Festival Director Alan Franey and programmers Tony Rayns and Shelly Kraicer today announced that the 27th annual Vancouver International Film Festival will feature a total of 47 features, 5 mid-length films and 23 shorts in the Festival's cornerstone Dragons & Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia program. Again presented this year thanks to the generous support of Brad Birarda, the Dragons & Tigers program is one of the pre-eminent showcases of East Asian films in the world. The series will feature 27 International Premieres, 18 North American Premieres, and one Canadian Premiere. Further titles may be announced in the coming weeks.
DRAGONS & TIGERS COMPETITION FOR YOUNG ASIAN CINEMA
For the 15th year running, the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema, which includes a prize of $10,000 to the film's director courtesy of sponsor Brad Birarda, will be awarded for the most creative and innovative first or second feature-length film by a new director from Pacific Asia. This year's VIFF features films directed by seven former winners or runners-up. The award will be handed out in a ceremony on October 2nd before the screening of Yim Phil-Sung's HANSEL AND GRETEL. The nominees are:
GERMAN + RAIN (Yokohama Satoko) - Japan International Premiere
KAZA-AANA (Uchida Nobutero) - Japan International Premiere LUCKY 7 (Sun Koh, K Rajagopal, Boo Junfeng, Brian Gothong Tan, Chew Tze Chuan, Ho Tzu Nyen, Tania Sng) - Singapore
mime-mime (Sode Yukiko) - Japan International Premiere
PERFECT LIFE (Emily Tang) - China North American Premiere
SWEET FOOD CITY (Gao Wengdong) - China North American Premiere SYNCHING BLUE (Seo Won-Tae) - South Korea Canadian Premiere THE "THANK YOU" GIRLS (Charliebebs Gohetia) - The Philippines International Premiere
The distinguished jury for the 2008 award is comprised of: Ichiayama Shozo, programmer for Tokyo FilmEx and Cinema Digital Seoul, plus a producer for Office Kitano; Thai filmmaker Pe-nek Ratanaruang, director, most recently, of Ploy; and Elisabeth Lequeret, critic for the Cahiers du Cinema and Radio France Internationale and a programmer for the San Francisco International Film Festival.
This year's Dragons & Tigers series features include:
CHINA
24 CITY (Jia Zhangke)
Jia Zhangke's most daring combination of documentary and fiction yet. The old socialist Factory 420 in Chengdu, Sichuan, is being replaced by ultra-capitalist luxury residences. Interviews with former workers recreate an entire lost world; appearances by famous actors (including Joan Chen) lace realism with poetry.
GOOD CATS (Ying Liang) - North American Premiere Ying Liang's savage, funny satire mocks corruption and greed in contemporary China. As ambitious young chauffeur Luo gets deeper into his boss' schemes, he loses his wife, his money and his moral compass. With a rock band as its Greek chorus: very indie and very surreal.
JALAINUR (Zhao Ye) - World Premiere
Zhao Ye's visionary film captures a strangely obsessive, beautifully dreamlike relationship between a locomotive engineer on the verge of retirement and his doggedly loyal apprentice. Visual poetry, set in the smoke, steam, and snow of wintry Manchuria.
KNITTING (Yin Lichuan)
An unusual comedy of poverty and romantic jealousy set in southern China. When Chen Jin's flamboyant ex-girlfriend moves back in to his hovel, his current live-in girlfriend quietly, stubbornly resists. Director Yin Lichuan allows three-way rivalries to develop in unexpectedly intense and off-beat directions.
THE LONGWANG CHRONICLES (Li Yifan) - World Premiere Li Yifan's brilliant documentary-almanac chronicles a year in the life of a Chinese small town. Rival underground Christian cults, dubious local electioneering, indentured labour practices: the Chinese government's policy of "building a socialist countryside" seems far, far away in this revelatory portrait of grassroots life.
THE LOVE OF MR. AN (Yang Lina) - North American Premiere A documentary from China as intimate as it is revelatory. Filmmaker Yang Lina brings us romantically charismatic Lao An, an eighty-something charmer with a vivacious lover (in her youthful 60s) and a disgruntled wife. Love, sex, betrayal, death: this is real life, not melodrama.
