Tenement (2024)

Cambodia's entry for the upcoming Oscar's is a supernatural horror film that mixes traditional Asian ghost stories awith J-Horror sensibilities.

The film has a Cambodian manga artist returning to Cambodia from Japan after the death of her mother. She is looking to find some connection to her mom and the life in the building where she grew up.

Following a narrative thread that is very close to the J-horror tales that horror fans are familiar with, the film has our heroine trying to deal with the weird things that are happening around her while also dealing with the various people in the building.

I can't really say much more than that without giving anything away. It's not that the film is bad, it is not, it actually has several truly frighterning sequences, rather it is simply that if you have seen a good amount of Asian horror you are going to piece this out well before the people on screen do.

Again- it isn't bad- its just not traveling down any new roads.

A solid film on its own terms TENAMENT is worth a look especially in this spooky season.

White Building (2022) opens at BAM Cinema Friday

 

Based on the director's own experiences WHITE BUILDING tells the story of a young man who is still living with his parents in a white apartment building. Run down and in a prime location for redevelopment his family is forced to choose whether to fight or go.Meanwhile his friends are leaving the city in order to take high paying jobs over seas.

Time marches on and leaves us all in the dust. How we choose to deal with the changes is the focus of the film. This is a small intimate tale that echoes out of it specificity of Cambodia to anyone living in a world that is rapidly changing. It is the story of how we are not always the captains of our fate except in how we choose to deal with the changes.

This is a small, beautiful film with a real emotional kick. Definitely worth a look for anyone who likes serious drama when it plays Brooklyn Academy of Music starting Friday.

Return to Seoul (2022) Santa Barbara 2023

This is the sort of cinematic gem I go to the New York Film Festival to discover. This was one of the last films I saw at the fest an it was one of the best.

The film is about a young Korean woman who was given up for adoption as baby and raised by a couple in France. Over the course of the film she returns to Korea over several years attempting to reach out to her birth parents.

This in cinematic magic of the highest order. Its a film where everything comes together to make a film that makes you go wow and then want to shuttle off to a cafe and discuss it with whom ever you just saw it with.

Possessing a genuine narrative complexity that pushes the film into the realm of reality, this is a film you will think about for days afterward. I saw two films after this and my thoughts kept coming back to this film. I loved that the film is so real that we don't care that the film ends with lots and lots of unanswered questions- but it's not being lazy rather its purely the fact we are seeing moments in time.

And then there is the use of music, which includes a jaw dropping dance scenes that reveals so much without a single word.

WOW and WOW.

This is filmmaking and storytelling of the highest order.

Highly recommended

White Building (2021) NDNF 2022

 

Based on the director's own experiences WHITE BUILDING tells the story of a young man who is still living with his parents in a white apartment building. Run down and in a prime location for redevelopment his family is forced to choose whether to fight or go.Meanwhile his friends are leaving the city in order to take high paying jobs over seas.

Time marches on and leaves us all in the dust. How we choose to deal with the changes is the focus of the film. This is a small intimate tale that echoes out of it specificity of Cambodia to anyone living in a world that is rapidly changing. It is the story of how we are not always the captains of our fate except in how we choose to deal with the changes.

This is a small, beautiful film with a real emotional kick. Definitely worth a look for anyone who likes serious drama when it plays New Directors New Films

Lost Boys (2020) Fantasia 2021

Director Joonas Neuvonen​ along with co director Sadri Cetinkaya tries to come to terms with what happened to his two friends in South East Asia. Using  video of the trip that ended tragically, Neuvonen tries to unpack what happened and how he feels about it.

Decidedly not the feel good film of the year LOST BOYS is a decent into hell for 100 minutes. This is the story of a group of guys who travel to party and then have the party get completely out of control. Its an ugly unpleasant road accident that you can not look away from. My reaction was just to stare at the screen and watch it all go wrong. Even knowing that it all ends really bad, we are told this up front, we are still kind of gutted when everything plays out and all is revealed.

