This year’s Udine Far East Film Festival offered a great selection of truly excellent films, and among those, some packed an especially powerful emotional charge; in this grouping, there is no doubt that Satoshi: A Move for Tomorrow was among the very best. The film’s screening was accompanied by director Mori Yoshitaka, known best for his Space…
Category: Foreign Films
In Conversation with Feng Xiaogang, the director of ‘I Am Not Madame Bovary’
Where to event start with Feng Xiaogang? He is a Chinese director, producer, screenwriter and actor, whose career has spanned for over 30 years. While bravely battling censorship, he has created a number of commercially immensely successful films, such as Be There or Be Square (Bújiàn búsàn, 1998), Cell Phone (Shŏujī, 2003), A World Without…
19th Far East Film Festival: In Conversation with Naoko Ogigami, the director of ‘Close-Knit’
While LGBT characters seem to be present in almost every Japanese drama or film, the reality is far from that in fiction; the members of the LGBT minority more often than not face scorn and are often shunned in their everyday lives. This is what makes Naoko Ogigami’s newest feature, Close-Knit (2017), that much more…
19th Far East Film Festival: Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High
Teiichi wants to create his own empire. How’s that possible, you may ask? Well, by controlling the student council at his elite high school, of course. If he can run the school then Teiichi’s a shoe in for a prestigious government position, and from there he can even become Prime Minister. With his father’s broken…
19th Far East Film Festival: New Trial
Injustice, corruption, and oppression of the underprivileged are continuing topics in the South Korean motion pictures, but instead of focusing on the themes of personal vengeance, filmmakers often turn to common social issues to raise public awareness. 2000. In the southern city of Iksan, a 15-year-old boy was sentenced to 10 years in prison for…
19th Far East Film Festival Opening: The Survival Family
On Friday, 21st April 2017, the Far East Film Festival (FEFF) opened the doors of Italy’s Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine for the 19th time; the selected opening film was Shinobu Yaguchi’s The Survival Family that promptly announced one of the “red threads” of this year’s edition: we were up for 10 days of excellent…
19th Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy (21st – 29th April, 2017)
In less than a week, the 19th edition of the Far East Film Festival (FEFF) will open the doors of Teatro Nuovo “Giovanni da Udine” in Udine, Italy, and East Asian cinema will reign over the little city in the Italian Friuli-Venezia Giulia region for a full 9 days (21st – 29th April 2017). The FEFF…
Kushuthara: Pattern of Love Review
The Kingdom of Bhutan is no common place; and while it is one of the smallest countries in the world, its cultural variety and depth are heartfelt. Located in the breath-taking Eastern Himalayan mountain range, it presents the perfect opportunity for the filmmakers, climbers and photographers to experience the extraordinary beauty of the country. The history…
Lee Gae-byok’s Luck-Key
Body- and identity-swaps have been explored by Hollywood since the 1970’s; unfortunately, most of those films are just wacky comedies. Unexpectedly, Asian cinema has been keeping up with this trend of the la la land and has produced a few worthy productions, including the Japanese Key of Life by Kenji Uchida (Weekend Blues, A Stranger of…
Hong Ji-young’s Will You Be There?
Surprisingly, last year was fairly fruitful for the female filmmakers in South Korea. Most of their films – perhaps slightly unappreciated by the mainstream cinema critics – have been cherished by many film goers. One of those films is Will You Be There?, the first adaptation of Guillaume Musso’s 2006 bestselling novel with the same…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 