PERFECT LIFE (Emily Tang) - China/Hong Kong - North American Premiere Li Yueying is a repressed 21-year-old, just starting out in a new job as a hotel maid, living mostly in her own fantasy world. Emily Tang's quietly masterful film (co-produced by Jia Zhangke) follows her from domestic disappointments through a tentative relationship to the surprises of encroaching middle-age, and counterpoints her life with that of a divorced mother-of-two living in Hong Kong. These women meet only once, very briefly, but have more in common than first appears. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.
PLASTIC CITY (Yu Lik-wai)
Three generations of Chinese intellectuals, officials, and activists discuss China's tortured post-1949 history and present possibilities in Wenhai's remarkably incisive documentary. "Creatures of politics," they call themselves, and we see how their remarkable histories animate their current beliefs. Living politics, at intimately close range.
SURVIVAL SONG (Yu Guangyi) - International Premiere Yu Guangyi documents the disappearing lifestyle of a family of isolated hunter-trappers in the snowy wilds of northeastern China. But he uncovers the uncanny: their boarder Xiao Li, a nearly mute vagrant, whose wild, passionate singing is a cry, piercing unimaginable loneliness, for survival and dignity.
SWEET FOOD CITY (Gao Wendong) - International Premiere Recut since its premiere in Berlin, Gao Wendong's debut feature makes brilliant use of cinematic space. In the extraordinary setting of Dalian's Sweet Food City, a housing/shopping development of the 1990s which is already a massive slum, a jobless chancer strikes up a tentative relationship with a tough hooker--until fate intervenes. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.
THE EQUATION OF LOVE AND DEATH (Cao Baoping) - North American Premiere A tour de force by China's finest young actress, Zhou Xun, anchors Cao Baoping's black comedy/thriller. She's a tough cabbie, whose quest for her lost lover pits her against a couple of hapless drug runners. With a frenzied, labyrinthine plot that twists right up to the end.
UP & DOWN (Wang Wo) - International Premiere A different way to look at Beijing's Tiananmen and the Avenue of Eternal Peace that's witty and slyly subversive to boot.
WE (Huang Wenhai) - International Premiere Three generations of Chinese intellectuals, officials, and activists discuss China's tortured post-1949 history and present possibilities in Wenhai's remarkably incisive documentary. "Creatures of politics," they call themselves, and we see how their remarkable histories animate their current beliefs. Living politics, at intimately close range.
HONG KONG
HIGH NOON (Heiward Mak) - North American Premiere One of the freshest new Asian coming-of-age stories comes from young Hong Kong director Heiward Mak. This remarkable feature, about seven boys whose exploits escalate from taunting teachers to erotic video, drugs, and troubling violence, is beautifully composed and vibrantly contemporary.
SPARROW (Johnnie To) - North American Premiere A delightful jeu d'esprit combining yearning romance, gentle action (of the pickpocketing kind), and cinematic dazzle, Johnnie To's non-action near-musical surprises and beguiles. French in inspiration: think Jacques Demy with a sprig of Melville. Champagne sparkle with a tender heart.
INDONESIA
THE BLIND PIG WHO WANTS TO FLY (Edwin) - North American Premiere Maverick talent Edwin's debut feature uses the experiences of Indonesians of Chinese descent to uncover a hidden history of prejudice, paranoia and shameless exploitation. The storytelling is oblique, the images are radiant, and the revelations are sometimes shocking.
UNDER THE TREE - A BALI STORY (Garin Nugroho) Garin Nugroho heads for the ancient/modern holiday island Bali to tell three stories about women, birth and death. The stories are unrelated, but their motifs criss-cross in interesting and surprising ways: pregnancy, adoption, baby-trafficking and abortion yield a complex tangle of variations on the theme of motherhood, all set in the context of an ancient Balinese death ritual.
JAPAN
ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE (Kitano Takeshi) Another change of pace for Kitano Takeshi: a sad comedy about a boy's lifelong quest to become a credible artist, lavishly illustrated with Kitano's own paintings. (He plays the character in the closing scenes.) Modern art-history was never like this...
AFTER SCHOOL (Uchida Kenji)
Uchida Kenji's hit thriller has as many twists as The Usual Suspects but stays rooted in its likeable, fallible characters. A common-or-garden salaryman has gone missing, maybe with a woman, but as assorted yakuza, private eyes and schoolteachers discover, more is going on than meets the eye. With hot new stars Oizumi Yo and Sasaki Kuranosuke.
