The 9th Annual Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF) was held from May 1-9, 2008 in Jeonju, the 12th largest city in South Korea. JIFF is Korea’s second largest film festival behind the massive Pusan International Film Festival. Offering a cozy setting in a city famous for its small town atmosphere and traditional architecture – as well as delicious Jeonju bibimbab – JIFF screened a total of 195 films from 40 countries in several venues centrally located around the city’s aptly named Cinema Street. With a $2.9 million budget and nearly 300 volunteers, JIFF put on a fantastic festival this year.
The main venue for the festival, Megabox Theatre, was a vertically stacked distant cousin of one of those massive US megaplexes that take up an entire corner of a shopping mall or make for the centerpiece of a massive strip center (when the heck are Americans going to learn to build upward?). It housed twelve theaters inside it’s towering 8-story complex which was conveniently located toward the front end of Cinema Street. Many of the street performances during the festival took place directly in front of this cinema, including several performance art events that grabbed the attention of just about everyone walking by, even if they only stopped to scratch their heads and wonder what the heck the performance was supposed to mean. Very interesting nonetheless. One other venue I quite liked was the #4 theater in Primus Theatre, in which the seats were put at ground level and seat rows were given ample room between them so that you could spread your legs out in front of you. Unfortunately the only movie I got to watch in this venue was an Alexander Kluge film, and since his films aren’t exactly the kind that ‘keep you on the edge of your seat’, my arse fell asleep a number of times and it’s wasn’t exactly easy to re-circulate blood to my thirsty butt cells since I had made the mistake of sitting in the front row and everyone behind me was sitting at ground level also. Nonetheless, I think it was a fantastic idea and wish more theatres would adopt similar seating. The other venues were pretty standard theatre fare that can be found in just about any city the world over, but fortunately most of my movies were in the massive and ultra-hip Megabox.
I attended the festival as a NETPAC jury member and was one of over 1,800 official guests, 136 of which were foreigners. Our NETPAC jury was an interesting mix: Ngo Phuong Lan, a renowned Vietnamese film critic who used to belong to the state censorship board (and is a good friend of mine); Jung Jae-Hyung, a film professor at Dongguk University and chairman of FIPRESCI in Korea; and me, a young filmmaker based in Beijing. NETPAC has juries at almost 20 different festivals around the world and gives one NETPAC award annually at each of these festivals to Asian films that are either the director’s first or second feature-length work. There were twelve films in competition for the NETPAC award at Jeonju, eight of which were Korean films. The most interesting and exciting thing about the line-up of these Korean films was that they were all shot on HD by young filmmakers, giving me the opportunity to see what my peers working in the same format as I usually work were doing next door in Korea. In the end we were unanimous in our decision to give the NETPAC award to the Korean film ‘Children of God’, a documentary shot in the sacred area of Pashupatinath in Nepal that dealt with the lives of children struggling to survive in harsh conditions along the river where many people come to cremate the dead. There were a number of other films that were quite spectacular in our competition, particularly among the Korean films.
In addition to watching the twelve films in the NETPAC competition, I watched as many other films throughout the festival as I could manage, catching films by Hungarian Bela Tarr and German Alexander Kluge – whose films were highlighted in special sections of the festival – and a number of other films from around the world that I knew I’d have a hard time finding on DVD in China. Between screenings I loaded up on delicious Korean food, watched special street performances and took pictures around the Cinema Street area, previewed some films in the video rooms at the JIFF Service Center (they had fantastic video rooms!!), chatted with some of the many filmmakers attending the festival, attended a few of the multitude of parties and events, and generally just tried to squeeze in as much as I could between my manic movie screening schedule during the nine days of the festival.
Below I’ve given a daily rundown of some of the more interesting things (and notably uninteresting things) I experienced throughout the festival:
Opening Day (May 1)
Well, today was actually opening night, which means during the day I was free to roam around Jeonju and check out the Hanok Village located directly behind the festival hotel. I took a handful of pictures of the traditional Korean ‘Hanok’ houses that pack (more than 800 total) this well preserved quarter of the city. Then I was off to opening night, held at Sori Arts Center of Jeonllabuk-do, an architecturally impressive complex that hosted a full house of over 1500 guests. With the exception of the fact that they made each of us judges stand up one by one in front of the audience, which definitely caught me off guard, everything was great for me up until the opening film, the Japanese psychological-drama ‘The Kiss’. I was not very impressed with this film. Judging from the laughs of the audience (at very dramatic points throughout the film), it seems I was not alone in my disdain for the somewhat farcical nature of a number of key narrative elements and the film’s lack of ability to stir any sort of emotion in the viewer. If the cinematography had at least been interesting I might have enjoyed the film more, but unfortunately it was as uninspired as the rest of the film. But I didn’t fret over this film for long, as a huge reception waited for us back at the hotel and I hadn’t eaten since noon. The food on offer in the massive ballroom seemed to me a perfect reflection of the crowd in attendance, an eclectic mix of primarily Korean food with a number of Western delicacies and a fusion of the two filling several plates. While munching on goodies and snapping off a few pictures, I mixed and mingled with a number of diverse people, from university presidents to Korean directors (including Lee Myung-se… Im Kwon-taek was in attendance but I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him) to foreign press, as well as several of the festival organizers who I hadn’t met yet. So I go to bed tonight with a very full stomach hoping that the festivities and events throughout the week continue to be this impressive and that the films are much more impressive than the one film I’ve seen thus far.
