Hong Kong International Film Festival

Asako Asakof
Wed Mar 17 13:44:47 EST 1999


I'd like to comment on Stephen Cremin's intro on the upcoming HKIFF. 

I believe Hong Kong truly is still the most important international film
festival in Asia, not only because of its superb programming--yes and
particularly in their efforts at featuring young independent Chinese
filmmakers, new films from Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, but also in
their growing attention to short films, videos and documentaries. Not
only will there be retrospectives on Haneda Sumiko and Christine Choi
this year (last year they had Anand Patwardhan from India), their
Documentaries East and West program is strong as ever and one of their
closing films is the premier screening of Zhang Yuan's new documentary. 

The struggle of HKIFF programmers and colleagues against HK government
bureaucrats who tried to shut down one of the programs last year is
still fresh in my mind, and I am in deep respect for the activism of the
cultural workers who moved against it. They petitioned and roused the
local media to such an extent that a higher committee within the
government reverted the lower decision. 

There's no doubt a connection between this commitment to their belief in
cinema, and their programming.  

On another point, I would like to mention that no comparison can be made
in terms of festival organization, screening conditions, and handling of
prints, between Hong Kong and Pusan. Film festivals can't be discussed
on the basis of programming (and the number of premiers!) alone. A film
festival coordinator myself, I've been in awe of Hong Kong's cordial
communications and efficient handling of preview tapes for the past
years. 

Fujioka, Asako 
 

> With the overwhelming success of the Pusan International Film Festival 
> which only launched in 1996, its Tokyo counterpart is at least putting 
> up a feeble fight, but the 23rd HKIFF has relegated itself as purely an 
> event for local audiences.  For example, Korean cinema is represented by 
> the Holy Trinity of "Spring in My Hometown", "Christmas in August" and 
> "The Power of Kangwon Province", a threesome who first met in Cannes 
> 1998 and have been joined-at-the-hip ever since, parading themselves at 
> every unimaginative festival around the world.  The great shame is that 
> Hong Kong programmers actually do their research, best exemplified by 
> the superb in-depth retrospective they host every year - this year 
> devoted to New Wave Hong Kong cinema - an area where Pusan doesn't even 
> come close.  There are also small retrospectives to Japanese directors 
> Haneda Sumiko and Kurosawa Kiyoshi.  While Japanese, Taiwanese and Hong 
> Kong films are well-represented, other East and South-East Asian 
> national cinemas barely get a look in.




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