ALL AROUND US (Hashiguchi Ryosuke)
Hashiguchi Ryosuke's superb new film (his first since Hush) traces a marriage across nearly a decade, during which the easy-going husband (played by novelist Lily Franky) becomes a courtroom artist and finds himself sketching some of Japan's most notorious criminals, while the control-freak wife (newcomer Kimura Tae) recovers from a near crack-up.
GERMAN + RAIN (Yokohama Satoko) - International Premiere Sensationally original debut feature by woman director Yokohama Satoko, centred on an indomitable 16-year-old rebel. Assistant gardener Yoshiko grapples with a talent contest, a dying father, a predatory paedophile, a small boy who wants to be a girl and a German soul-mate, all the while pursuing her dream of musical glory. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.
GOD'S PUZZLE (Miike Takashi) - International Premiere Never shy of tackling the big issues, Miike Takashi here explains quantum physics - through the stories of an embittered woman genius and a laddish male idiot, the latter impersonating his twin brother while he's away searching for spiritual truths in India. The mix of low comedy, high theory, sex, puddles and special effects will certainly make your particles accelerate.
KAZA-ANA (Uchida Nobutero) - International Premiere "Unrequited love raged through me like a stray dog." Uchida Nobutero's excellent indie feature tells the story of what the tabloids would call a "love triangle." Nabe dumps his girlfriend Mika (by inviting her to a party and then not showing up himself) so that he can seduce her friend Yoko. And his strategy works, but only for a while... Egos clash, desires fade and people change in the gap between love and lust. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.
mime-mime (Sode Yukiko) - International Premiere Makoto is as independent-minded as young women get. She lives alone, hates her mother and sister and dates a married man. She doesn't want to form attachments, but a classmate from primary-school may be the rock on which she crashes. Sode Yukiko's sparky independent feature confirms that Japan's women directors are tackling women's issues in radically new ways. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.
MURAKAMI KENJI TRILOGY [Dear Mrs. Ogi + Interview + Fujica Single Date] (Murakami Kenji) A droll trilogy of linked film essays in which Murakami Kenji (remember Tel-Club?) ponders the demise of Super-8 and gets to grips with what it takes to be an indie film-maker in these troubled times. Several old friends (and past guests) of the Dragons & Tigers series put in appearances, but these are essentially 'pages' from a video diary: funny, shocking, provocative and deliciously self-deprecatory.
NAKED OF DEFENSES (Ichii Masahide)
Ichii Masahide (Dog Days Dream) returns with a remarkable movie about a psychologically damaged woman's road to recovery. Ritsuko makes plastic toys on a production line; she's shunned by her husband since suffering a miscarriage in a road accident. The arrival of a pregnant newcomer in the factory brings her inner conflicts to the surface.
STILL WALKING (Kore-eda Hirokazu)
Kore-eda Hirokazu's explorations of the family are beginning to take on Ozu-like dimensions. Two adult children and their families visit their elderly parents for 24 hours to mark the anniversary of their elder brother's death in a drowning accident. Nothing "dramatic" happens, but a great deal of emotional truth is slowly revealed. Beautifully acted and observed.
UNITED RED ARMY (Wakamatsu Koji) - Canadian Premiere Between July 1971 and February 1972, two radical-student groups in Japan joined to form the United Red Army, a militant-terrorist organization which stole weaponry from the police and declared war on the Japanese authorities. Wakamatsu Koji's incendiary docu-drama recreates those fateful months with cool impartiality--and visceral immediacy.
WHAT THE HEART CRAVES (Takahashi Izumi) - North American Premiere The long-awaited new feature by D&T Award-winner Takahashi Izumi explores more of the dark underside of contemporary lives. A mix-up with house-keys during a conjuring trick throws several lives into confusion, and has a fateful effect on Mukai's relationship with his flaky girlfriend Kozue.
THE WITCH OF THE WEST IS DEAD (Nagasaki Shunichi) - North American Premiere Nagasaki Shunichi's exquisite adaptation of a novel by Nashiki Kaho must be one of the most luminous feminine rite-of-passage films ever. A troubled teen is sent to stay with her English grandmother in the Japanese countryside; the old lady teaches her "witches' lore" and the girl recovers her emotional equilibrium. But life is never as neat and tidy as you might wish... Stars Shirley MacLaine's daughter, Sachi Parker.
