The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz
The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz |
| Korea’s Busan stakes claim as Asian film hub Posted: 08 Oct 2011 04:16 AM PDT  A general view of the opening ceremony of the 16th Busan International Film Festival in Busan, about 420 km southeast of Seoul. — Reuters pic The 16th annual Busan International Film Festival (Biff), Asia's largest, kicked off earlier this week at the new Busan Cinema Center, an eye-catching, US$140 million (RM476 million) complex designed by Austria-based architectural collective Coop Himmelblau. Over 300 movies from 70 countries will be screened at the festival, including 89 world premieres. Organisers have spared no expense on infrastructure and expanded the festival to include industry forums and educational activities as the number of competing regional events grows. Beijing launched its own international film festival this year, and similar events have emerged in such seemingly unlikely places as Luang Prabang, Laos. Even South Korea's hostile northern neighbor is getting in on the act, with the next edition of the biennial Pyongyang Film Festival slated for September next year. Organisers expressed hopes the 30,000 square foot venue, topped by a sprawling, LED-covered roof that resembles a pair of wings taking flight, would become a "symbolic structure" representative of the region's burgeoning film business. One of the jury members, Australian director Gillian Armstrong, said of the venue at a news conference earlier this week that she was "very, very jealous. I want to take it home." Among the most anticipated films are local director Song-il Gon's "Always," which chronicles the romance between a troubled boxer and a young woman losing her eyesight, and "Chronicle of My Mother" by Japan's Masato Harada, about an author coming to terms with his elderly mother's progressive dementia. European and North American film luminaries are also well-represented, with France's Luc Besson visiting to promote his latest work "The Lady," a biography of Myanmar democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi starring actress Michelle Yeoh. "What makes the Busan festival special is the city itself, it's by the sea," said Vincent Sung, creative director at Seoul-based communications agency Visual Sponge and a longtime festival-goer. "You have glamour mixed with the normal Busan inhabitants, it's casual and relaxed but still keeps a very chic air ... it also gets really amazing lineups of directors and actors, this year is one inch up compared to the other years." Veteran French actress Isabel Huppert also attended, announcing on Friday a new collaboration with Korean director Hong Sang-soo and praising the region's "alive, vivid" film culture. The festival will culminate October 14 with the "New Currents" prize, which awards $30,000 to two outstanding films by first or second-time Asian directors. Among those competing for the title this year are Sri Lanka's Aruna Jayawardana, whose "August Drizzle" chronicles a power struggle in a remote village, and Indonesia's Kamila Andini, who details a young girl's efforts to accept her father's death in "The Mirror Never Lies." The festival's focus also appears to be shifting westwards, with several works from Central Asian and Iranian filmmakers figuring prominently on the agenda, including "Cut," a Japan-set crime fable from exiled Iranian director Amir Naderi. Streets around the center and the towering luxury hotels of nearby Haeundae Beach were awash with red carpet over the weekend, with police cordons struggling to hold back energetic fans determined to catch a glimpse of one of the festival's many high-profile guests. Formerly known as the Pusan Film Festival, the event also adopted the BIFF moniker for the first time to fall in line with the official name for the city. Sung had guarded praise for the changes. "The new venue is really impressive, the design is amazing ... but compared to past festivals it lost the human touch, it's huge and you can get lost really easily," he said. "(But) it's very futuristic and shows Busan wants to go forward in terms of design." — Reuters |
| Film festival comes to Kabul on war anniversary Posted: 08 Oct 2011 02:09 AM PDT  Afghans talk about their movies at the French Cultural centre during the First Autumn Human Rights Festival in Kabul. — Reuters pic Tragedy can seem all too common in war-torn Afghanistan, but fortunately, this time, the story of Yacoub is not true. Instead it is the centre of a movie, one of 50 screened during the first Autumn Human Rights Film Festival. The event provides a central Asian stage for directors from Afghanistan and abroad who are tackling human rights issues, and a window for the public to explore challenges many have faced themselves. "This film festival is special compared to other festivals I have attended, because it's about human rights," said Homayun Morowat, the Kabul-born director of the film about Yacoub, An Apple from Paradise. The festival takes place at the tenth anniversary of the start of the US military campaign in Afghanistan, a time when the human rights achievements and abuses of the last decade are in sharp focus. Amnesty International said on Wednesday the Afghan government and its international supporters have failed to keep many of the human rights promises they made to the Afghan people. But media freedoms are still better than in almost all the surrounding countries, according to the Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, making the Afghan capital a logical choice to host a central Asian film festival. Organisers say the festival has been years in the planning and the dates chosen were practical, not political. "This event is not related to any political issues, and we started to plan it three years ago," said Malek Shaf'ii, the chief executive of Afghanistan Cinema Club. Instead he said they fixed on the human rights theme because over 90 per cent of movies and documentaries made by Afghan independent film makers touch on human rights problems. "Human rights issues are one of the biggest challenges for Afghanistan," Shaf'ii told Reuters in the heavily-guarded French Cultural Institute in central Kabul, where many films were shown. Afghanistan struggles with desperate poverty and three decades of war that has killed thousands of civilians and maimed or traumatised tens of thousands more. There are also strict restrictions on women, who traditionally have limited rights. "The first step we can take to improve human rights is just let the people know the problems and challenges, and we are doing this to make a connection between film makers and the public audience," Hassan Zakizadeh, a festival spokesman said. The film festival, which includes 32 Afghan movies and 18 from other countries, lasts seven days, with screenings in a downtown cinema and a auditorium at the French Cultural Centre. For Morowat, who now lives outside Afghanistan, the making of his film — which features a despairing father, an innocent son, a corrupt police system and a holy site occupied by gamblers — helped lift his sadness at the fate of his homeland. "Now I am relaxed as the experiences are transferred to my audience," he told Reuters after the show. — Reuters |
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