The ImaginAsian: A happy, healthy 1-year-old

I will always have kind of a special place in my heart for the ImaginAsian Theater, which moved into its East 59th Street space around the same time I settled down in Manhattan last July. It was the first cinema I visited as a New Yorker—spending every precious dollar I had to attend about a half-dozen screenings of its "Miike Madness" series, gorging myself on Pocky (as much as one can gorge oneself on Pocky) and walking 30 blocks home with Visitor Q stuck in my head, thinking, "I love this fucking city."

It is hard to believe that was more than a year ago, but it is equally impossible to forget, and as such, the ImaginAsian is celebrating its first anniversary with this week's $5 Film Festival: Big-Screen Asian Madness, which features kind of an all-star line-up of contemporary Asian classics.

"A lot of people have seen Hero, a lot of people have seen The Killer," said ImaginAsian programmer Dylan Marchetti. "But it doesn't compare to watching it on a 25-foot screen in Dolby Digital with 200 other filmgoers. That's an experience we wanted to share."

The idea took shape during June's New York Asian Film Festival, which split its time between Anthology Film Archives and the ImaginAsian. Marchetti and others surveyed festivalgoers, theater staff and frequent visitors about some great Asian films they would have an interest in catching on the big screen.

The results reached from iconic anime titles (Akira, Princess Mononoke) to cult films (Audition; the uncut, original 1954 Japanese version of Godzilla) to blockbusters (Hero, Shaolin Soccer) and more. Wong Kar-Wai has two films—Happy Together and Fallen Angels--in rotation. "I personally have never had the chance to see Fallen Angels on anything larger than a 27-inch television," Marchetti told The Reeler. "So I'm kind of chomping at the bit for that one."

Despite the big titles featured next week, the ImaginAsian is hardly a repertory house and has made a habit of working in newer subcontinental titles alongside Southeast Asian releases. Last March, the theater hosted the NYC premiere of the Indian picture Morning Raga, and has interwoven numerous Bollywood pictures between other tributes like April's "Masters of Indian Cinema" series.

Other cultural spotlights have included both Filipino and Thai festivals and the premiere of the "first Pakistani-American film," Hassan Zee's Night of Henna. "Right now we're looking to bring in titles that are new and exciting and push the edge a little bit, whether it's politically or sexually," Marchetti said. "If we think there is an audience for them, we're going to bring them in. We're actually looking to bring in more films that don't have US distribution."

Meanwhile, the ImaginAsian's current first-run feature—the lavish, controversial Bollywood epic The Rising (The Ballad of Mangal Panday)—is about as big as they come, and offers a perfect (albeit $10) counterpoint to the $5 Film Festival. Not to mention a tidy symbol of how to get Year Two off to a solid start.

"New York has been very good to us for a year," Marchetti said. "It's been very supportive during the growing pains. Now that we have the operation up and running very smoothly, we thought we'd give back by knocking the ticket prices down and bringing some of the basics back."

Sounds great. Just keep the Pocky coming.