DRAGONS & TIGERS TURNS ITS LENS TO NEW ASIAN CINEMA
Vancouver, BC (August 25, 04) – Festival Director Alan Franey
and programmer Tony Rayns today announced that the 23rd annual Vancouver
International Film Festival will feature a total of 43 features,
5 mid-length films, and 47 shorts in the Festival’s cornerstone
Dragons & Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia program. Again presented
this year thanks to the generous support of Brad Birarda, the always-anticipated
Dragons & Tigers program is one of the preeminent showcases
of East Asian films in the world, this year featuring 16 International
Premieres, 13 North American Premieres, 9 Canadian Premieres, two
English-Canadian premieres, and one World Premiere.
“Our aim with the Dragon & Tigers series is to celebrate
the continuing excellence and innovation of East Asian cinema, and
in particular to introduce new talent to the West. We are perennially
gratified that Vancouver audiences are very responsive to not only
the already recognized titles but to the cutting-edge films and
young talent that our veteran programmer Tony Rayns cares so deeply
about,” says Festival Director Alan Franey.
“The tendency of recent years which has seen our selection
shift away from mainstream commercial and art-house features towards
more independent work continues this year,” commented Dragons
& Tigers programmer Tony Rayns. “This is partly because
more of the commercial and art-house titles are reaching distribution
in western countries, but the main reason is that the indie sector
continues to be livelier and more rewarding than the mainstream.
China is especially strong this year.”
Of special note is the surfeit of Dragons & Tigers shorts,
including new short films from regulars Bong Joon-Ho, Yu Lik Wai
and Sogo Ishii produced by the Jeonju Film Festival in South Korea,
the TWENTIDENTITY
shorts made for the Korean Film Academy, alternative animé
from Japan, and a welcome return of the Cop
Festival program, curated by Shinozaki Makoto. “The
reason is that these shorts include some of the most impressive
filmmaking of the year,” Rayns continues, highlighting work
from Japan’s Hirabayashi Isamu (TEXTISM,
winner of the Grand Prix at the Image Forum Festival) and Thailand’s
Aditya Assarat, “a coming talent who clearly is going to be
making important features in the near future.”
A TRIBUTE TO LEE SUNG-GANG
This year we are also pleased to honour the great Korean animator
Lee Sung-Gang with two special screenings. Part One of our tribute
is a screening of his 2001 feature, MY
BEAUTIFUL GIRL, MARI, winner of the Grand Priz at
the Annecy Animation Festival. It concerns a 12-year-old boy living
with his mother and grandmother in an isolated fishing village who
tries to escape into a parallel world. Part Two of the tribute comprises
a selection of the shorts and music videos he has made. ONURI
AND OTHER SHORTS includes his music videos for the
band Rainy Sun Ocean
(co-directed with Nam Ji-Woong of Teenage
Hooker fame), his animated sequence for Jang Sun-Woo’s
Bad Movie and
his latest short, Onuri,
based on a Jeju Island creation myth.
DRAGONS & TIGERS COMPETITION FOR YOUNG ASIAN CINEMA
For the eleventh year running, the Dragons & Tigers
Award for Young Cinema, which includes a prize of $5,000
to the film’s director courtesy of sponsor Brad Birarda, will
be awarded for the most creative and innovative first or second
feature-length film by a new director from Pacific Asia. Previous
winners of the award returning with new films out of competition
this year are Kore-eda Hirokazu (NOBODY
KNOWS), Jia Zhangke (THE
WORLD), and Hong Sang-Soo (WOMAN
IS THE FUTURE OF MAN), who will serve as a distinguished
juror for this year’s competition.