Day 2 (May 2):
We began with a jury meeting at breakfast this morning including the three NETPAC jury members, the two festival programmers, and the jury organizer Sung. There wasn’t too much to talk about in terms of jury duties, and I ended up having a very pleasant chat with the program director Jung Soo-wan about her background and her recommendations for films to watch. In the afternoon we saw our first two jury films, ‘Children of God’ and ‘Ride Away’. Both films were very well done and far exceeded my expectations for HD films (as much as I hate the popular misconception that because a film is shot on HD and not film it automatically must have low production value, I often subconsciously give into this belief myself). While watching ‘Children of God’ I noticed that the visual feel of the film, shot by the director Yi Seung-jun himself, looked very familiar. Afterward I asked him what camera he used to shoot the film, and was not surprised when he told me he shot on a Canon XH-A1 camera, the same model I own and have shot a number of projects on recently. I was ecstatic to see footage from my camera model look so darn good up on the big screen (it was the first time I had an opportunity to see XH-A1 footage on anything larger than a TV) , although much of that credit for that must go to Seung-jun who did a fantastic job of shooting the film. The cinematography in ‘Ride Away’, particularly the lighting, was also quite impressive to me, and in the credits I was surprised to find that it was shot by Hwang Ki-seok, an excellent Korean cinematographer that has shot a number of major films, including the blockbuster ‘Chingu’ back in 2001. Interesting to see him shooting a film in HD for a first-time director. Evidently one of the male actors is an up-and-coming star as well, judging from the number of young screaming girls in the audience when the cast and crew introduced themselves before the film. Actually, there were a number of young screaming guys in the audience as well when that actor was introduced. Now that’s true sex appeal. At any rate it was nice to have the directors for both films present today to answer questions about their films after the screenings. In the evening, I hung out with several of my friends who had come down from Seoul for the weekend. They were as impressed with the festival atmosphere as me as we cruised down Cinema Street in search of food and fun.
Day 3 (May 3):
I only watched one film today, the very personal and experimental documentary film ‘Years When I Was a Child Outside’ by Filipino filmmaker Jeff Torres. The film is a rather unconventional and poetically composed exploration of the director’s feelings about finding out that his father has had three children with another woman. Shot on DV and eclectically cut together, the flow of the film was hard to follow and the director’s statement was never entirely clear to me, but at the same time there were many moments during the film that I was profoundly moved, and the director’s poetic and sometimes haunting voiceover has stuck in my head the rest of the day. It was certainly a very unique style of filmmaking. The rest of the day I spent hanging out with my friends before they had to take off that evening.
Day 4 (May 4):
Oh what a day! This morning I went to watch another HD Korean film not in our jury competition because the head make-up artist for the film who was there with much of the rest of cast and crew is a good friend of mine who helped with two short films I shot in Seoul a few months ago. The English title of the film is ‘Thirsty, Thirsty’, and I’d say the best way to describe the movie would be as a black comedy, even though my friend insisted that it was not intended to be a comedy. And I think that was the main problem with the film is that it didn’t know exactly what genre it wanted to belong in, not that it was a bad film. In fact I quite liked it for the most part. With the exception of the cinematography, and some of the editing, and the fact that the film went through mood swings (the problem I just mentioned), the film was quite funny – even hilarious at points – and entertaining enough for a rather demanding viewer like myself. Of course the makeup in the film was the best part. That’s what I told my friend at any rate. And good thing I did, because she invited me to join the cast and crew for their group dinner tonight. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First let me cover the other two movies I watched today.
I saw two more Korean HD films in the afternoon that were both in our jury competition. The first one, ‘My Dear Diary’, felt very much like a student film and was exactly the kind of film I was afraid of running into when I saw that I would be watching so many HD films. It had it’s nice moments and there were obviously some good ideas incorporated into the script, but everything from the acting to the direction to the cinematography were inconsistent and for the most part felt too unprofessional and a bit pointless. There were a number of scenes or individual shots though that redeemed the film, but often even when the cinematography of certain shots was inspiring, the shot itself would be totally unmotivated and not lend to the overall mood or meaning of the scene.
The second film of the afternoon left a completely different impression. With it’s odd name, unusual subject matter, and peculiar cinematography, ‘A Broom Becomes a Goldfish’ was one of my favorite films in our competition. It crawled along at a leisurely pace using nothing but static shots (often from high angles) and long takes for the entire two hours of the film, and didn’t have a particularly strong storyline, but I really liked the way the director painted his somewhat twisted and incomprehensible story. Most of the story takes place in a ‘koshiwon’, a private dormitory for the thousands upon thousands of students in Korea from outside Seoul who come to prepare for tests. The rooms in these places are about as big as a closet in a house in the US, and they very often don’t have windows or very good circulation. I know how depressing these places can be because I lived in one in Seoul for a summer. Perhaps that is part of the reason I enjoyed the film and empathized a good bit with the main character. No, probably not. Again, I think it was just the style of the film. And the film doesn’t really focus on the hardships of living in a ‘koshiwon’ room, rather this setting only serves as a background. The main character is a 60-year-old man who has obviously lived in his ‘koshiwon’ room for some time and barely makes ends meet doing little odd jobs. A very simple plot, and told quite simply, but nonetheless it was a quite interesting depiction of the darker side of life in Korea, and for whatever reason I seem to be inextricably drawn to such films.
After a pleasantly spent two hours in the Megabox Theatre watching broomsticks become goldfish (actually, no broomsticks did turn into goldfish in that movie, which was one of the few disappointing things about the film), I joined my makeup artist friend and the cast and crew of her movie for a massive dinner celebration for the world premiere of their movie. Clearly this was a huge privilege and honor, and has certainly been the highlight of the festival for me so far. I stayed rather quiet for the first half hour and mainly chatted quietly with my friend as about 20 of us sat on the floor Korean style around one massive table and munched away on ‘panchan’ (small Korean side dishes). Finally someone asked me a question and realized I could converse well enough in Korean and suddenly I was barraged with questions and I replied with a barrage of silly responses and even sillier gestures and pretty soon we were having a jolly good time and ready to go to our ‘second party’ (a great tradition in Korean and Japanese culture… a bit like barhopping in the West, but with a very different nuance). Fortunately our second party led us to more food instead of karaoke, not that I was hungry but I preferred to stuff myself a bit more rather than spend the rest of the evening trying to chat with people over the raucous bellowing of someone doing a particularly pitiful rendition of the latest K-Pop song. At about midnight I decided to call it a night despite the new round of ‘soju’ (Korean distilled rice wine) that had just been brought around for everyone (I don’t drink anyway), and everyone took a brief break from their drinking and gave me big hugs and name cards and took pictures together with me, my pale white face in sharp contrast to the dark red one next to it in each picture. More so than most one-time encounters like this one, I felt like a real part of the group and was genuinely going to miss my new friends, the vast majority of which would not be staying for the rest of the festival.
