Asian cinema may have missed the jackpot, the Palme d'Or, but was still a winner at this year's Cannes Film Festival, taking home honors and basking consistently in the limelight during the 12-day bonanza.
When it came down to the wire, politics nudged art off center-stage, giving Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 top prize over the film all the critics were talking about -- Chinese movie 2046 by cult Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai (
PHOTOS: AGENCIES
But Asians walked home with Best Actress, Best Actor, the runner-up Grand Prize and a shared special award for Thailand's first-ever bid at the Palme.
With Quentin "Kill Bill" Tarantino, the US director entranced by Asian film, heading this year's Cannes jury, it was hardly a surprise that movies from the East stole center-stage from movies from the West at the Riviera festival.
Films by established auteur darlings, such as US team Joel and Ethan Coen or Serbia's Emir Kusturica, went home empty-handed, and Brazil's Walter Salles, another hot tip for his road-movie on Ernesto "Che" Guevara, failed to win a mention.
But then, neither commercially-driven Hollywood nor artsy Europe appear to be producing as much novel and varied cinematic work as Asia
nowadays.
After almost missing its deadline for screening at Cannes, 2046 took Cannes by storm. It was the most-liked movie by a worldwide panel of critics listed in the film industry magazineScreen
International.
The same panel was cool about Thailand's debut Cannes film, Tropical Malady by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, though the jury, along with a few French critics, were over the moon about the two-part avant-garde tale featuring gay romance and a walk through the night jungle on the tracks of a mythical tiger.
"My film is so personal I'm not sure how well it will travel," Apichatpong told journalists. "But I hope this will encourage other Thai filmmakers."
On the acting front too, performers from Asia hogged the screen.
Maggie Cheung (
The 39-year-old Chinese actress, who has starred in several films by Wong Kar-wai, notably in the 2000 movie In The Mood For Love, made a name in the West in 1992 in New China Woman.
She recently starred in Hero, Zhang Yimou's (
Also in the limelight at Cannes was China's Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), the former Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star listed as one of People magazine's 50 most beautiful women in 2002. She was breath-taking both as a blind warrior in the out-of-competition House of Flying Daggers and as one of the four women in 2046.
The much talked-about Flying Daggers is Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou's second foray into the popular epic martial arts after Hero of 2002. Also at Cannes and also liked was Johnnie To's action movie Breaking News.
Asian film, which is grabbing an ever-growing share of Cannes, festival after festival, this year accounted for six of the 18 films competing to win the coveted Palme d'Or trophy.
Japan and South Korea each had two movies in competition for the prize, and each scored prizes, bolstering hopes for their buoyant local industries.
South Korea is one of the few countries outside the US where domestic productions outnumber foreign films in box-office takings, and Old Boy by director Park Chan-wook, the Cannes runner-up that won the Grand Prize, has been one of the country's biggest hits.
The ultra-savage flick -- which includes the main character slicing his tongue off and eating a live octopus -- is about a man who is incarcerated and tortured in a hotel room but doesn't know why. It kept critics on the edge of their seats with its twisted narrative and graphic violence.
Tarantino especially was reported to have loved it.
Japanese films dazzled too. A quiet human drama about four small children deserted by their mother and left to fend for themselves -- Nobody Knows by Hirokazu Koreeda -- was listed as one of the favorites at the end of the fest and its teenage star Yagira Yuuya was named Best Actor.
"It was the fruit of a whole year of work with these children," said Koreeda on accepting the award on behalf of the boy, now 14 years of age.
Virtually invisible on the screens this year was Bollywood, but India nevertheless turned out in force to sell its increasingly popular movies and growing festival scene.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located