The films in this year’s competition are:
THE BIG DURIAN
(Amir Muhammad, Malaysia) Canadian Premiere
FADE INTO YOU
(Chegy, South Korea) International Premiere
THE FOLIAGE
(Lu Yue, China) Canadian Premiere
GOOD MORNING, BEIJING
(Pan Jianlin, China) North American Premiere
THE SOUP, ONE MORNING
(Takahashi Izumi, Japan) International Premiere
THE OVERTURE (Itthi-sunthorn
Wichailak, Thailand)
SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS (Zhu
Wen, China) North American Premiere
SPLENDID FLOAT
(Zero Chou, Taiwan) International Premiere
SUND@Y SEOUL (Oh
Myung-Hoon, South Korea) North American Premiere
2004 DRAGONS & TIGERS PROGRAM BY COUNTRY
CHINA
BAOBER IN LOVE
(Li Shaohong) English-Canadian Premiere
Like Betty Blue without the misogyny, Li Shaohong’s psychedelic
romance takes one wild and crazy (but damaged) girl–the wonderful
Zhou Xun from Suzhou River–and watches her transform the life
of a bored salaryman. But then she bolts and leaves him bereft…
DELAMU (Tian
Zhuangzhuang) Canadian Premiere
Tian Zhuangzhuang takes High-Definition cameras along the perilous
Chinese and Tibetan trails of the “Tea-Horse Route”
and comes back with stunning reportage. Incredible landscapes, amazing
people, and ways of life about to be obliterated.
THE FOLIAGE (Lu
Yue) Canadian Premiere
A completely fresh take on the zhiqing phenomenon, the city kids
(ex-Red Guards) sent by Mao to China’s remotest regions to
“learn from the people” in the late 60s. A sexual triangle
provokes jealousy, pain and finally violence. Stars Liu Ye (from
Lan Yu) and the wonderful Shu qi. Directed by Lu Yue (Mr. Zhao).
Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee.
GOOD MORNING, BEIJING
(Pan Jianlin) North American Premiere
A young woman is held captive in an apartment with other women and
forced to provide sexual services to various male clients. Meanwhile
a man spends the night criss-crossing the city with a hard-bitten
private detective, trying to buy the freedom of his kidnapped wife.
A powerful first feature by Pan Jianlin. Dragons & Tigers
Award Nominee. With two visually remarkable short films
from Japan: Hirata Takahiro’s The
Trains and Goshima Kazuhiro’s Z-Reactor.
GREEN HAT (Liu
Fendou) Canadian Premiere
Winner of two top prizes at the Tribeca Festival in NYC, Liu Fendou’s
amazing debut feature examines male impotence from two radically
opposed perspectives: a bank robber jilted by his girlfriend and
a cop whose wife is having an affair. Sexually candid, formally
inventive.
INCENSE (Ning
Hao) North American Premiere
Grand Prix winner at the Tokyo FILMeX Festival last year, Ning Hao’s
debut is a wry black comedy about a village priest determined to
raise the money to repair the Buddha image in his temple–who
betrays all his own moral principles, one by one, in the process.
A fine satire on China’s new materialism.
THE NARROW PATH
(Cui Zi’en) International Premiere
The doyen of Queer Chinese Cinema, Cui Zi’en comes up with
a strange and fascinating fable about freedom, conformity and intimidation.
A naked man walks along an endless country road, joined by another…and
then more. Eventually they encounter a group of tough guys who object
to their nudity, and a confrontation develops. With Tsugita Jun’s
short Friends
(Japan), about friendship, jealousy and enmity between men.
SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS
(Zhu Wen) North American Premiere
Not as angry or abrasive as Zhu Wen’s debut Seafood, but easily
one of the finest Chinese films of the year. A pensioner in northern
China takes the trip to the tropical south which he should have
taken 40 years earlier–only to find himself trapped in a gently
erotic fantasy. With Tian Zhuangzhuang in a cameo as a very laid-back
chief of police. Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee.
TANG POETRY (Zhang
Lu) North American Premiere
A thief has retired from crime because a nervous disease makes his
hands shake. His mistress/apprentice tries every way she can think
of to tempt him to tackle “one last job.” Their obsessive-compulsive
behaviour is counterpointed by some of the most famous classical
poems from the Tang Dynasty. A wryly funny indie by Zhang Lu, made
at the height of last year’s SARS epidemic in Beijing.