Day 5 (May 5):
This morning I had tickets to the original version of the ‘Red Balloon’, a classic European (French?) short film that was remade into a feature two years ago by Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao Hsien. I had heard good things about the short (and not such good things about the feature, which I passed up seeing at three festivals already), so I was quite disappointed when I arrived at Megabox a few minutes before the screening this morning and realized I was at the wrong theatre. Since all of my screenings thus far had been at Megabox, I naturally assumed this film would also be screened there and went through my normal routine of arriving at Megabox and getting on the long escalator ride up the theaters before pulling out my ticket to check the theater number. So when it said Chonju Performing Arts Theatre (I think that’s the right name) I almost lost my shoe tripping over the end of the escalator. I quickly found the nearest volunteer and showed her my ticket and asked politely in Korean how far away the theatre is. The volunteer looked at her watch and with a stern look on her face – like a teacher scolding a child for arriving late to class – the volunteer replied in English “too late”. I smiled and politely asked again in Korean “yes, but how far away is the theatre?” Unfazed, she replied again in English “too far.” I strained to maintain my smile as I politely asked one more time in Korean “yes, I see. But what I’d like to know is how far away the theatre is?” This time to emphasize the point she pointed at her watch and pressed on in English. “2 minutes after movie starts. Theatre need ten minutes taxi.” I nodded politely and holding on to the last semblances of a smile I thanked her in Korean and told her that was exactly what I needed to know. I turned, stepped back onto the escalator, stuffed my worthless tickets into my pocket, and began sobbing uncontrollably. I would miss my one and only chance to see ‘The Red Balloon’, and I felt like a child whose big red balloon had just been popped. By a Korean volunteer who refused to speak to me in Korean, no less.
Ok, so I didn’t actually cry, and I wasn’t really that upset. But you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just go to the movie anyway a little late. Well, therein lies the beauty and absurdity of this film festival. The rule in Jeonju is that once the movie starts, the doors are closed and nobody is to enter or exit, no matter if it’s a jury member trying to come in or some poor old ajumma (Korean auntie… come on, I already taught you that word!) inside the theater whose bladder is about to burst and needs to rush out to the bathroom. I will admit that for the most part, I think this is a fantastic rule, especially since many of the theater venues at JIFF are very long and narrow and it’s very noticeable when someone comes in after the film has started and stands there on the steps for 2 minutes like a deer in the headlights (except I guess in this case the deer would be facing away from the headlights) waiting for their eyes to adjust so they can spot those two empty seats next to you and then yanks their girlfriend up the steps and down the aisle and duck down in front of you in an attempt to appease you for crushing your legs and stepping on your toes, not realizing of course that by ducking down they are actually blocking MORE of your view because you are sitting down and they are standing up and by placing their torso horizontally in front of you it actually takes longer to clear through your field of vision. And then the girlfriend does the same thing, but amazingly she doesn’t brush against you on her way by like her boyfriend did (in some cases this is the only unfortunate part about the whole affair). And then just as they get seated and settled in and stop making noise, the boyfriend’s cell phone starts ringing with a Britney Spears ring tone and amazingly it takes him five rings to pull it out of his pocket, and then instead of turning the darn thing off he has the nerve to actually answer the phone and talk to his friend about how hungover he was that morning and how pissed off his girlfriend was. And he of course does all this in a normal voice. But then again, this kind of thing probably doesn’t happen very often in Korea. I guess I’ve just been living in China too long.
So back to my point, and that is that I have found JIFF’s strict “seal the hatch” rule (remember if you see that phrase used anywhere else that I coined it) quite useful. The only problem is that it’s not very practical. Once already I arrived at a film right as it was starting after scarfing down a quick lunch and sprinting frantically down Cinema Street (where they have volunteers screaming out how many minutes are left until showtime, since all films start at the same time), pushing ajumma out of the way and avoiding the cameras of the festival paparazzi. They had just closed the door and I flashed my jury badge (surprised that it was still hanging from my neck after my mad dash up the crowded escalators), but the volunteer waved me off and began to tell me that the film was already starting. Luckily our jury coordinator was there and she flashed her staff badge at the girl, who reluctantly relented and cracked open the door for me. And on the reverse side, a member from one of the other juries (whose name will be withheld to protect her identity… errr, I mean their identity) sitting next to me in an earlier screening found out just how serious they are about the ‘seal the hatch’ rule when she (or he) had to relieve herself (or hisself) in the middle of a film we were watching together. She snuck down to the door, but was back 30 seconds later with a not-so-happy-because-I-have-to-piss-like-a-racehorse-and-the-door-is-bolted-shut-and-the-volunteer-gave-me-the-evil-eye-for-trying-to-leave look on her (or his) face. She (or he) sat back down in her (or his) seat and did the sitting peepee dance for the remainder of the movie. I was impressed with the way she (ok, ok, YES it’s a she) leapt over my legs and made it to the door in under five seconds as the credits came up. Later that day she revealed to me that she doesn’t think the ‘seal the hatch’ rule is such a good idea. I nodded in agreement, noticing that she was wearing a different outfit.
So anyway, I missed the screening of ‘The Red Balloon’, and instead went to the AWESOME video screening rooms in the second floor of the JIFF service center. They had every single film in the festival available on DVD and/or VHS tape and twelve cozy little rooms with nice TVs, dual VHS/DVD players, and comfy sofas for anyone lucky enough to have a festival badge. Which I did. A jury badge at that. And I was really beginning to like my badge today, as I was finally learning about all the nifty things it could do. Even though it didn’t properly save my butt when I was (almost) late to that one film, it did allow me to get free coffee or tea in the service center, watch movies anytime in the video rooms, get free tickets to movies outside my jury competition, and allowed me to wear sunglasses outside even when it wasn’t sunny. Had I been an international jury member, my badge would have entitled me to wear my sunglasses inside the theater as well, but alas I will have to wait a few years for that privilege I suppose. Since I wanted to have plenty of time for lunch and didn’t think I’d have enough time to watch a full two-hour movie in the video room, I chose one of the short film panoramas. The tape started off with two very amusing and well shot Indonesian films, but the third short was rather slow and I don’t remember much about it because that’s when the comfy sofa I was sitting on began to subdue me with it’s soft blue fabric and extra soft cushioning. Almost surrendering to it’s beckoning, I snapped to and fetched the tape from the deck, then ran straight from the room for the free coffee stand and ordered a steaming cup of green tea. It didn’t seem to help though, and in the end I opted to go back to my hotel room and take a quick nap before my slew of afternoon screenings.
