Looking back to look forward at film festival
Looking back to look forward at film festival
By Jane Freebury
JAKARTA (JP): With the Asia Pacific Film Festival over there
are winners and losers. The winners will reflect on their merits
and wonder at the process that catapults them above certain
equally deserving fellows.
This year the Asia Pacific Festival held in Jakarta last month
had to manage the irresolvable contradiction of being required to
judge the best from among a widely disparate set of entries.
There were films which came from countries that have a long and
distinguished history in cinema with a developed industrial
infrastructure, and there were films which had struggled out of
countries with patchy histories in film production and poor
infrastructure.
Government subsidy is the norm in some of the countries in
competition, in others it is virtually unheard of. The national
film cultures of the Asia Pacific region have very many different
starting positions. Should it therefore be argued that the
festival should recognize the deserving above the best? That is
clearly a contradiction to resolve.
Films resulting from disparate contexts will also reflect a
country's familiarity with international film culture. Under
tight censorship, filmmakers and local audiences are not in a
position to judge the standard of their own locally-produced
films against international standards.
This year the jury could not agree on the category of "special
award" -- in part because the terms of the award are not clearly
specified. Should a mediocre film from a country not in receipt
of any award receive an award for "social awareness" over, say
Once were Warriors?
This year's festival dealt with these contradictions by indeed
choosing the best in craft, artistic and performance categories.
But this process of selection is costly if there is among the
delegates the expectation that all participating countries,
whatever the merits of their films, will all go home with awards.
The two categories for acceptance for this year's festival
were dramatic and non-dramatic. That is all. No individual
categories for action, science fiction, children's, comedy or
even for horror film or thriller. Dramas tend to do best in this
kind of open competition.
The five films nominated for best film did little to reflect
the diversity of films screened for judging. There was no action
film among them. There were four in competition, three from Hong
Kong, which we know to be a favorite genre among this region's
audiences. Two science fiction films were submitted, one from
Thailand and one from Japan, but neither gained an award. Perhaps
one could have won in a children's category. There was the
anomaly of a 3.5 minute film from Australia entered in
competition against fiction features of 60 minutes or over. It
was considered but impossible to give serious consideration, at
video-clip length.
For future clarification, the festival committee could
reconsider the notion of "best" (best film, best cinematography
and so on.), because if that is exactly what is meant then it
needs confirmation. If, on the other hand, "best" could be read
to mean the best in achievement (as compared to what a country
was previously producing), then the awards system should be
structured to clearly specify this and make that sort of
recognition possible.
Films from South Korea have traveled well and are the subject
of feature articles in international film journals. Taiwanese new
wave cinema has been celebrated around the world. Korea submitted
four films and received only a single award while Taiwan won
five. Two of the nominees for best film, The Last Tattoo and
Bulan Tertusuk Ilalang, failed to win anything at all. Vive
l'Amour and Once Were Warriors, films acclaimed at other
festivals, failed to win so much as a nomination. Delegate
disappointment was patent. Puzzling outcomes will continue while
there are anomalies in the selection process.
But there is also the X-factor: seven jury members with seven
professional perspectives. Beyond the point at which it is
possible to agree on quality, there is the issue of subjective
taste.
The Lovers for me was a delight in magic realism. If you
caught it at the screenings you were lucky. This love story,
based on an old legend, is given new life with charming
performances from the two young leads, Wu Chi Lung as Leung Shan
Pak and Charly Young as Chuk Ying Toy. Their affair ends as it
does for star-crossed lovers.
The controversial Vive l'Amour was no love story but a
minimalist piece with central anomic characters hungry for
intimacy. City locations provide the chilly, empty ambience for
three lost souls, trying to make connection. I would have
expected a film such as this to come out of the West, with its
scenario (after Antonioni) of alienated protagonists wandering
the lonely landscapes of the mind.
While it was the only film to cause passionate argument among
the judges immediately after screening, it was hard to understand
the judges' decision at Venice which gave it the Golden Lion.
Will they wonder at a our decision to award Hsiao Yu?
Hsiao Yu is a co-production and as such is allowed within the
terms of the Asia Pacific. But again this needs to be further
specified to avoid future confusion and conflict. If you caught
the credits for Hsiao Yu they revealed that this film involved
the work of a long list of Americans. Permissible, but the issue
of the international or regional co-production, now growing in
number, needs careful definition.
Hsiao Yu, the work of female director Sylvia Chang, is
predicated on solid dramatic foundations, without avant-garde
pretension. It concerns the plight of illegal immigrants
everywhere in an encounter of cultures at the level of
relationships, between the dissolute white American, Mario and
the young lady, Hsiao Yu, an illegal immigrant who marries him in
order to later acquire citizenship.
Women
Hsiao Yu was one of just several festival films directed by
women -- others included Margot Nash's Vacant Possession and
Shuhaimi Baba's Playground. They all had a common centerpiece --
a central role played by fine female actors. Rene Liu won Best
Actress but Pamela Rabe and Tiara Jacqueline did not, because it
is the fine performance within a fine film that wins the day.