THE WORLD (Jia
Zhangke, China)
Set in and around a “World” theme park which features
scale reproductions of the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the pyramids,
etc., Jia Zhangke’s new film looks at the phoney cosmopolitanism
of China today and the desire of so many Chinese to emigrate. Its
core is the relationship between Tao, a dancer at the park’s
shows, and Taisheng, one of the security guards.
HONG KONG
MCDULL, PRINCE DE LA BUN (Toe
Yuen) North American Premiere
Created by Alice Mak, the little pig McDull is emblematic of Hong
Kong people: hard-working, self-sacrificing and deeply pragmatic.
This second McDull feature (again directed by Toe Yuen) blends social
satire with fantasy: the story of McDull’s missing father
McBing, also known as the Prince de la Bun.
INDONESIA
ARISAN! (Nia
diNata) Canadian Premiere
Lively satire on the emotional travails of the Jakarta smart-set,
notable for being the first Indonesian movie to take gay male characters
seriously. A successful young architect, desperate to keep his gayness
hidden from his domineering mother and two close gal-pals, suddenly
finds himself in a romance.
JAPAN
L’AMANT
(Hiroki Ryuichi) International Premiere
Hiroki Ryuichi follows up Vibrator with another provocative
foray into gender politics. Three men, all middle-aged losers, club
together to honour the wishes of their late mentor: they buy a year
from the life of a schoolgirl to do with her as they like. But she
may be tougher than they are…
CAFÉ LUMIÈRE
(Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Narrow in focus but suggesting volumes, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s
first Japanese film (made to mark the century of Ozu’s birth)
meditates on time, history, parenthood, pregnancy, coffee–and
railways. Mysterious and haunting.
THE COMPLETE JAPANESE SHOWA SONGBOOK
(Shinohara Tetsuo)
International Premiere
Shinohara Tetsuo adapts and transcends a notorious novel about gang
warfare between a group of young droogs with a thing for the greatest
hits of the 60s and a group of refined and well-connected middle-aged
ladies. Tit-for-tat retaliation escalates off the scale in a fabulous
black comedy. Stars Matsuda Ryuhei (Gohatto) and Ando Masanobu
(Kids Return).
COP FESTIVAL RELOADED International
Premiere
After last year’s ambiguous triumph, a further selection of
gripping cop stories, including Suzuki Kosuke’s Hairwig
and the Angry Cop and Honda Ryuichi’s near-pornographic
Love Juice Cop. Guest appearance:
Miike Takashi. With Shinozaki Makoto’s Nobody’s
Home (Japan): a remake of his early short about
a girl who finds something very nasty on her video answering machine.
DEATHS AND TRANSFIGURATIONS
International Premiere
Probably the most electrifying program of non-mainstream shorts
ever presented by the festival, comprising Hirabayashi Isamu’s
knockout Textism
(Japan), which starts as a murder mystery and ends as a kind of
snuff movie; Kim Gok and Kim Sun’s
Light & Class (South Korea), a post-Sokurov
film about a mother, a son and the decay of communism; and Chen
Chieh-Jen’s Lingchi: Echoes
of a Historical Photograph (Taiwan), which recreates
and reflects on a Qing Dynasty execution.
FLOWER AND SNAKE
(Ishii Takashi) International Premiere
Ishii Takashi (director of Gonin, Black Angel,
etc.) tackles the most famously Japanese sado-masochist novel by
Oniroku Dan, the one about the society wife who is kidnapped and
forced to star in a private show for jaded voyeurs. No great sexual
surprises, but Ishii’s florid style turns this into the Titanic
of s-m exploitation.
IMAGINATION PRACTICE
(Various Directors) International Premiere
A selection of seven “alternative animé” shorts
from Japan’s indie sector, ranging in style from Tsuji Naoyuki’s
A Feather Stare in the Dark (line animation; the sex of angels)
to Onitsuka Kentaro’s Blooming Ink Tale (pixilation; a vignette
from the war between men and women). Wonderfully imaginative work.
