The New York Asian Film Festival 2013 ended Monday night with the sold-out North American Premiere of Jay Chou’s THE ROOFTOP, but there is still news to report.

Every year the New York Asian Film Festival gives an Audience Award. This is voted on by the audience who fill out ballots after each eligible screening. Then our team of top scientists go to work and use complicated math to figure out the most popular movies at the festival.

The audience has spoken and the winner of the NYAFF 2013 Audience Award is…HENTAI KAMEN: FORBIDDEN SUPERHERO (Japan, 2013)!

Based on a popular manga series, and directed by Yuichi Fukuda, this motion picture about a young man born to a dominatrix and a masochist, who uses perversion to fight evil while wearing panties over his head and a mankini was originally intended to be a direct-to-DVD release in Japan. Accidentally unleashed in theaters by a hentai-liberation group, it became a box office hit and turned out to be the most popular film of this year’s festival.

Previous Audience Award winners include: ACE ATTORNEY (NYAFF 2012), A BOY AND HIS SAMURAI (NYAFF 2011), CASTAWAY ON THE MOON and GALLANTS (NYAFF 2010), THE MAGIC HOUR (NYAFF 2009), FINE, TOTALLY FINE (NYAFF 2008), MEMORIES OF MATSUKO (NYAFF 2007), ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET (NYAFF 2006), THE TASTE OF TEA (NYAFF 2005), PLEASE TEACH ME ENGLISH (NYAFF 2004), PING PONG (NYAFF 2003), and MY SASSY GIRL (NYAFF 2002).

The runners-up for this year’s audience award were:
HOW TO USE GUYS WITH SECRET TIPS (South Korea, 2013)
THERMAE ROMAE (Japan, 2012)
COMRADE KIM GOES FLYING (UK/Belgium/North Korea, 2012)
THE LEGEND IS BORN: IP MAN (China, 2010)
RUROUNI KENSHI (Japan, 2012)
EUNGYO (South Korea, 2012)

In addition, this year the New York Asian Film Festival has initiated another award. The Daniel A. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema is designed to celebrate the memory of longtime Subway Cinema member, Daniel Craft, who passed away this January, and to celebrate kick ass action movies, a genre too often dismissed or looked down on by the kind of people who usually give out movie awards.

This year, the inaugural Daniel A. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema goes to Herman Yau’s IP MAN: THE FINAL FIGHT, written by Erica Li and choreographed by Nicky Li Chung-Chi and Checkley Sin Kwok-Lam.

This is the third film Checkley Sin Kwok-Lam has choreographed, the other two being Herman Yau’s THE LEGEND IS BORN: IP MAN and THE WOMAN KNIGHT OF MIRROR LAKE. Nicky Li Chung-Chi was a longtime member of the Jackie Chan Stuntman Association and he was the action choreographer on 50 films including SHAOLIN (2011), LET THE BULLETS FLY (2010), NEW POLICE STORY (2004), GEN-X COPS (1999), RAPED BY AN ANGEL (1993), and PROJECT A II (1987).

And that’s it for 2013! This year saw us take on a double-barreled blast of movie madness with the “Jackie Chan Experience” event right before the New York Asian Film Festival, which was probably unwise from a logistical point of view, but we’ve always wanted to bring Jackie to NYC and give him an award. As things turned out, tons of people showed up, nothing caught on fire, and no one lost any major body parts. In other words, it was an outrageous success.

So sit back and enjoy spending the rest of the summer melting and we’ll see you next year for the New York Asian Film Festival 2014! ‘)}