When the inaugural Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) closed last year, the organizers promised that the next one would be even bigger and better, and it certainly looks like it's going to live up to that promise. Over eight days, from October 10 to 18, Nampodong will take on an almost European ambience as 167 films are shown at four of the downtown cinemas (Puyoung, Pusan, Cheil, and Academy) as well as on Asia's largest screen at Suyoung Yachting Center, out towards Haeundae.
Last year the festival kicked off with Secrets and Lies, fresh from its Palme d'Or victory at the Cannes Festival; this year's opener is Wayne Wang's Hong
Kong hand over story, Chinese Box, and two of its stars Jeremy Irons and Maggie Cheung (not Gong Li, unfortunately) are expected to attend. It was also expected to arrive as a festival winner, but it was beaten to the Golden Lion award at Venice by a Japanese gangster/romance story, Hanna-bi directed by a pop star, Takeshi Kitaro; he will also be here for a screening of his movie in one of the festival's seven program sections, "A Window on Asian Cinema" where it is joined by sixteen other recent releases including this years Cannes victor, The Taste of Cherry and two others from Iran. There's also Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together, banned by the Korean censors only two months ago on account of its gay theme, and from Taiwan, the winner of the Silver Bear from the Berlin Festival, Tsai Ming-liang's The River.
Less established Asian directors will be featured in a competitive section entitled "New Currents" which also has an entry from Iran, Airplanes - a kind of Iranian Cinema Paradiso according to the publicity - as well as efforts from Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, China, Thailand, India, and Korea. The veteran director of The Taste of Cherry, Abbas Kiarostami, will chair the judging panel.
Although Asian films predominate, there is a major section, "World Cinema," devoted to productions from Europe and North America. A sampling of the 21 entries: Mike Leigh's follow-up to Secrets and Lies, Career Girls, the latest by Robert Altman (Kansas City) and Billie August (Jerusalem), and two that I'm specially looking forward to, The Tango Lesson by Sally Potter, who gave Virginia Woolf's Orlando a spectacular going-over a few years ago, and Some Mother's Son, a film starring Helen Mirren and set during the Northern Ireland hunger strikes of the 1970's, which was heavily criticized for bieng too sympathetic to the IRA.
Hong Kong is one of the main themes of the festival, and it figures particularly in a very large Retrospective Program. There are three documentaries occasioned by the hand over, one Swiss-made, and the others from local directors Ann Hui and Stanley Kwan. Hong Kong features were very popular in Korea in the '80's, a period which saw the rise of such incandescent stars as Jackie Chan, Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-fat, whose talents are represented here by the elegiac New York romance An Autumn's Tale and the film that launched John Woo's career, A Better Tomorrow. A section of "historically important" works includes the late King Hu's 1970 3-hour-plus kung-fu epic A Touch of Zen. Other sections of the retrospective comprise early films from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Korea; a 4-minute documentary entitled Korea, the Land of the Morning Calm dating from 1910 has the distinction of being the oldest film in the festival. Finally, there is a selection of features by a "cult" Korean filmmaker, Kim Ki-young, the earliest from 1955, the last from 1984. The name's new to me, but titles like The Insect Woman (1972) and Killer Butterfly (1978) are intriguing, at least.
The Wide Angle Program is competitive, and presents shorts, documentaries, and animations, 53 in all, mostly from Asia, but also including a Swedish documentary on Ingmar Bergman an another Cannes award-winner from Britain Is it the Design on the Wrapper? - at 8-minutes, the shortest of the short.
Apart from the opener and closer, nine films will be shown at the Yacht Center. They are described as popular, but at least one, The Opium War, the Chinese authorities' take on the British takeover of Hong Kong, bombed in the (then) colony. Bigger hits might be Bean, a fullish-length misadventure story of Korea's most popular Brit, and four U.S. productions. These include the latest by two more Brits, One Night Stand by Mike Figgis and G.I. Jane by Ridley Scott, in which Demi Moore joins the Air Force. Perhaps the most interesting entry here is Shall We Dance?, from Japan; anyway it's the longest (more than two hours) so if you go to see it be sure to wrap up well, as the nights get pretty chilly on the bayside by mid-October. The closing film, by the way, is Eighteen Springs, the last of three Ann Hui films in the festival; it's a period love story ('30's Shanghai) starring teenybop idol Leon Lai and the wonderful Anita Mui, last seen here in Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx. All three will be worth attending.
And finally, answers to FAQ's. We are assured that all films that require them will have English subtitles. Schedules will be available and tickets will go on sale from September 22 at all BRANCHES OF THE PUSAN BANK, which I'm afraid may mean that some films will be sold out by the time this appears. Anyway, on the basis of last year's experience, you are strongly advised to book everything AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. For the opening and closing nights, prices will be 8,000 won, for everything else, 4,000 won. Good film going.