IZO (Miike Takashi)
North American Premiere
Miike Takashi resurrects a notorious assassin from the mid-19th
century and sends him on a murderous journey through time and space,
killing everyone in sight. The low-born Izo is the very spirit of
negation: can anything stop him? The huge catalogue of guest stars
includes “Beat” Takeshi, Mornoi Kaori and Matsuda Ryuhei.
NOBODY KNOWS
(Kore-eda Hirokazu)
Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Cannes prize-winner is about a group of
four hardy kids (two of them still infants) abandoned for weeks
on end in a rented Tokyo apartment by their unmarried mother. Not
a re-run of Lord of the Flies but a tale of resilience and youthful
dreams. Sad, of course, but also heartening.
THE SOUP, ONE MORNING (Takahashi
Izumi) International Premiere
Kitagawa suffers panic attacks, so he quits his job and stays home,
supported by his girlfriend Shizu. She tolerates the situation for
a time, but gradually realizes that he has joined a cult religion…
Superbly acted and daringly conceived first feature by Takahashi
Izumi. Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee. With
Oki Chieko’s Grainy Days
(Japan), a woman’s first-person account of
her dreams of escape from a dead-end job.
PINK RIBBON (Fujii
Kentaro) World Premiere
Sex movies have a special place in Japanese pop culture. Many famous
directors started out making them, and some sex films have built
up huge cult reputations. Fujii Kentaro’s exhaustive documentary
explores the history of the genre (with plentiful clips) and interviews
Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Wakamatsu Koji and many others about their sex-film
experiences.
TONY TAKITANI
(Ichikawa Jun) North American Premiere
The first ever feature adapted from the writings of Murakami Haruki.
Tony Takitani (great stage actor Issey Ogata, last on screen in
Edward Yang’s A One and a Two) is an illustrator specializing
in mechanical drawings who doesn’t realize how lonely he is
until he marries Eiko (Miyazawa Rie, The Cabbie). But she has an
alarming clothes-buying habit… A brilliantly stylized film,
directed by Ichikawa Jun. With Penis,
Helmut, Cockroach
and Kakashi (Japan),
four splendid early shorts by Hirabayashi Isamu, the director of
Textism.
TSUBURO (Yamada
Masafumi) International Premiere
Sci-fi indie feature (somewhat in the vein of Tetsuo) by
Osaka-based filmmaker Yamada Masafumi. After some unknown catastrophe,
a nurse wakes in a wrecked hospital room with a taciturn man named
Tsuburo who has a strange apparatus embedded in his back. They seem
to be trapped together… With Sayonara,
Sayo-u-nara (Japan,), an electrifying movie about
suicide cults by Hirosue Hiromasa (the lead actor in The
Soup, One Morning).
MALAYSIA
THE BIG DURIAN
(Amir Muhammad, Malaysia) Canadian Premiere
Amir Muhammad emerges as a major talent with a documentary (or is
that mockumentary?) which finds keys to Malaysia’s deep-rooted
problems in the real-life case of a soldier who ran amok. With Amir’s
earlier shorts, Lost,
Friday, Checkpoint,
and Pangyau, each
one a witty and sardonic personal vignette.
MIN (Ho Yuhang)
North American Premiere
Min is a 20-year-old Chinese girl who was adopted by Malay parents;
she decides one day to look for her birth mother and embarks on
an enigmatic journey. Ho Yuhang’s prizewinning indie feature
is told in still, quiet images which reveal their meaning only slowly.
With two shorts by an outstanding new director from Thailand, Aditya
Assarat: Motorcycle
and Waiting.
PHILIPPINES
WOMAN OF THE BREAKWATER
(Mario O’Hara) North American Premiere
Mario O’Hara’s latest is a group portrait of the down-and-outs
who make homes of sorts alongside the Manila Bay breakwater, a ramshackle
community of beggars, scavengers and hookers. Like a raunchier equivalent
of Kurosawa’s Dodes‘kaden, held together by
ballad-commentaries from the Visayan singer Yoyoy Villame.
SOUTH KOREA
ARAHAN (Ryu Seung-Wan)
North American Premiere
Ryu Seung-Wan (director of Die Bad) hits his commercial stride with
a slam-bang martial-arts actioner. A gormless young cop and a cool
check-out girl need to attain enlightenment fast to tackle the recently
unleashed Master of Absolute Evil. The great Ahn Sung-Ki stars as
their teacher.