MALAYSIA
SELL OUT! (Yeo Joon Han) - North American Premiere An idealistic engineer defies a faceless corporation, while a ruthlessly ambitious TV hostess devises a death-obsessed reality show. Yeo Joon Han's contemporary Malaysian black comedy intersperses hilariously touching musical numbers throughout his savagely witty spoof of commerce, and true art.
THIS LONGING (Azharr Rudin) - North American Premiere Sidi is a scrappy boy living in a condemned tenement. His escapades revolve around avoiding school and hallucinatory scenes of night fishing with his father. Malaysian director Azharr Rudin's first film is a formally daring mood piece that meditates on the meaning of leaving one's past behind.
PHILIPPINES
ALTAR (Rico Maria Ilarde) - International Premiere Rico Ilarde's prizewinning horror movie offers a distinctively Filipino take on the haunted house with a portal to hell in the basement as two jobless men find work renovating a strange house in the countryside. Strong genre thrills and very fine visuals.
BLINK (Ronaldo Bertubin) - North American Premiere Ronaldo Bertubin's feisty indie feature looks and sounds like a thriller, but it's actually a fresh (and, uh, homo-erotic) take on the Quiapo slum melodrama as developed by the likes of Lino Brocka. Small-time crook Ambet wants to pay for an operation to cure his sister's glaucoma; should he trust photo-journalist Marlon, who wants to use him to expose the local criminal rackets?
JAY (Francis Pasion) - North American Premiere Today, on Dearly Departed Ones, a mother in Pampanga whose house was half-buried by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo turns on the TV news and discovers that her elder son, a schoolteacher in Manila, has been stabbed to death in a gay sex-crime. Francis Pasion's prizewinning debut feature is both a lacerating satire of the ethics of "reality TV" and a wry commentary on the west's predilection for certain images of the "Third World."
SERBIS (Brillante Mendoza) - Philippines/France Brillante Mendoza follows last year's Foster Child and Slingshot with the story of an epically dysfunctional family. They operate a decrepit cinema (called "Family"), which attracts few but men looking for male and transvestite hookers, but conjure up enough melodrama in their own relationships to fill a dozen of the movies they screen.
THE "THANK YOU" GIRLS (Charliebebs Gohetia) - International Premiere Charliebebs Gohetia, the editor of Brillante Mendoza's films, turns director with this deeply Filipino variation on Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. A gaggle of drag queens and their domestic entourage travel around the sticks, joining "beauty pageants" in which they impersonate the likes of Miss Ecuador. There's laughter and tears on stage, but how do their off-stage realities match up? Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.
YEARS WHEN I WAS A CHILD OUTSIDE (John Torres) The new feature by D&T Award-winner John Torres represents a very personal coming-to-terms with his father, a publisher of self-help textbooks, who left the family and started another without telling anyone. It's as essayistic and discursive as Todo, Todo, Teros, but anchored in very precise feelings of love, loss and resentment.
SINGAPORE
LUCKY 7 (Sun Koh, K Rajagopal, Boo Junfeng, Brian Gothong Tan, Chew Tze Chuan, Ho Tzu Nyen, Tania Sng) - North American Premiere Sun Koh is a naughty director. She invited six other Singaporean filmmakers to join her in a game of "exquisite corpse": a chain of episodes linked only by the presence of actor Sunny Pang which mysteriously adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Singapore's film culture has rarely looked livelier. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.
SOUTH KOREA
ACTION BOYS (Jung Byung-Gil) - Canadian Premiere Jung Byung-Gil's hair-raising documentary suggests that it may be more dangerous to be a stuntman in Korea than anyplace else on earth. Eight hapless young men are the only ones to stay the course in Seoul Action School; their future (in movies like The Host and The Good The Bad The Weird) will test more than just their breakable bodies...
CROSSING (Kim Tae-Kyun)
Kim Tae-Kyun (Volcano High) comes up with a wrenching new angle on the gap between North and South Korea. A desperate North Korean coal-miner, looking for medicine for his ailing wife, manages to cross the border into China ... but finds himself cast as a "refugee" and trapped in South Korea.
HANSEL AND GRETEL (Yim Phil-Sung) - International Premiere A callow young man crashes his car on a forest road and finds sanctuary in the "House of Happy Children"--where his cellphone can't connect, the housephone is down and there's no apparent way out... Fresh from a cameo role in The Host, director Yim Phil-Sung uncovers the grown-up horrors implicit in fairy tales like no-one since Angela Carter. A dazzling, disturbing entertainment. Dragons & Tigers Award Gala screening.
