The Beat November 2002

One of the best film festivals in Asia is set to run from Nov. 14 to 23 here in Busan. The 7th annual Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) will feature 228 films from all over the world with a focus on Asian and Korean cinema.

There will be special retrospectives this year, of directors Nagisa Oshima and Kim Soo-yong (106 films listed on imdb.com), and of Taiwanese films.

The complete program of films is now online at http://www.piff.org/ and tickets (5,000 won) will be on sale at Pusan Bank branches from November 4. Tickets for the opening and closing films, the latest from Kim Ki-duk and Takeshi Kitano (10,000 won) will be available on October 29 and 30. The brochure should be out a few days before that. Reservations can also be made online at http://banktown.piff.org/ (Korean language only) using ’PiffCash‘, but be warned that registration may take longer than a trip to your local Pusan Bank. The most popular films sell out VERY fast.

The "big" venue will move from BEXCO to Citizens‘ Hall this year. Films will also be screened at Daeyong and Pusan Cinema in Nampodong, and Megabox Cinema (in Hauendae New City). The ’festival atmosphere‘ will be most visible in Nampodong with mobs of people watching outdoor stage interviews, street performers, and the occasional celebrity sighting.

The Pick of PIFF 2002

Ararat (Atom Egoyan, Canada)
"Who, after all, speaks now about the annihilation of the Armenians?” So Hitler is supposed to have said. The Armenian-Canadian director‘s film-within-a-film about the 1915 genocide, still denied by the Turkish government, features what is likely to be the last performance of the too rarely seen Armenian-French singer and actor Charles Aznavour.

Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass, UK)
On the evening of January 30 1972, unusually, it snowed on the south coast of England. I remember it well, because I was in my office at Southampton University finishing my master‘s thesis. I switched on the radio, and heard the news of several demonstrators being shot by the British army in Northern Ireland. This magnificent faux-documentary gives the story from both sides, with an outstanding performance by James Nesbitt as a good man caught in the middle.

Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima, Japan)
Oshima may be best known in the West for failing to persuade David Bowie to act (an achievement also recorded by Nicolas Roeg and Martin Scorcese). He made his attempt with “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”, but PIFF this year is featuring four of his earlier films which explore prejudiced Japanese attitudes to Korea. In addition to this 1968 examination of capital punishment, there is “Diary of Yunbogi”, “Sing a Song of Sex”, and “Three Resurrected Drunkards”

Falcons (Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Iceland)
The Director‘s Icelandic/Japanese road movie “Cold Fever” was one of the best films of PIFF #4, and made me determined to visit the Land of Bjork. I still haven‘t, but it still does give reason enough to recommend his latest. It‘s his first English language effort, and stars Keith Carradine, though from imdb comments, it will be the landscape, if anything, making its acceptance speech at the next Oscars.

Lilja 4-Ever (Lukas Moodyson, Sweden)
Nobody who saw “Together”, for me most enjoyable film of last year‘s PIFF, will want to miss Moodyson‘s latest, by all accounts a much darker work, a story of a 16-year old Russian girl who gets taken to Sweden by her boyfriend.

The Magdalene Sisters (Peter Mullan, Ireland)
This won the Golden Lion Award at Venice this year while provoking protests from the Catholic Church – a promising sign. With forced prostitution in the news in Korea, a timely story of girls coerced, with the church‘s approval, into a different kind of labour, laundering clothes. The film is set in the 1960‘s, but the state of affairs it depicts continued well into the 90s.

Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, Scotland)
The director‘s first feature film, “Ratcatcher”, won plenty of praise, abuse and awards, and this one was well received at the Edinburgh Film Festival a couple of months back The story of a small town Scottish supermarket worker who finds herself in possession of a brilliant novel by her late boyfriend.

Oasis (Lee Chang-dong, Korea)
A filmed exhibit at the current Busan Biennale is a Lotte basement re-enactment by a Korean couple of a scene from Fellini‘s “La Dolce Vita”, where Marcello Mastroianni wades into the Trevi Fountain, lured by Anita Ekberg. This has nothing at all to do with “Oasis”, except that the leading actress, Moon So-ri, won the Mastroianni Award for best actor/actress at the recent Venice Film Festival. The male lead, Sol Kyung-ku, is no less impressive in this story of the love between an ex-con and a cerebral-palsied girl. It has subtitles. Don‘t miss it. And for info on other Korean movies at the festival including Im Kwon-taek‘s Cannes prizewinner “Chihwaseon”, catch the latest edition of Darcy Pacquet‘s indispensable Korean Film Newsletter at http://koreanfilm.org.

Public Toilet (Fruit Chan, Hong Kong)
Chan has become a PIFF perennial. His earlier films, like last year‘s “Hollywood Hong Kong”, gave a fascinating insight on the margins of society in the SAR; his latest is a kind of pan-Asian effort, including a story of how “a terminally-ill woman emerges from the sea near Pusan”. As a regular participant in the Haeundae Aquathlon, I can identify with that.

Pushing Hands (Ang Lee, Taiwan)
There have been lots of boxing movies and Kung Fu movies. Now here‘s a chance to see a Tai Chi movie, Lee‘s first feature, from 1992, before he made the big time with “The Wedding Banquet” and an Oscar with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.

Rabbit-proof Fence (Philip Noyce, Australia)
After a string of Hollywood successes, including a couple of Tom Clancy adaptations, Noyce returns to his native Australia, with a true story the trek home of three Aboriginal girls, members of “the Stolen Generation” forcibly assimilated into white society in the 1930s. The tracker who guides them is played by David Gumpilil (of “Walkabout” and “The Last Wave”). Chris Doyle‘s cinematography is a reminder that “outback” is more than a chain of overpriced restaurants.

Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar, Spain)
A comatose female matador, a comatose ballerina, a journalist and a male nurse. As you might expect, the male characters are, for once, better developed then the female ones in an Almodovar film. A really gripping piece of hokum from the Spanish master.

2001 – September 11
Eleven short (11 minutes 9 seconds each) films by internationally noted directors, including Samira Makhlambaf, Mira Nair, Sean Penn and Shohei Imamura, on the Twin Towers tragedy. The segment that has drawn most attention is the one by Ken Loach, whose latest, and highly acclaimed “Sweet Sixteen” is also in the Festival. There are some extremely interesting comments on the imdb on this one.