DIGITAL SHORT FILMS BY THREE
FILMMAKERS (Bong Joon-Ho, Yu Lik-Wai, Ishii Sogo)
International Premiere
Three digital films commissioned by the Jeonju Film Festival in
Korea: Ishii Sogo’s Mirrored
Mind (Japan) on an actress experiencing a crisis
of identity; Yu Lik-Wai’s Dance
Me to the End of Love (China) with a nervous love
story from the future; and Bong Joon-Ho’s brilliant Influenza
(South Korea) in which a tragic life-story unfolds through CCTV
footage.
FADE INTO YOU
(Chegy, South Korea) International Premiere
Indie filmmaker Chegy’s debut feature offers a succession
of mysterious events which may or may not add up to a storyline.
Each episode is easy to watch and enjoyable in itself, but the connections
remain elusive and tantalizing. Dragons & Tigers Award
Nominee. With Chegy’s earlier short, Rest
in the Light.
REPATRIATION
(Kim Dong-Won) Canadian Premiere
Kim Dong-Won’s magisterial documentary starts from the release
of long-term political prisoners in 1992 (they were communist sympathizers
in the fascistic South Korea of the 1960s) and then explores the
filmmaker’s attempts to befriend and understand these men
and their circle of friends and supporters in the rapidly changing
context of the 1990s. A film of great candour, this is the most
searching account of modern Korean politics ever made.
SPYING CAM (Whang
Cheol-Mean) International Premiere
Two men stay locked up together in a cheap hotel room, rarely going
out. Are they gay, as the cleaning women assume? Or is something
more sinister going on? And what does Dostoyevski’s Crime
and Punishment have to do with it? An intriguing new feature
by Whong Cheol-Mean, the godfather of Korean indie filmmaking. With
Principle of Party Politics
(South Korea): a comedy about radical filmmaking by the Kim brothers.
SUND@Y SEOUL
(Oh Myung-Hoon, South Korea) North American Premiere
Drawn from real-life stories found in the tabloids, Oh Myung-Hoon’s
debut feature is a collage of strange events and relationships gone
wrong. Sex-for-money, changed locks and phone numbers, missing terrapins...
Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee. With Warm
Swamp (South Korea), the latest film by Park Chan
Ok, director of Jealousy Is My Middle Name.
TWENTIDENTITY
International Premiere
The Korean Academy of Film Arts celebrated its 20th birthday last
year by inviting twenty of its graduates to make digital shorts.
Our program is a selection of ten of them, including brilliant work
from such directors as Park Ki-Yong, Hur Jin-Ho, Min Gyu-Dong, Kim
Tae-Yong and Bong Joon-Ho.
WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN
(Hong Sang-Soo) North American Premiere
Heonjun, just back from film school in the US, looks up his old
friend Munho, now a university teacher, and they find their thoughts
turning to Sunhwa, a girl they both once dated. But they remember
her very differently, and their trip to visit her has unforeseen
consequences. Hong Sang-Soo’s latest finesses his characteristic
mix of deadpan comedy, psychological probing and formal play.
TAIWAN
BEAR HUG (Wang
Shaudi) International Premiere
Wang Shaudi takes apart a typical middle-class divorce–from
the point of view of the emotionally neglected son and the resentful
relative who’s dragged in as a babysitter. Cruelly funny and
sweetly sentimental, sometimes both at the same time.
THE MISSING (Lee
Kang-Sheng) Canadian Premiere
Multi-award-winning debut by Tsai Ming-Liang’s regular actor,
Lee Kang-Sheng. An old woman spends the day frantically searching
for her grandson when he goes missing in the park. A teenage boy
squanders his day in a video game arcade and gets home to find that
his grandfather has gone missing. Could the two disappearances be
linked?
SPLENDID FLOAT
(Zero Chou) International Premiere
Roy is a Taoist priest working in Taipei, mostly officiating at
funerals. By night he becomes Rose, one of four drag queens touring
the countryside in a splendid float, putting on lip-synch shows.