Watching the film I couldn't believe that this film wasn't getting more play in festivals. I wasn't sure why I hadn't run across it until Fantasia. Yes it has graphic sex and drug use, but someone had to be bold enough to run it. However by the time I got to the end I kind of understood why this wasn't playing festivals, its not the sort of film most programmers would run because you aren't singing Zippadee Do Dah at the end, rather you might consider playing in traffic. This is a look at an ugly side of life most people don't want to see.

LOST BOYS rocked me in a way few films have.

While not for most audiences, it is recommended for anyone who wants to take an unflinching look at the dark side...just be warned its a punch in the face.

The Prey (2018) Fantasia 2019

An undercover agent who is trying to bust a ring of scammers targeting Chinese nationals in Cambodia is arrested in a police raid. Convicted and sent to prison he gets on the wrong side of the warden who tortures him before sending him out to be the prey for rich hunters who pay a fortune so they can hunt humans.

Riff on the classic story Most Dangerous Game, is a solid, enjoyable ,if unremarkable action film. Certain to entertain pretty much every action fan, the film is a series fights that become largely hunter becomes hunted in the final hour.

While I enjoyed the hell out of the film I never quite loved it the way I probably could have or should have. Blame it on the lack of real characters, the odd pacing and some odd twists, say the burning of a stack of bodies on what amounts to little more than a campfire, that prevented me from taking THE PREY deep into my heart.

On the other hand the film does have some kick ass marriages of music and image, the use of songs is truly some of the best I've seen all year, and of course the action sequences are certain to produce frequent audience reactions.

THE PREY played earlier today at Fantasia. It is almost certain to end up on Netflix or another streaming service where if it is highly recommended for anyone wanting a really good film for a Saturday night.

Human Rights Watch 2018 Short Takes: ANOTE'S ARK, ANGKAR, and THE CLEANERS

ANOTE'S ARK
Portrait of Anote Tong's battle to save Kiribati, a Pacific island nature that will be wiped from the face of the earth within decades (if not sooner) if climate change isn't stopped.

Gorgeous looking film brings home the dangers of rising ocean levels by putting a very human face on the problem. We watch as the islanders struggle to keep the sea out of their homes  as their leader travels the world to try and make people listen to their plight.

While the film doesn't break any new ground, it does make clear the danger we are all in.

ANOTE'S ARK plays June 15 and 18

ANGKAR
Neary Adeline Hay documents her father's return to Cambodia 40 years after he fled the killing fields of the country to see who is left of his friends, family and the men who tortured him four decades before.

A frequent dream-like exercise in memory this is a film that brings us into one man's past life. Part documentary, part memory play, this is a film that grabs you by the lapels and makes you an active fellow traveler.

The strength of the film is in it's showing the line between what is and what we remember (Hay says he doesn't remember many of the people who see to know him). It is here the film stakes out it's own territory and reveals itself to be something special.

ANGKAR plays June 16 and 17

THE CLEANERS
A look at some of the people who act like moderators for big sites such as Google, Facebook, You Tube, ect and remove any content that is deemed inappropriate such as the work of terroristic organizations. It raises the question of if we really do have free speech or just an approximation.

This was curates egg of a film. While I absolutely loved the discussions, when they happened, and I love the issues raised by the film (such as who are these people to make the decisions) I found the presentation, while occasionally nicely moody, ultimately much too distracting. How many times do we really need to see people walking or just sitting at a computer? While I understand some of it is here to set a mood, after a while some of this seems like to be filler.

Ultimately this is a good but unremarkable film with a vital discussion at its core.

THE CLEANERS plays June 17 and 18

For more information for these or any films playing at the festival and tickets go here

Missing Picture (2013) New York Film Festival

Director Rithy Panh recreates his years under the Khmer Rouge using dioramas and a few scraps of film footage from the Khmer's own propaganda films. The result is film that is largely an informative look at life under a mad regime.

The story begins when Panh was 12 and the Khmer's took over the country. Emptying the cities they forced everyone into reeducation camps where they were worked to death and starved for their troubles. Panh lays out what life was like in those hellish times as those in charge tried to force everyone back to some fictional glorious agrarian past.

