Whether they are big or small it seems that the best way to document films from all corners of the world is to have a festival dedicated to a specific genre. Having said that, the UK’s annual Asian film festival, the Terracotta Far East Film Festival, kicks off on Thursday and will be featuring 13 handpicked films representing the best of Far East cinema, held at London’s Prince Charles Cinema, titles from countries including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea will be shown over its four day course.
Opening the festival will be the UK premiere of Eye For An Eye, a thriller from directors Ahn Kwon-tae and KT Kwak starring Han Suk-kyu and Cha Seung-won in a Heat style thriller about a soon-to-retire detective who’s is unwillingly drawn into an elaborate plot in which he is impersonated by one of the bank heist perpetrators.
Other highlights include the latest mystery thriller from writer/director Oxide Pang Chun, The Detective, Sparrow starring Simon Yam and Kelly Lin, the Malaysian horror-comedy Zombies From Banana Village (pictured) and the martial arts action-thriller Legendary Assassin which marks the co-directorial debuts of Jacky Wu and Chung Chi Li, Jackie Chan’s long-time stunt coordinator.
The programme also includes Muay Thai Chaya, Kim Ki-duk’s Dream, Keeping Watch, Ghost In The Shell 2.0, Me… Myself, After School and God Man Dog, the winner of the Tagesspiegel Readers’ Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
More information on the Terracotta Far East Film Festival can be found on the official website.
The Terracotta Far East Film Festival 2009 – Preview (text) by Limara Salt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Trailers for all the films showing at the Terracotta Far East Film Festival can be found here:
http://www.dailymotion.com/TerracottaFestival
Written by DeeDee on May 20th, 2009 at 14:15
Of the ones I've seen: The Detective offers a well-managed confusion of genres, where Chanleresque down-at-heels dick meets, well, something else; Dream is a suitably hallucinatory study of identity, metamorphosis and karma (and is unmistakably the work of Kim Ki-duk, even if it is more dialogue-heavy than his usual); and Sparrow is as elegantly stylish not-quite-caper set in the world of Hong Kong pickpockets (but inspired by the moods of bygone French cinema). I'd certainly recommend all three, although none is exactly a classic…
Written by Anton Bitel on May 20th, 2009 at 14:24
Of course, I meant 'Chandleresque' and 'an elegantly'
Written by Anton Bitel on May 20th, 2009 at 14:32
I thought for a moment this was the latest Cannes post, and the picture was Matt Bochenski and Jonathan Crocker after watching Lars Von Trier's new frightfest. Hah.
This festival looks interesting – thanks Anton for the extra info on the films.
Written by Rod Hell on May 20th, 2009 at 14:38
HA!
Written by Lim Salt on May 20th, 2009 at 15:16