I must have been really exhausted because I don’t remember my alarm going off, and if it hadn’t of been for the green tea working it’s way through my system so fast and triggering a peepee alert in my brain, I might have slept through the beginning of the first movie (or I would have at least been five minutes late which would have kept me from entering the theater anyway). I threw on my clothes and rushed down to the lobby of the hotel to catch a taxi since the 20-minute walk to the theatre would have to be covered in a sweaty 10-minute run otherwise. Taxis are normally a bit hard to come by at this time as it’s right before afternoon movie time and about half the hotel is headed over to Cinema Street. But Lady Luck was on my side this fine afternoon (well, except for the fact that she’d somehow dismantled my alarm clock, but maybe that was all part of the big scheme), and as I walked out the door I spotted fellow jury member Ngo Phuong Lan getting in the taxi with a European man sporting a ponytail. I sprinted over and asked Lan if I could squeeze in with them, not even bothering to look at the man with her. I hopped in beside her and the European guy got in last, then a volunteer jumped in the front to tell the taxi driver where to go. I know Lan and I weren’t special enough to get volunteers to chaperone us to the theater, so suddenly it dawned on me that the man next to me might be someone important. I slowly turned my head in his direction, of course careful to pretend that I was looking at the cute schoolgirls walking by outside, and realized immediately that I was indeed next to someone important. Very important. In fact, the biggest VIP at the festival this year. There next to me in this small gray Hyundai taxi cruising down the main thoroughfare of Jeonju, South Korea – as cute schoolgirls walked by swinging their tote bags and talking about their most recent crushes – was none other than Hungarian master Bela Tarr. I smiled and looked back immediately in Lan’s direction. I thought for a moment of something to say and then turned back to him and in my most suave voice I asked “Hey, you’re that Bela Tarr guy, aren’t you?” He replied with a heavily accented ‘yes’. And that was the extent of my conversation with the great Bela Tarr. Personally, I thought it went quite well.
Actually a few minutes later right before we arrived at the theatre I managed to think of something else equally clever to ask, and he replied with one or two word answers, apparently not the most capable of conversationalists, though that might have something to do with the fact that he didn’t seem to speak much English. Or actually maybe it had something to do with me, as the only thing he asked me in our very brief conversation, besides if I’m from the United States (how on earth did he know?!), was if I was really a jury member. I told him yes. And that was the real end of the conversation. I’ll probably never know what was going through his mind there in that taxi at the moment he asked that question, but I’ll always suspect he was questioning himself for giving into the invitation of a film festival that invites young American guys who ask oh-so-intelligent-questions while riding in taxis to be members of their juries. Or maybe he was just thinking he shouldn’t have eaten so much kimchi at dinner the night before. Who knows. All that really matters is that my leg actually brushed up against his in the taxi.
In the afternoon I watched three competition films, all of which were Korean HD films. Actually, one of the films turned out to be shot on DV, and really bad DV at that as the majority of the footage was shot on a handycam almost ten years ago (and even the expensive DV cameras back then are hardly comparable in quality to the cheapest on offer now) and only recently edited together. The best part of the first film, “The House of Freshness”, was perhaps the name of the film. Supposedly a documentary, this film was one of those scripted films that is shot in documentary style, although the festival review of the film says it’s up to the viewer to decide if the story is real or scripted. I’m pretty sure it was scripted. Either way, this was one of my least favorite movies in the competition, even though my two fellow judges both seemed to like it for it’s original approach despite the very low production value, a cinematographer who seemed to have never operated a camera before, and the many long stretches of the movie that were about as powerful as a bottle of extra-strength Nyquil. But I shouldn’t be so harsh. After all, there was one endearing scene when the main character is walking by the ocean with his mom. That scene was cute. And that’s really all I have to say about this film.
The next film was a REAL documentary, and a much more interesting one in my opinion. ‘My Soul is Undefeated’ tells the story of a Korean-Japanese woman who served as a ‘comfort woman’ for Japanese soldiers during World War II. This is the film that relied heavily on footage shot on a DV camera almost 10 years ago. Despite the home-video feel of much of the film, the director did a good job of editing it together and filling in the gaps with new footage that above all else was extremely moving and uplifting. And rather than using the film to display the atrocities committed by Japanese during the war as many other documentaries on the topic have done, it chooses instead to focus on the inspiring story of one woman’s indomitable spirit and her fight against the Japanese government. As a cinematographer I was less than pleased with the aesthetics, but as a human being I was more than pleased with the story. The ‘Korean Cinema on the Move’ jury gave a special mention to this film when they announced their awards.
The last film of the day was ‘La La Sunshine’, a film by Dongguk University student Aaron Kim. Of course I didn’t know he was a student when I watched the film (or that he was at Dongguk University, where one of our NETPAC jury members is a professor… when I saw Dongguk mentioned repeatedly in the credits I asked my fellow jury member if he knew him and he admitted that he was a student… not that he let this affect his decision when it came to giving the award). The film was just over one hour, and in most big festivals would not have even qualified as a feature. For me the hour passed quickly and I was consistently impressed with many aspects of the film, even though the film in itself was a bit inconsistent in many ways. The acting, the cinematography, and most importantly the story itself had too much ebb and flow. One scene would be very solid in one or all of these aspects, and then the next scene would be rather weak. And overall the script felt like it was written by a student attempting his first feature. Which was the case. Yet for all this, I really liked the film. It had many original elements in it, and in the non-original parts of the film it deftly paid homage to the work and ideas of several other great filmmakers. The cinematography, though it was weak in a handful of scenes (very likely due to time constraints or other logistical limitations), displayed a number of beautifully composed shots and a very professional looking aesthetic overall. And perhaps most importantly, the film set a strong mood from the beginning and managed to maintain it through most parts of the film, which I know from personal experience is not easy for a young filmmaker. So while I’m not putting this at the top of my list, I’m very eager to see what else this director does in the future, because I’m betting it will be well worth seeing.
