This year's Venice Film Festival sees Taiwan's Wu Nien-jen in competition with his gentle comedy drama Buddha Bless America. On the evidence of the two previous winners, Wu could be forgiven for feeling confident: both 1994 and 1995 saw Asian contenders take the Golden Lion.
Taiwan's Tsai Ming-liang won top honours in 1994 for his Antonioni-esque drama Vive l'amour (shared with Before the Rain), while Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung took the prize in 1995 for his Saigon story Cyclo.
However, Venice has an important connection with Asian films that goes back much further. When the jury awarded Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon the Golden Lion in 1951, the festival brought films from Asia to the attention of the West for the first time. Before 1951, few Western critics were aware of movies from Asia.
Rashomon nearly didn't appear at Venice at all. When an Italian film executive in Tokyo suggested to Daei, the film's producers, that they enter the film, they were unenthusiastic. Rashomon had not been given good reviews at home, even though it had been reasonably well received by the public. Rashomon's success at Venice threw Japanese cinema into the international limelight, where it stayed until the early 1970s.
1957 saw the festival award the Golden Lion to another acclaimed Asian director, India's Satyajit Ray. Ray took the prize for Aparajito, the second part of the Apu trilogy; part one, Pather Panchali, had been awarded the Best Human Document award at Cannes the previous year. Indian cinema, however, proved too inaccessible for Western audiences, and Ray's success did not translate into a wider interest in Indian films.
1958 saw Japan again take the top prize with Hiroshi Inagaki's Muho-Matsu No Issho (Rickshaw Man), the last Golden Lion to go to an Asian filmmaker until Taiwan's City of Sadness won in 1989. Chinese-language cinema was well established as a festival favourite by 1992, when Zhang Yimou won for The Story Of Qiu Ju. Gong Li also won the Best Actress prize.
Tsai Ming-liang was the controversial winner in 1994 with the bleak Vive l'amour, a gloomy story of urban alienation set in Taipei. Perhaps fittingly, Vive l'amour saw Tsai compared to Italy's Michelangelo Antonioni, himself a winner in 1964 with Red Desert.
Last year's winner Cyclo was less controversial. Cyclo is a synthesis of the best film making in Asia, worthy of a Golden Lion,” said L'Unita reviewer Alberto Crespi before the award was announced.
Richard James Havis
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