A flurry of festival news, backlash against the Muslim trans community, and a bit of dodgy history
Sylvia Chang joins the Busan International Film Festival jury
This week has brought plenty of exciting festival news, as South Korea’s Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has revealed that Taiwanese actress Sylvia Chang is to join their jury panel. The Golden Bear-nominated director and actress definitely seems like the right choice for this year’s festival, given her history of discovering and helping to produce new talent, including Edward Yang. As part of the jury, Chang and her fellow filmmakers will award $30,000 each to two films directed by Asian directors. In Toronto, meanwhile, the city’s 40th International Film Festival (TIFF) has named several highly anticipated films in its line-up, including Sono Sion’s The Whispering Star, Guan Hu’s Mr Six, and Tsai Ming-liang’s Afternoon. The films, which will be part of three sections Contemporary World Cinema, Special Presentations, and Wavelengths, will be screened at the festival in September.
The big news of the week though was the announcement of legendary Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien making a rare appearance at the BFI in September. The event is part of a BFI celebration of The Assassin, and will take place at the BFI Southbank alongside the Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien retrospective being presented next month. Other films that will be screened at the BFI include Cute Girl (1980), Cheerful Wind (1981), A City of Sadness (1989), Flowers of Shanghai (1998) and The Time to Live and Time to Die (1985), and tickets are on sale now.
Sir Ian Mckellen with Zareena Khan, Asifa Lahore, and Ibrahim. © Channel 4
The British Gay Asian community have created an eye-opening documentary about the struggles three drag queens face daily. The film, which is narrated by Sir Ian Mckellen, will be shown on British television on Monday night. Activist for the community Asif Quaraishi, who is the UK’s first gay Muslim drag queen and is also known as Asifa Lahore, is hoping that the film will raise awareness and support for the community. Sadly, Quaraishi has received constant death threats for taking an activist role in the community, and police will be on alert on Monday night in case of any backlash. Mckellen has called the drag queens pioneers for their community, and has offered his support in dispersing the prejudice they face.
Jonnie Yen and Jiang Wen join Star Wars Rogue One. © Gareth Edwards
Chinese film fans will be delighted by the news this week, as Chinese film stars Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen have joined the cast for Star Wars spin-off Star Wars anthology: Rogue One. Set before episode four in the series (aka A New Hope), the film focuses on a band of resistance fighters trying to steal plans for the Death Star. Directed by Gareth Edwards, principal photography has begun, and the film is set for release on December 16 2016. Arclight Films, meanwhile, is behind the helm of China’s first English 3D Sci-Fi adventure film. Lost in the Pacific, which stars Brandon Routh and Yuqi Zhang is set in 2020 on a luxury transoceanic flight’s mysterious demise. The film has already made major headway with its pre-sales, and is on track to becoming China’s top international film. Meanwhile, bloggers have criticised Chinese blockbuster The Cairo Declaration for attempting to place Mao Zedong at the centre of a Second World War summit he didn’t attend. The film, which is released in cinemas as part of the Communist party’s commemorations of the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender, is set during the 1943 meeting between Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and China’s Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Chinese bloggers have mocked Mao’s appearance in the film by creating spoof posters that include Gollum and the Minions at the conference.
Mao may not have actually been in Cairo, but this week there’s other East Asian entertainment news cropping up in relationship to Africa. Second Secretary of the Japanese Embassy to Zimbabwe, Masa Iida, recently made a statement to NewsDay Zimbabwe saying Japan was eager to promote the cinema industry in the country by bringing in Japanese films for a number of showings. The showings were, and will be in collaboration with two film festivals, the first of which, International Images Film Festival for women, is already underway, while more films are expected to be shown at the Zimbabwe International Film Festival in October. On the subject of festivals, films from all over Asia have received warm support from the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, allowing many of these films a larger and more diverse audience than they would have received back home or on perhaps any other stage. Of the film’s in the running for their main competitions, a third are Asian or Middle Eastern in origin, and expectations of a win would certainly not be based on no precedent. More interesting a method of gaining an audience, however, is being provided by Vidsee and their video hosting app, which recently launched for Android after an iOS launch last November. The platform specialises in shorts and other productions by independent filmmakers based out of Asia, and this new launch is only likely to bring an even larger audience to this already popular service.
In releases news this week, Arthur Wong and Takeshi Miike return to cinemas next month, while Christopher Doyle’s Hong Kong Trilogy is previewed, and American Shaolin’s soundtrack have been announced. Wong’s latest action thriller Ulterior Motive, which stars Gordon Lam, Qin Lan, and Simon Yam will hit Chinese theatres on September 17th. Meanwhile, Samuel Goldwyn Films have acquired the North American rights for Miike’s Yakuza Apocolypse: The Great War of the Underworld. Penned y Ymaguchi Yoshitaka, amd starring Ichihara Hayato, the film focuses on international assassins that specialise in the Silat fighting style. Making its premiere at TIFF in September, the film will have a general release on October 9. In other TIFF news, the trailer for Christopher Doyle’s film Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled, Preoccupied, Preposterous has been released ahead of its premiere at the festival, and can be viewed below. Finally, fan created record label Spirit Touch Records are set to release the soundtrack for Lucas Lowe’s America Shoalin if enough supporters back them. The labels first release, founder Anatolij Kaiser feels that the endeavour is “more than a simple CD purchase. If you support a soundtrack release, you are saving music.”
For our last bit of news, it has recently been announced that the Sitges Film Festival is awarding the Time Machine lifetime achievement award to Japan’s Sono Sion. The director is a regular attendee at what is widely considered the world’s premier international festival specializing in horror and fantasy, and has previously had his films screened there. The three films he brings to the festival this year will join a line-up of seven other Asian films announced early last month.
Join us every Saturday for our regular digest of the week’s Asian Film news!
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