Whew, that’s a lot of writing for just one day of movie watching.
Day 6 (May 6):
This morning I watched a simple but very entertaining film. At least I found it very entertaining. I could imagine my parents sitting in the audience and probably leaving during the first ten minutes of the film (but of course they would get busted at the door by the Gestapo volunteers), because about all that happens in those first ten minutes is some nerdy Korean guy masturbates to copious amounts of hard-core porn. And actually that’s about what happens in about a third of the scenes in this film. And another third of the scenes in the film involves a gimp girl mopping around a swimming pool where people are doing synchronized swimming. And the other third of the film shows them getting it on. And there’s not one word of dialogue throughout the entire film. Need I say more? Brilliant. And well it would have to be in order to get accepted to a major film festival with said content. In other words, this isn’t your typical boy-meets-girl, girl-likes-boy-until-she-discovers-him-wearing-red-panties, boy-wins-her-back-anyway-by-almost-drowning-in-her-pool film. It’s far beyond that. It raises the standard for this genre of film. Seriously though, the director took a very simple idea and very simple shots (this film was actually shot quite similarly to ‘A Broom Becomes a Goldfish’ that I saw a few days ago, relying almost entirely on wide, static, high angle long takes… and in this case it was shot by the director himself) and injected a very clever sense of humor and unique sense of space and timing and made a really enjoyable film. Of course I laughed longer and louder than most people in the audience, so maybe that just says something about my sick sense of humor, but I talked to several other people later today who also saw it and they seemed to be equally impressed. Another interesting thing about the film is that the Korean director is a grad student at an art school in San Fransisco where the film was shot, and it’s always encouraging for me as an American filmmaker in Asia to see other filmmakers do the same thing in reverse.
The rest of the day I was free of jury films, so I took full advantage of my freedom and piled on the films. I had tickets to a Korean film (this one shot on film, not HD, and not in my competition) first in the afternoon, but one of my friends in the international jury talked me into seeing an Iranian film directed by the head of the international jury, and since tickets were sold out for it I just snuck in with a wave of my magic badge. ‘Hafez’, the name of the film, is an Iranian-Japanese co-production that stars a Japanese actress in a key role (though she was only on-screen for less than 10 minutes, she still got very high billing) playing the Tibetan daughter (by marriage??) of a powerful countryside cleric. Yeah, and the rest of the movie was equally confusing. Still, there were elements of the film that I liked, and despite the fact that it was not trying to depict everyday life in Iran, I still felt like it gave me some interesting insights into the country quite different from the more stock fare that other Iranian directors will spit out just for international audiences and festival runs. I also found it interesting that the film was shot on 35mm but the director shot it himself instead of hiring a director of photography. While several of the Korean HD films I watched were also shot by their directors, it’s an entirely different matter to shoot your own film on a digital video camera than on a 35mm film camera. And to be honest, the cinematography was pretty decent. The director’s constant use of shots panning across the desert at full telephoto following the main character around on his motorcycle was a bit overkill, but overall the composition and use of colors in the shots were quite nice. I wouldn’t rate this anywhere close to one of my favorite films in the festival, but I’m still glad I caught this film instead of a Korean film I can watch back in China on DVD anytime.
Next I experienced my very first Alexander Kluge movie. And I must say that while I liked his subtle sense of humor throughout the film, I was utterly bewildered by his narrative style. It was not at all to my liking, and I really had a hard time getting an overall picture of what he wanted to say. After all the film was like a collection of bits and pieces of work shot for completely different films by completely different directors for completely different purposes. I just couldn’t draw the connection between the story of a director who is still directing even though he’s gone blind (though the interview with him was hilarious, and the interview with his producer even more so), the story of a woman who has a difficult time giving up a foster child to new parents, interviews with a scrap collector, a professor, and a stage actor, the recording of a stage play, and a number of other random elements thrown in the mix with no rhyme or reason. At least that’s how it felt. But perhaps that’s the exact feeling that the director intended, and in that he is making his statement. But I’m not educated enough in Alexander Kluge’s work or the rest of the German New Wave that he helped lead in the 1960s, so I won’t make any conjectures as to what Mr. Kluge and his unusual film were trying to do to my head. I do know that most likely I will not go out of my way to see his films in future festivals, not that his films are often screened anyway. Still I’m glad I had the opportunity to try a little taste of his work, and will try to view more in my own time and see if I can make any sense of it.
The last film I watched tonight was easily one of my favorites that I’ve seen here so far, if not one of the best movies I’ve seen this past year. ‘The Valley of Elah’, written and directed by ‘Crash’ director Paul Haggis, and starring Tommy Lee Jones, was phenomenal. Haggis knows what he’s doing. And he had an excellent cast and crew to back him up. I wonder if it is just coincidence that he not only pulled the two lead actors (Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin) from the Coen Brother’s ‘No Country For Old Men’, but also the director of photography Roger Deakins as well (who did a fantastic job without being too showy). Even without such a great supporting team, Haggis wrote a fantastic story and clearly knows how to direct his own scripts. I’m not going to bother writing much about the film since unlike the other films I’ve seen in the festival it has received wide distribution. Suffice it to say that I gave it five stars (highest rating) for my audience voting ticket.