With all his possessions gone, with all the pictures of his life gone Panh turns to dioramas in order to illustrate what he and his fellow countrymen  went through. Its a bold stroke that makes what was going to be a conventional look at the same story and turns it into something better. For whatever reason seeing the small figures makes the story more real then if we had been treated to actors and actresses. We are in the camps, and the swamps and the empty cities. Everything is highlighted by the use of the Khmer footage which reveals the world as the Khnmers wanted it seen. Its a scary tale.

For me the film is a wonderful primer of what happened when the Khmer's came calling. So long as the film remains focused on life in the camps we are getting a wonderful history lesson and being told one hell of a tale of survival.

The trouble is that somewhere in the final half hour Panh trails off. He stops telling us about life in the camps and begins waxing poetically. Narratively Panh simply says that after the war many people stayed in the villages to which they had been brought and that some people were never tried for their crimes. Its all anti-climatic as is his attempt to explain how the Khmer's took power in a final moment reference to land grabs and US bombings. Things were not that amorphously simple.

I liked this film a great deal. Actually I love the first half and merely like the second. That said this is a good film and is worth tracking down when it next screens on the 8th at the Film Festival.

Lincoln Center presents: Old Ghosts, New Dreams: The Emerging Cambodian Cinema (April 19-25)

At the end of April the Film Society of Lincoln Center  is running a series on recent Cambodian films. I'm really interested in the series but because it runs at the same time to Tribeca it's unlikely that I'll get to any of the screenings. However because this is exactly the sort of stuff that Unseen was started to highlight I'm presenting the press release so you can make arrangements to attend the series.

NEW YORK – March 12, 2013 – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today Old Ghosts, New Dreams: The Emerging Cambodian Cinema (April 19-25). To be presented in conjunction with the citywide Season of Cambodia arts festival, FSLC will team with the great documentarian Rithy Panh to screen a fascinating survey of films from Cambodia.

FSLC Executive Director Rose Kuo said, “This program of films reveal a Cambodia few have actually seen, from the heartbreaking truths and legacy of the Khmer Rouge as well as the Cambodian people who survived that struggle to both endure and maintain their culture – all documented and told through the camera lens.”

Among the films screened as part of Old Ghosts, New Dreams: The Emerging Cambodian Cinema will be an exploration of the work of Rithy Panh, led by his documentary, S21: THE KHMER ROUGE DEATH MACHINE (2002), a startling journey back to the notorious Tuol Sleng prison (code-named "S21"), which was converted into a genocide museum, and DUCH, MASTER OF THE FORGES OF HELL (2012), his more recent uncompromising character study of about the first leader of the Khmer Rouge organization to be brought before an international criminal justice court.

Other highlights of the week-long film series will be Davy Chou’s GOLDEN SLUMBERS, a moving investigation of Cambodia’s lost cinematic heritage with first-hand accounts of the emergence and flourishing of Cambodian cinema with filmmakers at the forefront of creating the films that chronicled life in Cambodia from the 60s through the 70s. The documentary, A RIVER CHANGES COURSE is the feature directorial debut of Kalyanee Mam, the cinematographer for the Academy Award–winning documentary INSIDE JOB. The film which won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize 2013 at the Sundance Film Festival, looks at the damage that rapid development has wrought on Cambodia’s land and people. Anne Bass’s uplifting documentary DANCING ACROSS BORDERS (2011), follows the journey a young man’s dancing talent took him - from the countryside of Cambodia to the halls of New York’s School of American Ballet to the stage of the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle.

Season of Cambodia, a special initiative of Cambodian Living Arts in partnership with Cambodia’s leading arts organizations and New York’s most vibrant cultural and academic institutions, will bring more than 125 performing and visual artists to New York City’s stages, screens, galleries and public spaces, creating a broad and dynamic platform for Cambodia’s cultural treasures to be shared with an international audience. Season of Cambodia will be a celebration of the living arts – of the people and practices that make up our cultural fabric.

Season of Cambodia is co-chaired by Anne H. Bass, John Burt, and Darren Walker.Support for the Season of Cambodia Film program is provided by the Hotel Sofitel New York and Cultural Services of the French Embassy. Additional institutional lead support for the Festival comes from the Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Fresh Sound Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Asian Cultural Council, The Kaplen Foundation, Openbox Inc., EVA Air, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, U.S. Embassy Phnom Penh, The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, Sofitel NY and Henry Luce Foundation.