NIGHT AND DAY (Hong Sangsoo) - Canadian Premiere Largely shot in Paris, Hong Sang-Soo's latest chronicles the emotional instabilities of a middle-aged painter who has fled Korea because he fears arrest as a dope-smoker. Sung-Nam (played by Kim Young-Ho) can't speak French and misses his wife, but a chance encounter with a young Korean art student and her flatmate threatens to derail his life.
SYNCHING BLUE (Seo Won-Tae) - Canadian Premiere A Korean man living in California spends most of his time masturbating. A woman works as a pool attendant and life guard. The pool is used for practice by a synchronized swimming team. Seo Won-Tae's smart and sardonic movie poses the urgent question: what links masturbation and synchronized swimming? And is there a place for sex in the equation? Dragons & Tigers Award nominee.
TROPICAL MANILA (Lee Sang-Woo) - North American Premiere Lee Sang-Woo's deliberately shocking movie centres on a Korean émigré in the Philippines, a wanted man who is waiting out the statute of limitations before going home to not face the music for his crimes. In the meantime he has a Filipina wife to abuse, and a teenage son to beat up. Based on a real-life case, this is funny, tasteless, sad and, well, shocking.
TAIWAN
ORZ BOYZ (Yang Ya-Che) - North American Premiere Fairy tales and sadder youthful realities mix in Yang Ya-che's story of two very young troublemakers who live in Taipei. With equal parts boyhood dreams, coming-of-age drama, and animated fantasy, the film devises an imaginatively separate childhood world that offers unexpectedly mature riches.
PARKING (Chung Mong-Hong)
Taiwanese star Chang Chen's car is blocked. Over a long night in Taipei, through episodes both comic and creepy, sexy and sentimental, he meets a one-armed gangster barber, a garrulous tailor, delusional grandparents, and a desperate prostitute. Chung Mong-Hong's romantic nocturnal adventure packs a wicked twist.
THAILAND
THE CONVERT (Kong Rithdee, Kaweenipon Ketprasit, Panu Aree) - International Premiere Documentary feature by Panu Aree and last year's D&T juror Kong Rithdee follows the ups and downs in the marriage of a Thai woman and a Thai-Muslim man. June is a typical, fun-loving Thai who finds herself obliged to convert to Islam when she accepts an unlikely proposal of marriage from Ake, who reminds her of her dad. Wryly observed and full of small revelations.
WONDERFUL TOWN (Aditya Assarat)
A Bangkok architect sent to supervise rebuilding in a coastal town hit by the 2004 tsunami drifts into a casual affair with the Thai-Chinese manageress of his hotel. But the sullen local community, still numbed by the loss of so many loved ones, disapproves of extra-marital sex and is still looking for a scapegoat for the tragedy ... Aditya Assarat's multi-prize-winning debut announces a major new voice in South-East Asian cinema.
More features and shorts will soon be announced.
A free Sneak Preview Guide containing short descriptions of most films is available at Rogers Video stores in Metro Vancouver starting August 30; see the list online. The complete program, including the festival schedule, film descriptions and photos, goes online at www.viff.org on September 6. Film information also is available via the festival info line at 604-683-FILM (3456) from September 4 to October 10, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Visa cardholders may buy tickets and passes starting September 6 at www.viff.org anytime or, from noon to 7 p.m. daily, by phone at 604-685-8297 or in person at the Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour St. The comprehensive Program Catalogue goes on sale September 13, and the box office opens, noon to 7 p.m., for cash and cheque sales the same day.
The Vancouver International Film Festival acknowledges the generous support of Telefilm Canada. Major corporate partners are Rogers Communications and Visa Canada.
For previous releases from VIFF 2008, please see http://www.viff.org/08media/releases.htm
Media contacts at VIFF office: 604.646.4770, media@viff.org Andrew Poon, publicist for Dragons and Tigers, 604.318.1882, andrew@viff.org Ellie O'Day, Media Director, publicist for Canadian Images and Spotlight on France, ellie@viff.org Helen Yagi, publicist for International films, helen@viff.org Melanie Thompson, Media Coordinator, mthompson@viff.org
- 30 -
Melanie Thompson
Media Coordinator
Vancouver International Film Festival
mthompson@viff.org / 604.646-4770
Chatelin Bruno 