A visually exquisite debut by Zero Chou, director of last year’s
gay-bar documentary Corner’s. Dragons &
Tigers Award Nominee. With Royston Tan’s Cut
(Singapore): a musical protest against the censorship in Singapore
of the director’s feature 15, shown in the VIFF last year.
TAIPEI 21 (Alex
Yang) North American Premiere
Jean and Hong have been together for seven years when Jean puts
down the deposit on an apartment for them to share–and thereby
sets in motion the process that will end their relationship seven
days later. Alex Yang’s second feature (the first was The
Trigger) tries to pinpoint the new mood of anxiety that has
overtaken the young generation in Taipei.
THAILAND
THE ADVENTURES OF IRON PUSSY
(Apichatpong Weerasethakul/Michael Shaowanasai) Canadian
Premiere
Special agent Iron Pussy goes undercover to crack a drug ring. Screamingly
camp mix of romance, Buddhist piety, mild political satire and torch
songs, all given a retro twist by co-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
With Whatever Happened to Ms Machiko?
(Japan), Shirakawa Koji’s jolly musical about a girl with
deficient gaydar.
BAYTONG (Nonzee
Nimbutr) English-Canadian Premiere
A change of pace for Nonzee Nimibutr: a Buddhist monk in northern
Thailand is forced to leave his temple and move to the Muslim south
to become a surrogate parent to his orphaned niece. A gently comic
picture about a grown man belatedly learning the ways of the world.
BEAUTIFUL BOXER
(Ekachai Uekrongtham) Canadian Premiere
You couldn’t make it up: Thai boxer Nong Toom fought his way
to a championship–to finance his sex-change from his winnings.
Ekachai’s bio-pic (starring real-life 22-year-old champ Asanee
Suwan) is funny, sincere and ultimately touching.
THE MACABRE CASE OF PROMPIRAM
(Manop Udomdej) International Premiere
Memories of Murder, Thai-style. Manop Udomdej recreates
the police investigation into a rape-murder which took place in
the town of Prompiram in 1976. Despite obstruction from higher up,
the enquiries are thorough–and they reveal a truly shocking
secret.
THE OVERTURE
(Itthi-sunthorn Wichailak)
Village boy Sorn has a remarkable musical skill playing the ranad-ek,
a bamboo xylophone; he overcomes setbacks and obstacles to become
a court musician and eventually an upholder of Thai traditions during
the Japanese occupation in the Pacific War. Itthi-sunthorn Wichailak’s
bio-pic combines beautiful recreations of early-20th-century Thailand
with the most thrilling sequences of musical performance imaginable.
Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee.
TROPICAL MALADY
(Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s new film (Prix du Jury, Cannes)
is actually two films in one. The first is a straightforward gay
love story: a soldier falls for a country boy, and their relationship
grows almost scarily intense. The second is a phantasmagoria: a
soldier hunts a shape-shifting man-beast through the dense jungle–or
does the beast hunt him? Are these two versions of the same story?
Or does each complete the other’s meaning? Sexy and intense.
The 23rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival runs from
September 23 to October 8. More than 150,000 patrons are expected
to attend 500 screenings of over 300 films from 50 countries at
10 Vancouver screens: Cineplex Odeon Granville Cinemas (7 screens);
the VISA Screening Room at the Vogue Theatre; The Ridge; and the
Pacific Cinémathèque.
All box offices open September 4 for VISA cardholders. Cash sales
begin September 11. The fastest way to buy advance tickets is at
www.viff.org, 24 hours a day, or through the VISA Charge-by-Phone
line at 604-685-8297, open noon to 7pm. There are two advance ticket
outlets, the Pacific Centre Kiosk (Granville and Georgia) and City
Square Mall (Cambie and 12th, mezzanine level). For festival information,
call the Starbucks Hotline at 604-683-FILM (3456) starting September
2, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., or see the website.
The line-up will be announced at a press conference on September
1, 10:30 am at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Georgia.
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