The Two Flags was another personal and idiosyncratic favorite
of mine. The well-constructed play recorded on film, located in
the home of a Korean war widow who is so alone she needs the
warmth of her pet dog asleep alongside her at night. Two men, one
young and one old, show up asking for shelter from the freezing
temperatures of the snow-bound mountains and from the fragments
of North and South armies that both patrol nearby mountain
spines. The elderly refugee (the festival's Best Actor, Dong-Hwi
Chang) sees the poor dog off and establishes his legitimacy,
based on the woman's needs. But an even better proposition is
offered by the young man when he returns, and the old man is
dumped. Then cold turns warm again for the old man when another
refugee arrives.
Another personal favorite was Out to the World. A celebration
of the Koreans' love of movies with a script scattered with
references to Hollywood. Echoes from the filmmakers' particular
favorite, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, carried the film
through to its somber conclusion in the no man's land between
North and South.
Swinger from Sydney. This cheeky little piece was surely never
a serious contender in the dramatic category. With its single
camera movement and its big band swing, it was clever but no
match against a solid fiction feature of hundred or more minutes.
The Taiwanese Ashes of Time was a conundrum, overwritten as
Bulan Tertusuk Ilalang was underwritten. Perhaps the material
managed to sneak out from under directorial control, but I loved
this imaginative and moody tale told with a wonderful camera eye.
Excellent out-of-focus slow-motion action sequences registered
dynamic energized images of horsemen in battle.
Ashes of Time was shot on location in the desert in mainland
China. With its flashback construction, great sound design, use
of beautiful formal imagery to develop its own system of film
language, Ashes of Time stood out for me among the films at the
festival. With many examples of routine cinematography among the
festival films, the camera of Christopher Doyle here looked
wonderfully adventurous.
Chaos was a very distinct possibility confronting the makers
of The Turning Point. Said to have involved some 3,000 shots,
this editing tour de force made dynamic use of flashback intercut
with present time. There were big bold horizontal wipes and
vigorous (criss) cross-cutting between scenes. Backwards and
forwards like a weathercock the action moved -- but when you
think back on it the film was dialogue-based and mostly took
place in living rooms and offices.
Cinematography and sound, music and editing for 47 Ronin
recreated the world of early 17th century Japan. Excerpts chosen
for screening at the presentation of awards were drawn from the
brutal fighting scenes, also beautifully rendered. The music and
the soundscape created were exquisite, even with the occasional
use of silence. 47 Ronin is a fine film that deserved a place in
the five nominated best films. But it looks to the past, with
nostalgia at that, and was considered to have little new to say
for today.
The plight of an indigenous people was the subject of New
Zealand entry Once Were Warriors. Like the Maori male leads, this
film is big and burly and delivered with an urgency that makes
fewer compromises to aesthetic pleasure than the measured
aesthetic restraint in 47 Ronin. Instead it is happy to declare
itself as propaganda for indigenous people everywhere who
struggle to restore identity despite dispossession.
The Last Tattoo fared better with the judges. It also begins
brutally with the murder of a U.S. marine but restraint prevails.
The screenplay is based on the period of a United States presence
in New Zealand as recreational visitors in World War II. The
screenplay turns on the strategies on both sides to maintain the
fiction that this glamorous presence had no repercussions on the
sleepy local community. The film's closing shot leaves Kelly, a
little more frumpy than usual, on the shore as her Captain glides
off, back to the ships waiting in the silvered harbor under a
full moon.
Nurse Kelly Towne is played by Kerry Fox, the terrific actor
who played Janet Frame in Jane Campion's Angel at my Table. By
turns plain and beautiful, she fills her character without
acting. In fact all the female leads from the antipodes -- Kerry
Fox, Pamela Rabe in Vacant Possession and Rena Owen in Once Were
Warriors -- turned in strong performances worthy of recognition.
Which brings us to Bulan Tertusuk Ilalang. Indonesia's entry
from director Garin Nugroho stood in a class of its own outside
other local films which failed to impress.
Bulan is interesting, but undercooked. It opens in a
particularly arresting manner with a dancer in traditional dress,
a cascade of long hair and a pistol in hand, performing in
silence. This sequence is one of the best moments of the film.
The relationship between the three protagonists was not explained
and the film carried on without developing the drama to give
resonance to the final conflagration and parting of ways.
Performances were rather wooden, but the screenplay offered
little scope for the actors to develop. Images in search of a
screenplay.
In other respects the film documents the traditional at odds
with the new, as in the director's previous film Surat Untuk
Bidadari. A poster for the movie Ghost slides by the old man as
he takes a ride in a becak (pedicab). A gamelan is tuned in a
room with graffiti declaring "Never Die".
Bulan is lovely to look at but that is not enough. Not that it
was too artistic, as I saw suggested somewhere. Never would a
film be disadvantaged for its artistry, but Bulan is underwritten
and relied far too heavily on its imagery.
The judges' final decisions -- to award and not to award to
Bulan Tertusuk Ilalang or any other worthy film -- could well
have done with a supporting statement to explain the choices in
all categories, rather than leave these decisions for the press
to make conjecture and speculation. Juries are accountable, after
all. Perhaps the Asia Pacific Film Festival can consolidate its
priorities before it looks forward to next year's venue,
Auckland.