All screenings will take place in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam). Tickets will go on sale April 4, 2013 at the Film Society’s box offices; and online at www.FilmLinc.com. Single screening tickets are $13; $9 for students and seniors (62+); and $8 for Film Society members. Visit www.FilmLinc.com for complete information.



Films, Descriptions & Schedule

DANCING ACROSS BORDERS (2011) 88min
Director: Anne Bass
Country: USA
On a trip to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia in January 2000, filmmaker Anne Bass came across a sixteen-year-old boy who moved her immensely with his amazing natural charm and grace as a dancer. A longtime devotee of the world of dance, Bass felt compelled to give this young boy the opportunity to leave his home and follow a dream that he could not yet have fully imagined. From the serene countryside of Cambodia to the halls of New York’s School of American Ballet to the stage of the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, DANCING ACROSS BORDERS peeks behind the scenes into the world of dance and chronicles the intimate and triumphant story of a boy who was discovered, and who only much later discovered all that he had in himself.
Screens Saturday, April 20

DUCH, MASTER OF THE FORGES OF HELL (2012) 110min
Director: Rithy Panh
Countries: France/Cambodia
Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime caused the death of some 1.8 million people. Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was in charge at M13 for four years before being appointed to the S21 centre in Phnom Penh where 12,280 people perished, according to the remaining archives. The first leader of the Khmer Rouge organization to be brought before an international criminal justice court, Rithy Panh records Duch’s unadorned words, without any trimmings, in the isolation of a face-to-face encounter. At the same time, he places it into perspective with archive pictures and eyewitness accounts of survivors. As the narrative unfolds, the infernal machine of a system of destruction of humanity implacably emerges, through a manic description of the minutiae of its mechanisms.
Screens Sunday, April 21 and Wednesday, April 24
Screening on Sunday, April 21 includes intro and Q&A with director Rithy Panh

FIVE LIVES (2010) 93min
Directors: Various
Country: Cambodia
Five young Cambodian directors follow five lives in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The films were produced during a documentary workshop led by world acclaimed director Rithy Panh.
Screens Thursday, April 23

Films include:
A BLURRED WAY OF LIFE by Sopheak Sao
I CAN BE WHO I AM by Sarin Chhoun
MY YESTERDAY NIGHT by Lida Chan
A PEDAL MAN by Katank Yos,
A SCALE BOY by Kavich Neang

GOLDEN SLUMBERS (Le Sommeil d’Or) (2011) 96min
Director: Davy Chou
Countries: France/Cambodia
Davy Chou’s moving investigation of Cambodia’s lost cinematic heritage is an oral history with first-hand accounts of the emergence and flourishing of that country’s cinema in the 60’s as described by directors Lu Bun Yim, Ly You Sreang, former actress Dy Saveth, (the first Cambodian movie star, who now makes her living as a dance teacher), and two middle-aged Cambodian cinephiles who wax lyrical at a café about the glory years. The interviews are interspersed with visits to former Phnom Penh movie theaters that have been converted into Karaoke clubs and restaurants,
Screens Thursday, April 25

THE LAND OF THE WANDERING SOULS (La terre des ames errantes) (1999) 143min
Director: Rithy Panh
Countries: France/Cambodia
The documentary follows a group of workers who are laying a high-tech fiber optic cable that will link Cambodia to the rest of Asia and Europe. The project is a hopeful symbol of the country's slow integration into the world community and the modern technological age. However, for the people employed to actually dig the trench by hand -- a group of rice farmers, ex-soldiers, and their families, the poorest of the poor -- the work is a mixed blessing. This film provides a haunting glimpse into the lives of these indigent workers as they encounter the painful remnants of the past - mines, bones, and a landscaped littered with human suffering - and labor to bring Cambodia into the modern age.
Screens Saturday, April 20
Screening includes intro and Q&A with director Rithy Panh

