The New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) has a reputation for going where no other film festival dares to go, and this year that place seemed to be Sandra Ng Kwan-yu's breasts.
Questions at its opening press conference, attended mainly by Taiwanese and mainland journalists, kept coming back to the prosthetic bosoms Ng wore in the comedy Golden Chickensss, one of three Hong Kong films screened on the opening night.
Even Peter Chan Ho-sun, Ng's filmmaker partner and father of her eight-year-old daughter, was dragged into the subject. "Was Peter offended by the fact that a props person had to touch your real breasts to fit the prosthetic ones?" asked one earnest reporter.
"Peter is a film director, and knows that such things must happen," the perky Ng countered, flipping back and forth between English and Cantonese. "Besides, no physical contact took place!" she said, laying the matter firmly to rest.
The Hong Kong actress later accepted one of the festival's two Star Asia awards handed out this year, and the presence of such an august actress on the stage showed how far the NYAFF, which ran from June 27 to July 14, has come over the past 13 years.
Founded by a group of New York film fans, using the collective moniker of Subway Cinema, the bash began as a fan-based festival funded out of the organisers' own pockets. These days, it takes place at the prestigious Lincoln Centre's Walter Reade Theatre - with a few additional screenings held at the Japan Society and Asia Society - and is co-hosted by that institution's artistically inclined Film Society.