotte Sometimes." Energized by the need to sell the film to this potential audience, director-screenwriter Byler delivers his punch line with expert timing: "What I say is that this is a movie about Asian Americans having sex -- with each other." A round of laughter. They know what he means.

A group of young Chinese American professionals -- mostly in their 20s and 30s -- is gathered around Eric Byler as he hands out colored postcards for the opening of his first feature film, "Charlotte Sometimes." Energized by the need to sell the film to this potential audience, director-screenwriter Byler delivers his punch line with expert timing: "What I say is that this is a movie about Asian Americans having sex -- with each other." A round of laughter. They know what he means.

To what "Charlotte Sometimes" refers may not become clear until its final moments, but every image is charged with wit, significance and emotion. A work of the utmost subtlety and perception, it marks the outstanding feature debut of writer-director Eric Byler, who understands the power of the implicit and the virtues of simplicity and economy. Byler's story concerns the intersecting lives of four engaging young people and is set principally in Silver Lake over a period of several days.

AsianAmericanFilm.com is a forum for filmmakers and fans dedicated to a distinct genre that's neither quite Asian nor American. Scanning the film news, analysis and filmmaking resources, visitors quickly see that the site's scope jumps well beyond Wayne Wang's "The Joy Luck Club" to help spread the word on the work of independent Asian American filmmakers like Justin Lin ("Better Luck Tomorrow") and Eric Byler ("Charlotte Sometimes").

As you might expect from a play that takes its title from a Rolling Stones song, Philip W. Chung's "laughter joy & loneliness & sex & sex & sex & sex" at Los Angeles Theatre Center's Theatre 4 includes sex and drugs. But despite the oldies blaring in the background, this Lodestone Theatre Ensemble production doesn't rock.

Like most programs of small-scale independent films, "Suburban Shorts"--screening at the Huntington Beach Art Center on Friday--veers from the exciting and provocative to the merely ho-hum in its search for insight. The nine little movies, a mix of fiction and documentary with only two longer than 20 minutes, were compiled by the center and American Cinematheque in Los Angeles with an eye toward "exposing the suburban experience."

The opening scenes of Ilya Chaiken's "Liberty Kid" would seem unremarkably quotidian were it not for the caption that precedes them: "September 2001." As would-be visionary Derrick (Al Thompson) and small-time hustler Tico (Kareem Savinon) work their menial jobs mere yards from the Statue of Liberty, you can feel the clock running out on their ordinary lives. Chaiken lacks the funds (and possibly the interest) for a reconstruction of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Linda Mabalot, an activist and filmmaker who founded the Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival and nurtured the careers of Asian American directors as the longtime head of Visual Communications, a nonprofit media production and advocacy group, has died. She was 49. Mabalot, who died May 19 at West Hills Medical Center, had cancer.

VC FILMFEST 2006: The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival concludes with the local premiere of "Americanese," writer-director Eric Byler's insightful drama about a couple's inability to fully move on after breaking up. Based on Shawn Wong's 1995 novel "American Knees," the film covers territory often elided in more conventional relationship tales. Raymond Ding (Chris Tashima) is a morose but likable Chinese American professor in his early 40s, possessed by a serious case of anhedonia.

At Cinema Libre, a small new film studio and production house in Canoga Park, the decor sets the counterculture tone. From beneath his ever-present baseball cap, muckraker Michael Moore grins down from a poster for his "Bowling for Columbine" documentary. Studio offices are named for film revolutionaries -- the production office for Costa-Gavras, the special effects suite for Jean-Luc Godard.

The Air I Breathe Four stories based on a Chinese proverb interweave to depict life's emotional cornerstones: happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love. With Kevin Bacon, Forest Whitaker, Andy Garcia, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Brendan Fraser, Julie Delpy and Emile Hirsch. Written by Jieho Lee and Bob DeRosa. Directed by Lee. ThinkFilm, Jan. 25. Alexandra Opera star Galina Vishnevskaya plays an elderly woman visiting her grandson, an army officer, at his base in Chechnya.