THE LAST REFUGE (2013) 55min
Directors: Anne-Laure Porée and Guillaume Soun
Country: Cambodia
THE LAST REFUGE follows the resistance of the Bunong, who have been living for centuries of the hills of eastern Cambodia, confronting alienation and annihilation by foreign companies who steal their lands, clear their sacred forests and their traditional cemeteries in order to cultivate rubber plants. In early 2010, a group of "resistants" took refuge on the land of their ancestors in the heart of the forest and recreated a field out of respect for traditional Bunong values.
Screens Tuesday, April 23

RED WEDDING (2012) 58min
Directors: Noces Rouges, Lida Chan and Guillaume Soun
Country: Cambodia
The winner of the Best Mid-Length Documentary award at last year’s prestigious International Documentaries Film Festival Amsterdam, Red Wedding is the story of Sochan Pen, who has kept a terrible secret for over 30 years: that she was forced to marry a much older man, a soldier, by the Khmer Rouge at the age of 16 and then raped and beaten on her wedding night before she escaped. Four decades later, Sochan, who now grows rice in a former killing field (where decomposed bodies are still unearthed), brings her complaint to the UN-sanctioned Khmer Rouge Tribunal. In so doing, she speaks up for the 4000+ women who suffered similar fates during the regime and lived their lives in shame and terror. Produced by Rithy Panh.
Screens Monday, April 22

A RIVER CHANGES COURSE (2012) 83min
Director: Kalyanee Mam
Country: Cambodia
Devastating scars are etched into the red earth as Sav Samourn ponders the future for her family in the deep jungles of Cambodia. Tumultuous waves pound against Sari Math’s boat as he navigates through waters being fished to extinction. The sewing machine taps and hums beneath Khieu Mok’s delicate fingers as she struggles to make money to pay off her family’s mounting debt. Against this backdrop A RIVER CHANGES COURSE is a cinematically spectacular and sensory journey into the lives of three young Cambodians and their families and an immersion into a world both distinctive and familiar. In her feature directorial debut, Kalyanee Mam, the cinematographer for the Academy Award–winning documentary INSIDE JOB, explores the damage rapid development has wrought in her native Cambodia on both a human and environmental level. Rural communities, used to reaping the bounty of their mountainous jungles and lush rivers, have witnessed their forests being cleared, land becoming scarce and costly, and fishing stocks rapidly depleting. No longer able to provide for their families, and often accruing massive debt as a result, many Cambodians have been forced to leave their rural lives behind to seek employment in the industrial factories of Phnom Penh.
Screens Friday, April 19

S21: THE KHMER ROUGE DEATH MACHINE (2002) 101min
Director: Rithy Panh
Countries: France/Cambodia
In S21, Rithy Panh brings two survivors and former members of the Khmer Rouge back to the notorious Tuol Sleng prison (code-named "S21"), now a genocide museum. Painter Vann Nath confronts his former captors in the converted schoolhouse where he was tortured. It was by chance that he escaped that fate that most of the prison’s 17,000 men, women, and children suffered. The "crimes" of these prisoners were meticulously documented to justify their execution. The former Khmer Rouge guards respond to Nath's provocations with excuses, chilling stoicism or apparent remorse as they recount the atrocities they committed at ages as young as 12 years.
Screens Sunday, April 21 and Wednesday, April 24
Screening on Sunday, April 21 includes intro and Q&A with director Rithy Panh

WHERE I GO (2012) 55min
Director: Neang Kavich
Country: Cambodia
San Pattica is a mixed Cambodian-Cameroonian son whose father came to work in Cambodia in 1992-1993, during a period of the first election in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed. Since his parents left home for many years, Pattica was raised by his grandmother. However, she was forced to bring Pattica to study and live in an orphanage in Phnom Penh and Pattica was inspired to learn about his own identity by the discrimination he faced from day-to-day.
Screens Monday, April 22
Screening will include intro and Q&A with director Neang Kavich


Shorts Program (82min)
THE GRANDDAUGHTERS OF WATER (2012) 12min
Director: Yann Cantais
Country: Cambodia
A delicate evocation of village life, shot in black and white. Children play, adults work, drink and prepare meals, while a grandfather silently sits on his porch and remembers the terrors of the past.