Day 7 (May 7):
Only two days left of screenings and I knocked out two of the last three films for our competition, both of which were international (i.e. non-Korean films). This morning I also had the treat of finally catching a Bela Tarr film up on the big screen. I’d wanted to catch several of them earlier in the week but they always conflicted with my competition screenings or festival events. The film was ‘Wreckmeister Harmonies’, a film Bela Tarr worked on from 1997-2000 (at least that’s what it said at the end of the film… it was released in 2000). Despite a severe case of drowsiness most of the morning, I was captivated by the opening 10 minutes of the film. Mind you, this captivation should not be confused with what one experiences watching the opening scene of the likes of a James Bond film, where Daniel Craig is running non-stop for 10 minutes straight jumping around cranes and skyscrapers and ending up blasting his way out of an African government compound. This was much more spiritual. Perhaps just as hollow and devoid of meaning (there seem to be a lot of mixed feelings about Bela Tarr films and the depth of meaning he imbues in his films) as the big action Hollywood films, but nonetheless this 10-minute single shot mesmerized me as it flowed seamlessly through a bar of drunks at closing time who are told the story of how a solar eclipse occurs by our protaganist Janos, the mailman of this small Hungarian town. The music that comes in halfway through the scene and continues on into the next scene as Janos walks down a dark road added an eerie but unmistakably powerful aura to this mystical opening, and this same simple yet powerful song serves as the entire soundtrack for the film, coming in at key points later in the film. This music was actually one of my favorite parts of the film and has been bouncing around in my head the rest of the day, and it was only surpassed in beauty by the cinematography that so inexplicably created an aura of mystery and intense feeling of awe that few movies have made me feel. Put quite simply, the film was absolutely gorgeous, an aesthetic masterpiece that surpassed the cinematography of most every other film I have seen. No small achievement considering it was shot in B&W and I love my colors as a filmmaker. But then there is the story to consider, and this is where my drowsiness and Master Tarr fought long and hard through the 145 minutes of the film. In the end Master Tarr won, as I was captivated enough by the cinematography and atmosphere of the film alone to force myself to stay awake, but I will admit that there were a few small parts of the film I missed as I dozed off briefly. This is no easy film to analyze, and I will not even begin to pretend that I have an inkling of exactly what Tarr was really trying to convey with this film, if anything at all. For me the experience of watching this film was very much like watching Terrence Malick’s ‘Days of Heaven’, a film whose narrative was a bit weak in my opinion but whose cinematography and strong mood easily carried the film. And for me that is enough to sit through several hours of a film, especially when I get the privilege of seeing such a beautiful film up on the big screen (unfortunately I only got to see ‘Days of Heaven’ on DVD… DOH!).
The first film of the afternoon was a competition film from Kazakhstan called ‘Strizh’. The title of the film refers to the short, boyish haircut that the female high school protagonist Ainura dons throughout the film (the opening shot of the film shows her receiving her haircut). Judging from the quality of the Beta SP tape that was screened, it seems to have been shot on DV (as compared to the HD format that most films in our competition were shot on), but that may just be due to the quality of the transfer. The film deals with the difficulties of adolescent life that Ainura is experiencing, trials and tribulations that perhaps are an accurate depiction of life in Kazakhstan. And for this glimpse into Kazakh life and the wintry landscapes of Almaty, a city I’ve long wished to visit, I quite enjoyed the film. The main problem with the film, however, was its inconsistency, a problem that recurred throughout the length of the film and plagued every aspect of the film, from the story to the acting to the cinematography. The film would have one extremely well-acted scene, but the composition of the shots or the lighting would be really off. And then in the next scene the cinematography would be fantastic, only to be compromised by a really weak link in the narrative. And the next scene the acting would really have your heart aching… if it weren’t for the fact that the scene had no relevance to the rest of the story. But when you average all of it out, the film was still entertaining and well enough shot for me to want to see more from young director Abay Kulbayev in the future, as judging from a number of his scenes where everything came together well he seems to have a lot of talent and promise.
The second film of the afternoon was a documentary from China (the only Chinese film I’ve seen so far) called ‘My Last Secret’ and deals with an old Chinese woman from Shanghai who was born into a wealthy family but ran away with her boyfriend at a young age and was later widowed. The ‘last secret’ that the title of the film hints at is whether or not she has a lot of money hidden away, and this is what drives the storyline of the film. Everyone from her personal helper – an illiterate, crude, but loyal woman – to her relatives are interested in the inheritance of this woman already in her nineties. The film captures some very candid interviews with these people as they explain that they care very much for the old woman and have no interest in the money, yet with the exception of her loyal helper the rest only seem to appear when the woman is on her deathbed. Which is why one of the funniest parts of the film is when the film jumps ahead several years and reveals that she has recovered her health and is doing better than ever now. I have to admit that I wasn’t crazy about the cinematography of this film or a lot of the editing style, but the story was a rather interesting and unique exploration of a small group of people in China that form a microcosm of Chinese society as a whole and actually touches on a much broader issue, the every-man-for-himself mentality that in my opinion has come to plague a magnificent culture in the middle of a great transition. That may not have been the objective of the filmmakers with this film, but that is how I saw it.
Every night at JIFF they have an outdoor screening at 8pm with a musical performance beforehand starting at 7pm. Tonight they were screening Academy Award winner ‘Juno’, which I’ve been wanting to see for some time now, but we had a dinner engagement with the international jury members at a pretty swank traditional Korean restaurant on the other side of Jeonju. And it was worth missing an outdoor screening of ‘Juno’ on a cool Korean night for this dinner. The food alone was quite fantabulous, but more importantly getting a chance to sit with the international jury as well as several of the festival programmers and chat and crack jokes was another highlight of the festival for me. I sat next to international jury member Bong Joon-Ho, director of two of my favorite Korean films ‘Memoirs of Murder’ and ‘The Host’, who I had sat next to or in the near vicinity of for several screenings (our jury selections had a lot of overlap with the international jury) but only briefly exchanged words with at the opening ceremony. He had actually been at the screening of one of my short films at the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2006 and commented on the film afterward (my film was part of a special exchange and they asked three VIP guests at the festival to come critique our films at the screening, and I lucked out getting him as the other two were obscure film critics I had never heard of), but I never had a chance to talk to him or tell him what a complete badass he is. So this was a great opportunity to mention it to him. But this time I was a little more discreet than when I met Bela Tarr a few days earlier. Bong was actually quite a character and joked quite a bit, at one point mention that since his last name spelled in English was the same as the ubiquitous smoking apparatus enjoyed by millions the world over, his distribution company in the US gave him a massive bong as a present on a previous trip to the States, which he of course was worried about getting through customs upon his return to Korea. I also got my first chance to chat with Chris Fujiwara, a writer and film critic from New England who had recently relocated to Tokyo. We had plenty of interesting expat stories to share, and realized we had many similar reasons for why were living outside the US. The only international jury member I had really had much of a chance to chat with earlier in the week was the affable and easygoing Turkish film critic Defne Gürsoy. Based in Paris, Defne is one of those people who can fit in anywhere and strike up a conversation with about anyone, and I’m very glad I had the privilege of meeting her the first night because we’ve ended up catching a lot of the same movies together throughout the week. She sat on my left at the dinner and I shared my limited knowledge of Korean food in exchange for her views on a number of films we had seen together throughout the week.
