It's now a couple of weeks since I've returned home from my first programming research trip for the film festival, and frankly, I haven't had time to sit back and breath -- we're busy organizing a new traveling series of the 2008 Film Festival award winners; I've met for the first time this year with the programmers and put them on alert that the entries will be coming at them real fast; and as I write this, the American Film Market is days away from beginning. The producers and distributors I've been talking to will be arriving in our back-yard, so to speak, and hopefully we'll be able to begin securing just some of the many feature-length films we hope to present next spring.
In a sense, AFM 2008 begins just as American politics hits a crescendo: the presidential elections take place the day before, and unless one has spent the past couple of months hiding under a rock, the world has been in the throes of a financial meltdown, as the worldwide credit system has come in for a massive beating. No doubt, it would be easy to blame our outgoing president for many of the goings-on in recent months -- I've always felt that with a 5-star imbecile running our country the past eight years, American got exactly the kind of government it voted for. But I think that the blame has to go around, given the culture of greed coming from the American housing and financial industries. We got just what we deserved, indeed.
Already, our Festival organizing team is feeling the effects of this economic malaise: potential corporate sponsors are doing some belt-tightening, monies are getting harder and harder to come by, and on a state level, the California legislature is set to get dragged back into session the day after Election Day. It seems that the budget that was finally approved, over three month overdue, is already nearly $3 billion in the red, and those guys have to fix it or else. Times are tough all around...ahhh, to be employed at an American non-profit arts organization. But, as always, I digress...
If I drew any conclusions from my annual Vancouver/Busan/Honolulu trek this month, it's that the centers of good-quality Asian international film is once again undergoing a regional shift. In Busan, the trade and industry talk around the Pusan International Film Festival and Asian Film Market is that hallyu, the vaunted Korean Wave is in recess as reflected in the yearlong dearth of true box office champions and preponderance of critical and popular duds. It seems as though high-concept hits as THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WIERD and left-field surprises as THE CHASER are not so much the tip of an iceberg...figuratively, they instead represent the prize at the bottom of a half-eaten box of Cracker Jacks. Of course, I don't live in South Korea, so I don't know for a fact that South Korean cinema is indeed in a state of fre-fall. But for sure, what Korean films I did view in those intense three weeks didn't give me much hope.
Instead, my trip confirmed that the cinema of various Southeast Asian nations as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand are as vibrant as ever. The digital Philippine cinema movement was on full display once again, though I think that by this time it's lost its surprise factor...I wonder what new auteurs will emerge to join the likes of Brilliante Mendoza, Lav Diaz, Khavn de la Cruz, and John Torres in redefining Philippine cinema? A new crop of works from the Peoples Republic of China has emerged recently, courtesy of their inclusion into Vancouver IFF, PIFF, and HIFF both this year and last, and offers a glimpse into the perspectives of a new generation of emerging filmmakers. And, I must admit I was pleasantly surprised at the range of new independent feature works being produced in Japan. As AFM gives wide berth to a host of Japanese distribution companies and studios, I'm waiting in anticipation for the works coming from the just-concluded Tokyo International Film Festival to make their market debuts.
In considering the wealth of new works coming down the chute, I wonder just how American audiences will receive this work. In addition to American audiences' well-known phobia toward subtitled films, I think that while solid films have been produced, I haven't really espied those films that possess that "WOW" factor; and of the few that do, they are already in line for theatrical showings. THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WIERD? If you don't catch it at AFI Film Fest, don't worry...CJ Entertainment plans to release it theatrically early next year. John Woo's RED CLIFF? At over four hours long, the American reaction to it has been, who's going to be able to sit still through it? And always, I mean always, we all want to know what Wong Kar-wai is up to. The obsession with the "surface" gloss of easily digestible cinema seems to conspire to obscure those hidden gems, the ones that promise great rewards for audiences who seek them out. I can't help but think about last month's posting: audiences only care about the home runs; they can't be bothered with the base hits. (Sigh!)
No comments:
Post a Comment