PAULINA (2012) 30min
Director: Caylee So
Country: USA
17-year-old Paulina has found herself attracted to the game of bets and wagers; a love understood and shared by her father and a community of Cambodian gamblers. Met with strong disapproval from her sister Sopheap, Paulina remains tied to the community. But soon she finds herself in the midst of her father's war with addiction, and the realities of this world is unmasked; Paulina must choose between the world she is drawn to and the life she might someday want.

SAMSARA (1989) 29min
Director: Ellen Bruno
Country: USA
This meditative, quietly urgent study of common life in Cambodia in the aftermath of Pol Pot was the first film from documentarian Ellen Bruno (SATYA – A PRAYER FOR THE ENEMY, SKY BURIAL), who served as a relief worker in Southeast Asia before studying film at Stanford. SAMSURA, shot in 16mm by cinematographer Ellen Kuras, was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 2012.

TWO GIRLS AGAINST THE RAIN (2013) 11min
Director: Sopheak Sao
Country: Cambodia
The latest documentary shory from filmmaker Sopheak Sao is about Soth Yun and Sem Eang, two women who met during the Khmer Rouge regime and fell in love. Their bond has survived years of forced separation, first by the government and then by their families, and an ongoing struggle for respect within the community of Takeo in southern Cambodia. Screened in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.


Public Screening Schedule

Screening Venue:
The Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65 Street, between Broadway & Amsterdam

Friday, April 19
7:15PM A RIVER CHANGES COURSE (83min)

Saturday, April 20
7:00PM THE LAND OF THE WANDERING SOULS (143min)
(with intro and Q&A with director Rithy Panh)
9:30PM DANCING ACROSS BORDERS (88min)

Sunday, April 21
4:00PM Shorts Program (82min)
6:00PM S21: THE KHMER ROUGE KILLING MACHINE (101min)
(with intro and Q&A with director Rithy Panh)
8:45PM DUCH: MASTER OF THE FORGES OF HELL (104min)
(with intro and Q&A with director Rithy Panh)

Monday, April 22
7:30PM RED WEDDING (58min)
9:00PM WHERE I GO (55min)
(with intro and Q&A with director Neang Kavich)

Tuesday, April 23
7:30PM FIVE LIVES (93min)
9:30PM THE LAST REFUGE (55min)

Wednesday, April 24
7:30PM S21: THE KHMER ROUGE KILLING MACHINE (101min)
9:30PM DUCH: MASTER OF THE FORGES OF HELL (104min)

Thursday, April 25
7:30PM GOLDEN SLUMBERS (96min)

Guns &Roses, Shorts, Golden Slumber and Din Tao or DB can't remember what day it is at NYAFF (spoilers)(and revised)

What a long day it's been. As I write this I'm in the house for 20 minutes from all day at the NYAFF . It started with my getting up normal work time thanks to a body clock that didn't know I was taking the day off.

While I had breakfast I watched the documentary Last Days Here about the lead singer of the band Pentagram. Its a really good film, that deserves a post of it's own, but not here since it has nothing to do with Asian film.

After lunch with one of my brothers I headed over to Lincoln Center. Once there I talked to Goran Topalovic one of the founders of the NYAFF and I believe the only one I had never ever spoken to before. It's weird, despite going to the festival for years I never managed to talk to him. He's like everyone else who runs the festival, charming and extremely nice. I really would love to sit down with him and interview him about how the festival is really put together. He told me some of it and if I can get him to tell stories you will gain a huge degree of respect for what goes into running the festival.

GUNS AND ROSES is the new film from Ning Hao, the director of Crazy Racer. Nominally a caper comedy the film concerns a thief who is thrown into jail during World War Two for robbery. He meets a revolutionary being tortured and leaves the prion with the other man's clothes. It transpires that inside the shoes is information about a Japanese gold shipment. This puts him in contact with the revolutionary's cohorts.

A wildly uneven film with a script that occasionally just jumps to things, special effects that are a tad too CGI, a lead character that's hard to root for (he is a low life) and tonal shifts that can make you feel bludgeoned this is film that will thrill some and annoy others. I liked the film, but I found it's last half hour of blood thirsty bleakness (which was in a way fore shadowed) is the sort of thing I don't need visit again. Yes the end affected me but I also felt a tad worked over as I was forced to wonder is this a caper film or The Wild Bunch 2

Yet again a film at the festival leaves me feeling beaten up....

