Asia:
Focus
on China, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand
CHINA
Adopting
a highly stylistic approach, Suzhou shies away from Chinese
identity or politics.
The
past year has seen a diverse range of films emerge from the Chinese
mainland. Perhaps the most invigorating is Lou Ye's Suzhou
River, an engrossing thriller set around the waterways
of the town of the same name. The film won top honors at the Rotterdam
Film Festival, and saw much interest from the European Film market
and the AFM. Suzhou
has a fresh energy reminiscent of the French New Wave. Its appeal
lies in the fact that it does not -- like many Chinese art-hours
films -- specifically focus on the social or political problems
that have arisen from China's economic boom. In fact, the film
is not grounded in any notion of Chineseness at all. "I was
mainly concerned with managing to finish the project," admits
Lou Ye.
The
film allows its characters to react freely to the obsctacles that
the story places in their paths, something that pulls the viewer
into a clever and gripping tale of double identity. Equally unusual
is the film's stylized approach, which approximates to Magic Realism:
an image of a mermaid lounging gently on the bank of river is
especially memorable. "Actually,
the idea of the mermaid came from a bar," says Lou Ye. "There
is a bar in China that has girls dressed as mermaids swimming
around in tank. I thought it was amusing how a Western mythological
urges had shown up in modern China, in a bar context. It is a
very typical image of today's China.
Before this interview, the completed Suzhou failed
to pass through censorship in China.
HONG
KONG
Little
Cheung
is the third in Hong Kong indie director Fruit Chan's social trilogy,
and continues to illuminate the mood of the territory around its
return to China in 1997. After the wayward teens of Made
In Hong Kong and the confused ex-soldiers of The
Longest Summer, Chan here decides to focus on events seen
through the eyes of children. This is neatly realized by choosing
to set the story against the controversial background of Hong
Kong's immigration laws a subject rich in material for
exploring the relationship between the people of Hong Kong and
their new brothers and sisters from mainland China.
Newcomer
Yiu Yeut-ming plays Little Cheung, a nine-year-old boy who befriends
Fan, a young illegal immigrant from China. As the return to Chinese
rule approaches, Fan feels that she'll be given legal status in
Hong Kong the territory is back with China now, after all,
and she is Chinese. But her hopes prove unfounded.
Moving
Pictures spoke to Chan by telephone in Hong Kong. Here is
some of what he had to say about immigration, working wth children,
and politics.
"After
April 1997, a lot of things happened in Hong Kong relating to
immigrant children from mainland China. [In the late-1980s and
90s] Hong Kong Kong's economy changed, and some industries were
moved to [cheaper] factories in China. So Hong Kong people
technicians and workers alike had to follow the factories
to China to run them. This changed a lot of things. The men could
get rich quickly in China. Some got married there, while some
got 'second wives.' They had children in China, but these children
were not allowed to come to live in Hong Kong.
"Sometimes these children overstayed their visas when they visited
Hong Kong. They were hidden by their families, and they didn't
return to China a lot of them didn't want to go back. But
in 1997 many of them were rounded-up and sent back by the Government.
This also got a lot of media attention. I decided to bind it together
with the other story. But I kept it simple when Little
Cheung meets an immigrant child in the street, it leads to some
changes in his life. That's the core of it."
0n Little Cheung, I decided not to take a position
on the immigration issue. A lot of people don't agree with the
decision to send them back. But a lot of others do. It confuses
me a bit, as over the last 30 years, many people have immigrated
to Hong Kong from mainland China. Now some of these same people
are saying that the children should be sent back over the border!
But the children themselves don't know what
the political angles are. That's why I didn't want to take a position
in Little Cheung.
Making
a movie with children in Hong Kong is tough. Kids in Hong Kong
pass through childhood quite quickly, they mature very young.
So it's difficult to find an actor with a degree of innocence.
It was a challenge. I looked for an actor to play Little Cheung
for three solid months until I found Yiu Yeut-ming."
AUSTRALIA
The
Australian Film Commission has enjoyed a facelift under the leadership
of Kim Dalton.
Every
regular at Cannes knows the Italian film commission (AFC), but
this year they'll have to adjust to its changed image. Following
structural changes, the Australian industry has to ace up to theAFC's
new focus -- on development. Not marketing. Since
Kim Dalton took over the top job at the AFC in August 1999 (after
Cathy Robinson's long tenure), the AFC has shifted its emphasis
and is about to put its new structure to the working test. "When
I started" says Dalton, previously an experienced industry
practitioners who most recently ran the Melboune office for Beyond
Film, "I identified one key objective as the need to refocus
the work of the AFC on what I believe is its core function: a
development agency.
"The
AFC has played an important role in the past but failed to take
account of the broad structural changes that have taken place
over the past seven or eight years here in Australia and also
internationally. I think it allowed its focus to be directed to
broader areas of involvement." Now, says Dalton, the AFC
could be testing everything it does against the criteria of "developing
projects, developing producers and developing the production sector."
As
Dalton sees it, the marketing role is "primarily facilitating
and resourcing Australian filmmakers to participate in and engage
with the marketplace, here in Australia as well as internationally."
Dalton's
restructure involved the blending of the AFC's film development
and marketing branches. He recruited Chris Warner (based in Melbourne)
who is another industry practitioner (producer, director, writer
in film and TV), as head of the department, which oversees development
as well as marketing. Sabina Finners (based in Sydney) was appointed
to the marketing role, reporting to Warner. The
new focus on development is in its final stage of implementation
as the new team at the AFC tackles Cannes 2000, with the appointment
of four project managers. They are all industry practitioners
with a one to three year contract and a defined exit package to
help them ease back into the workforce.
"It
all sounds pretty good," Dalton admits, "but we still
have to deliver."
NEW
ZEALAND
Kiwi
Demons Bewitch Buyers
New
Zealand director Glenn Standring's new horror film, The
Irrefutable Truth About Demons, is likely to become this
year's Kiwi bestseller, with presales for France and Benelux confirmed
before Cannes. According to the New Zealand Film Commission's
marketing director Lindsay Shelton, Korea was added before the
film's screening -- "We have also received the first bid
from Japan, and there is an interest among American and German
buyers."
Standring,
who also wrote the script, is due at Cannes for the private screening,
along with male lead Karl Urban and producer Dave Gibson. In the
film, the demons who killed a man's girlfriend come after him.
"He's a skeptic who at first refuses to accept their existence,"
said Standring.
The
NZ Film Commission is launcching 3 other features at Cannes, of
which only Stephen Hickey's Hopeless has screened
in a market before (at AFM). Japan's Paris Eiga has purchased
Harry Sinclair's The Price of Milk, starring Danielle
Cormack and Karl Urban. The other film is Vanessa Alexander's
feature debut Magik and Rose. Shelton concluded:
"New Zealand has now achieved a balance between the small
quality titles and the more commercially viable productions.