After the dinner we went to a welcoming party for Bela Tarr, which took place in finely manicured garden of a traditional ‘hanok’ house in the middle of the preserved Korean village right behind our hotel. Lots of fine Hungarian wines (not like I would know… I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of sampling any Hungarian wines before) were on offer, as well as a number of tasty little delicacies that I had no room for in my bulging stomach but indulged in nonetheless. I mixed and mingled with people I’d seen throughout the week but not had the opportunity to talk with yet. I saw a young Japanese guy talking to a volunteer nearby and struck up a conversation with him. He turned out to be the PR guy for Tokyo’s small FilmEX film festival, which I’ve heard very good things about. He informed me that the opening film at Jeonju ‘The Kiss’ that I was less than ecstatic about had been discovered by the Jeonju festival director at the previous FilmEX festival. I told him I’d definitely have a feature film of my own to submit to his festival in a few years, and he smiled politely and scratched the little patch of facial hair on his chin and walked off. A delightful conversationalist. Later when I was talking to my jury buddy Defne, who seemed to already be on a first name basis with pretty much every guest at the festival already, I met an interesting young couple who have a Mexican film in the main competition called Cochochi. They shot the film in 16mm in a small village in northern Mexico using non-professional local Indian actors. Wife Laura from the Dominican Republic met hubby Isreal from Mexico while studying at film school in Cuba. An interesting couple. I also met a young French-Canadian director named Stephane who also had a film in the main competition. I had already been interested in watching his film just because of the title ‘Continental: A Film Without Guns’. That and the fact that the only films I ever get to see that were shot in Montreal are usually Hollywood films that go to Montreal for the film tax cuts and cheap(er) studio facilities. I’ve not had a chance to see either of these films yet, but it turns out both of them are showing tomorrow in my free time slots (I only have one competition film left tomorrow, and it’s in the morning), so I will try to go catch them.
Day 8 (May 8):
This morning I finished off the last of my competition films with the screening of ‘Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame’, the feature debut by 19-year-old
Hana Makhmalbaf, youngest daughter of Moshen Makhmalbaf and product of his family’s film school, where she began studying and making films at a very young age. I will admit that I am always a bit skeptical when watching feature films directed by very young filmmakers, even if they are the progeny of renowned filmmakers. I think there is a lot more that goes into filmmaking, especially as a director, than the technical aspects that you can learn from any age, and it is the life experience of the storyteller that endows him with the gift of telling any story with a special flare that can entertain or educate or do both at the same time. And I think in this case the film suffered from a lack of life experience on the part of the director. While it was executed well, especially considering all of the primary actors in the film were very young untrained actors, the film seemed a bit hollow and lacking the punch of an experienced or gifted storyteller. I did like that the young director seemed to be making a statement about the status of women in Afghanistan through her young female protagonist, but her message seemed to be a bit too forced. But as is often the case with films dealing with a cast of child actors, there were a number of adorable scenes with the children interacting that I quite enjoyed and helped relieve my boredom with other parts of the film. In all the film is quite an accomplishment for a 19-year-old director, but I think she will do much better work in years to come.
Right after the film, we three NETPAC jury members met at one of the hospitality centers set up by the festival and discussed our top choices. I’m sure you’re just dying to know what we talked about, but that of course is top secret and if I told you, I wouldn’t have to kill you because you’d die of boredom. Actually, our selection of the winning film was extremely efficient. We ended up spending most of the 90-minute meeting deciding how to word our statement for the winning film that didn’t sound too generic. Being the only native English speaker in the group, but having by far the least experience in film critique, I was in charge of wording the statement but didn’t feel I was giving the film the proper credit it deserved.
So we deliberated about the wording until a few minutes befoore 2pm when the screening of ‘Continental’ was about to begin. I sprinted down Cinema Street – now becoming almost a regular part of my daily routine – and arrived at the Primus theater just in time to hear Stephane introduce the film. He admitted himself that he hoped everyone in the audience had drinking plenty of coffee with their lunch as his film had a habit of putting people to sleep. I knew he was just being modest because the JIFF program director had highly recommended the film, and so far I’d had very good luck with her recommendations. The film begins with a man falling asleep on a bus and arriving in a forest with nobody left on the bus, and he wanders off into the trees. The rest of the film goes on to the tell the story of four people’s lives loosely interweaving, one of them the man’s wife who is trying to keep herself from believing that he has just run off with another woman as a tactless police officer tries to her convince her might be the only explanation. Each of the characters deal with similar issues in their small and insignificant lives, and their paths cross frequently but inconsequentially thoughout the film. Not an easy genre of film to tackle dealing with so many protagonists, but I could tell I was not alone in the audience in greatly enjoying the way Stephane humorously and sometimes ironically let his story unfold. It was one of the better films I saw at the festival. And it was also one of the best Q&A sessions with the director I attended at the festival.