The second screening of the day was the Korean Short Film program.

Okay first up I need to take the festival organizers to task here. What math were you using when you timed the program out? No offense guys but you list it as 90 minutes, but even allowing for a restart of one of the films and the prize giveaway the films ran longer than advertised. I wouldn't have cared but I, and a couple other people had to bolt before the end to run across the street for the sold out Golden Slumber screening.

Anyway 5 films were screened I saw 4 of the five (I missed Finis Operis, which may have been a good thing since one person I asked about it said "I don't what the hell that was other than weird")

NIGHT FISHING is Park Chan-Wook (Old Boy) and his brother's film made on the iPhone. One of the best proofs of how you can use cheap digital means to make a film when you have talent I've seen. This is a haunting film about a man who goes fishing and finds a dead girl. What is really going on I'll leave for you to see since the film, for a long stretch seems to unrelated, when in reality it's not.

HEART is a visually stunning battle between various human-like creatures for a heart. Its a marvelous mix of visuals and music.

THE HIDEOUT concerns a woman who goes to an Internet cafe to file a story and finds herself potentially in trouble with three strange guys, one of which is wearing an ankle bracelet to track his whereabouts. I didn't much care for it since I felt it took forever to get where it was going, and even then it's not much of a pay off.

THE LUCKY GUMBOY is a long shaggy dog story about a weird kid who comes to a school and is able to blow huge gum bubbles. It makes him a hero. I dare not say more since it's all in the payoff (maybe possibly)

As I said I didn't see the last film since I had to dash across the street to see the sold out screening of GOLDEN SLUMBER.

Sitting in my seat I was pleasantly surprised to see Hubert Vigilla from Flixist wander in. He is, as when I first officially met him Saturday at the Donnie Yen interview, a gentleman and a scholar. He also let this over tired reviewer babble on at him, which was overly kind.

Golden Slumber is about the Cambodian film industry which was wiped out when the Khmer Rougue came to power. Exacerbating the the loss was the fact that many of the films only had a couple (as in two) prints, so if they were lost they were gone.

I would love to report that it's a great film, but it's a snoozer. Sorry guys, I admire what you're trying to do, and I understand that you are trying to replicate the loss of the films by only having a fleeting glimpse of some of the surviving films at the end (30 out of 400 exist),but the stories don't mean a whole hell of a lot since we don't have points of reference...

...speaking of which the films biggest flaw is that unless you know what happened in Cambodia and to its population, you're going to have a hard time following what exactly they are talking about. Honestly had I not been watching John Pilger's films about Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge I'd have been lost.

Don't get me wrong I love what the film is trying to do but it's either wildly rambling in it's story telling and way too artistic in it's cinematography with at least 15 too many gliding shots.

Sign me up to see the surviving films, but please give me back the 100 minutes I lost to this film.

It's too much the product of a filmmaker who is WAY too close to his subject.

Din Tao:Leader of the Parade was a film I almost missed. Tired and burnt I seriously considered skipping it. I then decided to go figuring I could leave close to the end and catch an early train. However the amazing Mr C showed up for the screening so I ended up hanging to the end.

The film is the story of a bunch of misfits in a Din Tao (ritual drumming) group. They end up in a battle with a rival group when the son of their founder returns to the fold. Taking charge he has them travel around Taiwan carrying the drums on their backs. This gets attention from the media and causes all the tensions to heat up.

This feel good film is a feel good story unto itself since the director and producer wouldn't give up on the film and turned it into one of the Asian hits of the year.(The first box office take in some theaters was a single ticket)

While it's based on a true story (some real life footage plays over the end credits) the film hits many of the typical plot lines for a story like this...and many that aren't with many twists seeming really right. I really liked the film a great deal, with the only flaw in my book being the fact that the film feels short even at 125 minutes with plot points and character back story seeming to have ended up on the cutting room floor.

As I said to Mr C I'm going to pick it up when it hits a cheaper DVD than an import.

Okay it's 222 as I finish this time to spell check and go to bed. I have two movies tomorrow and an errand or two to do before hand.

(And a shout out to Mondocurry who has landed safely...)