Hawaii

[mark schilling]

Markus notes, rightly, that the profile of the Hawaii Film Festival has
fallen in recent years vis a vis Pusan and other fests with an Asian focus.
The most obvious reason is location -- Pusan is a major Asian port, with a
thriving domestic film industry and large population of young enthusiastic
moviegoers right at its doorstep. Hawaii may have great beaches, but it's
relatively small, out of the way and its film industry serves mainly as a
subcontractor for Hollywood. It doesn't help that the average festivalgoer
there is over forty.

More importantly, I think, Pusan is a media schmooze-fest and industry
dealathon -- and has thus become a must stop for Asian filmmakers looking to
generate buzz or find backers for their next project. Hawaii, by contrast,
has always been about presenting Asian films to the local community.
Business has never been a priority.

Be that as it may, the list of Asia films at this year's fest was long, if
not as fresh as the one at Pusan. As a member of the NETPAC jury, I only had
to see films by new Asian directors, but covering everything still meant a
four-film-a-day pace. Unfortunately, I had to return to Japan four days
early to attend my mother-in-law's funeral. On the day of my departure I sat
up till two in the morning watching -- and fast-forwarding through -- tapes
in my hotel room so my impression of some films is a blur. Our first pick
was Platform -- Jia Zhangke's finely nuanced study of China in transition in
the early '80s, as viewed through the lives and loves of a troupe of
provincial entertainers. We couldn't give it the award, however, because the
NETPAC jury at the Hong Kong fest had beat us to it, so we settled on Jian
Wen's Devils on the Doorstep. I thought it needed our prize about as much as
Elton John needed a new bouquet of roadside daisies. The Japanese film
selection was weak, though I enjoyed Color of Life, not a feature comedy so
much as a series of  totally unhinged sketches in the Monty Python mode. I
was choking on my mineral water.

Other reasons to go to Hawaii: balmy weather, blue skies and nearly deserted
beaches. The Japanese tourists were conspicuous by their absence, though the
odds of Bin Laden and his fellow madmen taking out a JAL flight to Honolulu
struck me as low.

Why, I wonder, do three important Asian film festivals -- Tokyo, Hawaii and
Pusan -- have to unspool within three weeks of each other? It strikes me as
the cinematic equivalent of a circular firing squad -- though Pusan has more
firepower and a quicker draw.

Mark Schilling

Asian Film List for Hawaii International Film Festival 2001
FEATURES:
China - Purple Sunset (Xiaoning Feng)
China - Beijing Rocks! (Mabel Cheung)
China - Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang Wen)
China - From the Queen to the Chief Executive (Herman Yau)
China - I Love Beijing
China/USA - X-Roads (Shazon Jiang)
Hong Kong/China/Japan/France - Platform (Jia Zhangke)
Hong Kong/China - Peony Pavilion (Yonfan)
Hong Kong - Wu Yen (Johnnie To & Wai Kai-Fai)
Hong Kong - Visible Secret (Ann Hu)
Hong Kong/USA - Gen-Y Cops (Benny Chan)
Hong Kong/USA - Manhattan Midnight (Alfred Cheung)
India - The Adopted (Gul Bahar Singh)
India - D?j? vu (Biju Vishwanath)
India - David Lynch presents Bhopal Express (Mahesh Mathai)
India - Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (Ashitosh Gowariker)
India - Sandstorm (Jagmohan)
India - The Magic Pearl (Tapan Sinha)
Japan  - Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Shohei Imamura)
Japan - All About Our House (Koki Mitani)
Japan - Closed (Again) (Shingo Yamashiro)
Japan - The Color of Life (Yoshimasa Ishibashi)
Japan - Darkness in the Light (Kei Kumai)
Japan - Departure (Yosuke Nakagawa)
Japan - Firefly Dreams (John Williams)
Japan - Hotoke (Jinsei Tsuji)
Japan - Hittobe (Ted Fukuda)
Japan - The Day Toshi was Born (Hikaru Yoshikawa)
Japan - Home (Takahiro Kobayashi)
Japan - Snowland Revisited (Koichi Goito)
Japan - Inugami (Masato Harada)
Japan - Waterboys (Shinobu Yaguchi)
Japan - Versus (Ryuhei Kitamura)
Japan - Gojoe (Sogo Ishii)
Japan/USA - Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (Yoshiaki Kawajiri)
Japan: Metropolis (Rin Taro)
Japan - Nagisa (Masaru Konuma)
South Korea - JSA: Joint Security Area (Chan-wook Park)
South Korea - Waikiki Brothers (Im Soonrye)
South Korea - Bungee Jumping of their Own (Kim Dae-sung)
South Korea - The Foul King (Kim Ji-woon)
South Korea - I Wish I Had a Wife (Park Heung-sik)
South Korea - Friend (Kwak Kyung-taek)
Philippines - Dog Food (Carlos Siguion-Reyna)
Philippines - Mila (Joel Lamangan)
Philippines - Tanging Yaman (Laurice Guillen)
Singapore - The Tree (Daisy Chan)
Singapore - Return to Pontianak (Djinn)
Taiwan - Migratory Bird (Yar-ming Ding)
Taiwan - Betelnut Beauty (Lin Cheng-Sheng)
Taiwan - The Cabbie (Chang Hwa-kun & Chen Yiwen)
Taiwan - Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
Vietnam - Heading South, Going North (Phi Tien Son)
Vietnam - Golden Key (Le Hoang)
Vietnam - Season of Guavas (Dang Nhat Minh)
Vietnam - Wharf of Widows (Luu Trong Ninh)
Thailand - Bangkok Dangerous (Oxide & Danny Pang)
Thailand - Bang Rajan (Thanit Jitnukul)

DOCUMENTARIES:
Vietnam - Return to Ngu Thuy (Le Manh Thich, Do Khanh Toan)
Vietnam - Mrs. Nam (Lai Van Sinh)
Vietnam - The Soud of Violin in Mi Mai (Tran Van Thuy)
Vietnam - Rocky Highland (Le Manh Thich)
Philippines - Promised Land (Cesar Apolinario)
Vietnam - My Hanoi (Thu Nguyen)
SHORTS:
Japan - The Fuccon Family (Yoshimasa Ishibashi)









----- Original Message -----
From: "A. M. Nornes" <amnornes at umich.edu>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 2:56 AM
Subject: Re: TIFF results


> At 2:01 PM +0800 11/15/01, Miles Wood wrote:
>
> > I notice Mark Schilling was attending Hawaii this year and look fwd to
> > hearing his report on the festival - not just the films/discussions etc.
but
> > the general atmosphere surrounding it
>
>
> I would also be very interested in this. Hawai'i was THE place to see
Asian
> films back in the 1980s, before various competitors in Asia displaced it
in
> the eyes of international programmers and distributors (HKIFF, Pusan, and
> Yamagata for docs, etc.). What's it like these days?
>
> Markus