Next I caught Laura and Isreal’s film ‘Cochochi’. The film opened with some lovely shots and I couldn’t tell if it had been shot on 16mm or with an HD camera with 35mm lens adapter. At any rate, it was another film with untrained child actors (these a bit older than the ones in the morning), and while they very much fit the story as they were indigenous children (and the two main actors were actually what inspired the film according to Laura and Isreal’s explanation after the film), and I have to admit that they seemed rather uncomfortable in front of camera and not very natural, and I think this was one of the few things that really hurt the film. The story was simple and punctuated by funny little incidences, and the shots were well composed and captured the beauty and rawness of a little explored part of Mexico. The film had a very natural feel to it, and if nothing else impressed me about this film, this alone was enough to merit the hour and a half I spent in the theater. I look forward to the next film Laura and Isreal plan to shoot later this year in the Dominican Republic.
Tonight I was tempted to take advantage of my last chance to catch an outdoor screening, and again they were screening an American film that I had wanted to see for quite a while – ‘3:10 To Yuma’. However there was a German documentary called ‘Dust’ that had come highly recommended by a reliable source and I figured I could watch ‘3:10 to Yuma’ some other time on DVD (though not on an outdoor big screen with a cool early summer Jeonju breeze blowing through the crowd). Two hours later, and for the first time at this festival, I was not very happy with my screening selection. The film started off very promisingly, shot beautifully on 35mm and delving into a topic that is rarely thought about but permeates our lives. Unfortunately the film got too bogged down in details and delved too deep into interviews burdened with scientific lingo and incomprehensible research (which I took to be part of the point of the film… that something as simple as dust could inspire people to invest so much time and money and knowledge into researching and understanding it… but I still felt this was conveyed more effectively in the first 15 minutes of the film then the rest of the film combined). I felt like I was sitting through a chemisty lecture (not exactly my favorite subject!) rather than watching a documentary at a film festival. And I was a bit tired, so it was a bit of struggle staying awake for the last third of the film. All of these factors combined to make for one of my least satisfying screenings of the week. The film did have it’s merits, but I think it was just a bit too ‘German’ for me. =0)
Closing Night (May 9)
The final of the day has come and gone, and while I didn’t get to make it to the afternoon screening of Bela Tarr’s newest film ‘The Man From London’ as I had hoped to do, it was still a nice final day to a fantastic film festival. Same as the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony was held at the Sori Arts Center. It was a full house again, and yet again we jury members had excellent seats right in the middle of the auditorium. The ceremony moved quite quickly, first awarding several of the smaller awards before getting to NETPAC. While many juries elected just one person to go up on stage and present the award, Lan decided that we should go up as a group. DOH. So there I was up on stage with my one line to say about the purpose of NETPAC, and all I could think about was how everyone was looking at my shoes and thinking they weren’t dressy enough to be worn with my suit, or that the knot in my tie was too big and awkward, or that the middle button on my coat was about to fall off. And yet despite this immense pressure I managed to repeat the rather long one sentence statement I crafted earlier in the day about what NETPAC is all about. And then Lan was announcing the winner, which I mentioned above was ‘Children of God’ by Yi Seung-jun. And then he was up on stage and he was even more worried about how he looked and what he had to say because he had no idea beforehand that he was even going to have to come up on stage and that made me feel better. And then it was all over and we were back in our seats and I enjoyed watching how other people up on stage were holding up to the pressure.
In the main competition, the top prize – the $10,000 Woosuk award – went to an Argentian film ‘The Stolen Man’ by Matias Pineiro, a young director I’d also met at the Bela Tarr party but whose film I had not been able to see. The next largest prize, the $7,000 Daum Special Jury award, went to another South American film ‘The Sky, The Earth, and The Rain’ from Chile. The biggest prize-winner of the night though was Noh Young-seok, director of the road movie ‘Daytime Drinking’ that won both the $10,000 JJ Star Award in the Korean on the Move competition as well as the $2,000 Audience Critics’ Award. I was kicking myself for not having watched this film, but unfortunately it wasn’t in the NETPAC competition and with all the HD Korean films I already had to watch, I chose to watch more international films in my free time. Another Korean film also took home two prizes. ‘Action Boys’ documents the lives of a handful of graduates from Seoul Action School, which trains stuntmen to work in the Korean film industry. It evidently was a very humorous and engrossing documentary, for it took home the CGV Korean Independent Feature Film Distribution Support Award as well as the JIFF Audience Award.
The awards were given out quite efficiently and we moved on the closing film. This required a rather long introduction though, as the film was a collection of five short Korean films shot by five different directors, and they all came up on stage with several of their child actors for introductions. This compilation feature is actually the fourth installation of a series of films commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, and in the past have drawn some big-name directors to direct the shorts. This year the omnibus film was a mixed bag. One of the films I found rather pointless, with a very weak narrative and poor decisions with shots and music that seemed completely unmotivated. Two of the films were very cutesy, and very well shot, but still seemed to lack much punch in their overall delivery. The film saved the best for last, as the last two shorts of the film were by far the best, although by this point some of the audience had already left the theatre. The fourth film “The Theory & Practice of Teenage Drama” was absolutely hilarious, even though some of the humor was obviously lost in translation because the predominately Korean audience was cracking up at the dialogue while we foreigners were scratching our heads. Still, the parts I did understand and the overall presentation of the film demonstrated some great creativity and brilliance on the part of director Yoon Seong-ho. After watching this short, I’m definitely gonna try to get a hold of his feature debut ‘Milky Way Liberation Front’ that came out last year. The last short ‘Girl on The Run’ deals with a young girl in a small town who has a hard time relating to her Filipino stepmother. The story alone was enough to make for a great short even in the hands of an incapable director, but in the experienced hands of Kim Tae-Yong who made his debut feature ‘Memento Mori’ in 1999, the whole film came together beautifully. Besides some lovely shots, I was particularly impressed with the acting, especially on the part of the Filipino stepmother, who I’m guessing probably has no acting experience. Anyway, a lovely little film, and a great one to finish up not just the omnibus film with, but the whole festival.
I had a fantastic time at JIFF and couldn’t have asked for a better festival at which to have my first jury experience. Ok, I’m sure I could think of a few – including my beloved Hawaii International Film Festival – but just like the high school cheerleader who sleeps with the quarterback of the football team rather than waiting for the Mr. Right she might meet years later at the local community college, I’m very content to have lost my jury virginity at Jeonju International Film Festival.
