The Korean peninsula's leading film festival kicked off yesterday in a southern beach resort town despite growing tensions over the North Korea's recent announcement that it tested a nuclear bomb.
The mood at the 11th Pusan International Film Festival, also one of Asia's most prestigious, appeared unaffected by the diplomatic fallout from the claimed nuclear test. The film festival retains the old spelling of the South Korean city now known as Busan.
Veteran Hong Kong actor-singer Andy Lau, who is being honored as Asian filmmaker of the year, was mobbed by fans as he arrived at the Busan airport late Wednesday.
PHOTOS: AP
Workers added finishing touches to the new PIFF Pavilion, a beachfront complex built with freight containers that houses a conference room, lounges and an outdoor stage for actor appearances.
This year's program, however, includes two timely films about the North. British documentary Crossing the Line tells the story of the last American defector to North Korea.
The German documentary Comrades in Dreams follows the life of a North Korean movie projectionist, comparing it to the lives of counterparts in southern India and Midwestern America.
The Busan festival opens with South Korean director Kim Dae-seung's Traces of Love, a man who can't overcome the pain of losing his lover. Kim wowed audiences with his debut Bungee Jumping of Their Own, a touching and innovative story about a secondary school teacher's relationship with his male student whom he believes to be the reincarnation of an old lover.
Traces of Love features Yu Ji-tae from Old Boy, which won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004.
In all, Busan organizers will show 245 films from 63 countries, including 64 world premieres.
Director Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) and Oscar winner Istvan Szabo from Hungary will give master classes.
Defying government sanctions, rising Chinese director Lou Ye (婁燁) will promote Summer Palace (頤和園), a love story set against the pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. Chinese film authorities banned Lou from filmmaking after he screened the film at Cannes this year without clearing government censors.
Thailand yesterday opened its second film festival this year, but some question the need for two events when the country is struggling to find a niche in the already crowded festival scene.
More than 70 films from 30 countries will be screened at the fourth World Film Festival of Bangkok, and although it may lack the celebrity draw of similar events, organizers say it has loftier aims.
“We want to give the city a serious film culture event,” said festival director Victor Silakong. “Of course, we cannot afford all the big stars but we want to promote serious cinema.”
The World Film Festival of Bangkok follows the Bangkok International Film Festival earlier this year, which boasted stars including directors Oliver Stone and Terry Gilliam and actors Willem Dafoe and Catherine Deneuve.
But Thai film industry experts are perplexed as to why the kingdom needs two festivals, especially when neither of them are close to rivaling Asia's premier film event in Busan, South Korea, let alone Venice or Cannes.
“Why do we need two festivals? I think it eats into their own programming,” said Gilbert Lim, executive vice president of Thai studio Sahamongkol Films.
“I think the resources could be developed together to make one very good film festival instead of two mediocre ones.”
A leafy boulevard in an Indian city stood in for a swish Pakistani neighborhood on Monday as Hollywood star Angelina Jolie began shooting for a film about a US journalist abducted and killed in Pakistan.
The film, A Mighty Heart, is the story of Daniel Pearl, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped in the Pakistani port city of Karachi and killed in 2002 while researching a report in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
It will be shot for a month in the western Indian industrial city of Pune as security concerns prevented filming in Pakistan.
On Monday, filming began in a two-story white bungalow in Pune's Sindh Society locality, which has a striking similarity to the district in Karachi — with its boulevards, row houses and bungalows — where Pearl was staying.
Cars painted yellow to resemble Karachi taxis were parked in front of the house and used for filming.
The Oscar-winning US actress plays the slain reporter's wife, Mariane. Her partner Brad Pitt is the movie's producer.
The celebrity couple's arrival in Pune has thrown the quiet Indian city into a frenzy as hundreds of fans throng their luxury hotel and the shooting locale for a glimpse.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50