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Festival Reports

21st Vesoul International Festival of Asian Cinema

System Administrator Saturday July 18, 2015

 The International Festival of Asian Cinema (FICA), Vesoul (France) must be one of the most loved festivals of Asian Films.

The festival celebrated its 21st edition this year and entered the 3rd decade of its existence in great style, recording over 30000 footfalls over 8 festival days, making it one of the top 10 film festivals in France and the most popular Asian Film Festival in Europe

The entire team of this unique Festival consists of passionate and enthusiastic volunteers, cinephiles themselves, who love to treat film lovers and attendees of the festival to some gems of Asian Cinema.

This year, the festival goers were offered 90 carefully chosen films from 18 different Asian countries, which included a special section entitled Tenir en Haleine ( Breathless), a showcase of 24 films that kept their audiences on the edge of their seats such as Black Coal, Thin Ice (China), Diao Yinan’s innovative murder mystery and winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2014 and Johnny To’s stylish pickpocket comedy Sparrow (Hong Kong), considered by many to be the director’s tribute to the French Nouvelle Vague. The FICA also screened To’s Life Without Principle, a satirical drama with a healthy dose of social commentary, dealing with the Global Financial Crisis and its effects on various citizens in Hong Kong. Other attractive films of the section included Au revoir (Iran) directed by Mohammad Rasoulof who was also on the Festival’s International Jury, and the great master Akira Kurosawa’s classics Stray Dog and Heaven and Hell.

The festival had planned several sections and activities to mark 50 years of diplomatic ties between France and China. Homage was paid to Wu Tianming - referred to as father of the so-called Fifth generation of Chinese directors - who passed away on March 4th 2014. FICA, Vesoul had honoured the director by giving him a Lifetime Award in 2007 and organising a comprehensive retrospective of his works. As a tribute to his memory, the festival screened this year, Song of the Phoenix, which he directed and Full Circle in which he acted.

The festival’s programming team must be lauded for putting together the most important retrospective on Chinese Cinema ever held in France. The section ‘Focus On China’ featured 36 of the most important Chinese movies made between the proclamation of the People's Republic of China and the present day, i.e., between 1959 and 2014. The programmed features are not the socio-realistic movies commissioned or acceptable to Maoist ideology, but socio-critical fictions, which somehow escaped censorship.

The Focus on Iranian Cinema section paid tribute to Iranian Independents, a company founded in the year 1997 by Mohammad Atebbai, who has since been involved in production, promotion and marketing of some very well known Iranian independent feature and documentary films such as Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s The May Lady (1998), Jafar Panahi’s The Circle (2000), Ali Reza Raissian’s Deserted Station (2002). Mohammad Atebbai has been active in different fields in Iranian film industry for the past 25 years as an international promoter of Iranian cinema, sales agent, producer, writer, researcher and journalist.

The section that the NETPAC Jury mainly followed was the completion section for Fiction features, ‘Faces of Contemporary Asia’. Vesoul screened nine previously unreleased movies in France.

The International Jury, headed by Wang Chao, one of the most talented Chinese directors from the sixth generation who started his illustrious cinematic career as Chen Kaige’s assistant director (Farewell My Concubine, The Emperor and the Assassin). Three of his films were invited to Cannes: The Orphan of Anyang in the section ‘Directors Fortnight’ 2001, Luxury Car, winner of Un Certain Regard Award in 2006 and Fantasia which competed in the main competition at Cannes in 2014 and was showcased at Vesoul ahead of its expected release in France in June 2015. Wang Chao was awarded the Golden Cyclo d’Honneur, during the Opening Ceremony of the 21st edition of FICA which celebrated 50 years of diplomatic relations between France and China by screening films that covered fifty years of Chinese film production in one of the most important retrospectives organised in France in honour of fifty years of friendship between the two nations.

The International Jury awarded the Golden Cyclo, FICA’s top award, to Filipino director Francis Xavier Pasion's Crocodile (Bwaya) for its blending of folklore in a remote wilderness to tell a lyrical narrative of compassion. Bwaya’s tragic story begins with Divina preparing for her daughter Rowena’s 13th birthday when she hears that her daughter has been fatally attacked by a crocodile, and her body is missing. As Divina searches for the body of her daughter in the marshlands of Agusan del Sur, she learns a lesson more tragic than her fate: not all predators are underwater. This superbly shot film is based on a true story.

The Grand Jury Prize was awarded to Chienn Hsiang 's Taiwan drama Exit for the power and dignity with which the filmmaker depicts an ageing woman's loneliness.

YANG Yishu 's One Summer (China) was recognised for the originality with which it sheds light on the paradoxes of society. It shared the Jury Special Prize with the well-crafted Iranian film Melbourne directed by debutant Nima Javidi. It is a gripping story of a young Iranian couple, Amir and Sara, who plan to leave their homeland in search of a new life in the Australian coastal city of Melbourne. However, a tragic event puts their plan at risk. Melbourne also won the INALCO (THE French National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations) Prize for its powerful script and excellent acting and the universality of its theme.

The NETPAC Jury gave its award to two films: The Monk (Mayanmar) directed by The Maw Naing. This sensitive coming-of-age tale revolves around a young monk, Zawana, who has spent most of his life in a monastery in the Burmese countryside. When his superior falls ill, Zawana is faced with the dilemma of deciding if the life of a monk is still his destiny. The jury chose it as one of its winners for its eloquence and even for its silence. It engaged the audience as participants (rather than mere witnesses)and aptly portrayed the dilemma of its protagonist, not just as a monk but as an individual. The NETPAC Prize was shared with the Taiwanese film Exit directed by Chienn Hsiang in which actress Chen Shiang-chyi gives a sensitive portrayal of a forty-something woman in who has just lost her job. Her daughter and husband are far away from home and she feels quite lonely. She must take care of her mother-in-law who is hospitalized. A young man is lying in the bed next to the old woman’s. He is seriously injured and in a coma and is apparently, just like Ling, all by himself. A bond slowly develops between the two even as he lies in coma in this story that has humanity at its heart.

The Emile Guimet prize offered by the jury of National Museum of Asiatic Arts headed by Hubert Laot, was won by Tales of the Wind (Kirghizstan- Netherlands) directed Marjoleine Boonstra for the originality of its script, its wonderfully filmed landscapes , poetry , humour , all in the service of an existential and humanist message.

One of the most important sections presented at Vesoul this year was the first Lao Cinema retrospective with three recent films and two classics from the 1980s, including The Sound of Gunfire in the Plain of Jars, which had never been shown since its ban way back in 1983. An interesting documentary film that featured in the festival’s section of films from Asian francophone countries was Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock And Roll. The film tracks the twists and turns of Cambodian music as it morphs into rock and roll, blossoms, and is nearly destroyed along with the rest of the country. This documentary film provides a new perspective on a country usually associated with war and genocide, and through the history of its music, it gives an excellent account of the nation’s history as well.

 

by Raman Chawla

Interview

Supriya Suri's Interview with Muhiddin Muzaffar

Director Muhiddin Muzaffar (1) 2 Min

1. I entered the cinema through the theatre. I was an actor in our local theatre called Kanibadam, named after Tuhfa Fozilova. After working for five years, I decided to do a theatre director course. I graduated with honors and became a director. We successfully staged performances at international festivals.

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