Hong Kong International Film Festival

[Stephen Cremin]

Just in response to Asako's comments.  Point taken.  The Hong Kong 
International Film Festival are a dream to deal with when it comes to 
print shipping.  But I still feel there's a great disappointment looking 
through the programme, the annual realisation that anything worth 
travelling five thousand miles for doesn't have English subtitles or 
commentary.  But admittedly, I'm not so interested in shorts and 
documentaries, and I should stress that bias.  And I'm not a 
particularly big fan of Pusan which seems to lose much of its magic year 
on year, but I do think that there's a perception that Hong Kong has 
lost the position it held ten years ago when it was an absolutely 
necessary trip for anybody interested in Asian film.  And as I hinted at 
in my initial posting, I do personally have huge respect for their 
programmers.  The fact that they're not hosting premieres isn't a 
reflection of lack of research, but that they primarily see the festival 
as an event for local audiences ... bringing the best of international 
work.  (Which you can argue has always been the primary objective of 
HKIFF.)  And, of course, any festival that subtitles Kurosawa Kiyoshi's 
"The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl" has a lot of merit.

Stephen Cremin

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