By Kim Ki-tae
Staff Reporter
PUSAN - Serving as a window to Asian cinema for the past decade, the Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) marks its 10th anniversary and kicks off this year's edition at the Yachting Center in Haeundae Thursday.
The fete is to present 307 works from 73 nations in its nine-day run, the biggest collection so far for the expansive festival.
Its opening film is the anticipated "Three Times", by Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien. The film is a tripartite of love stories starring the same actor and actress in three different history backgrounds: 1911, 1966 and 2005. It was one of the highlights of the past Cannes Film Festival, but Hou re-edited it afterward to come forward with it in Pusan.
"
Wedding Campaign", the feature debut of South Korean director Hwang Byeong-kook, is the festival's finale. The surprise choice is about two lovelorn Korea farmers going over to Uzbekistan to "buy" fiancees.
Sections like "A Window on Asian Cinema" and "New Currents" are expected to, as usual, reflect the vivacious Asian film scenes, some of which are even edging out the Hollywood counterparts in their home turfs.
The festival also carry on with its typical role of "unearthing" forgotten greats in the continent. Following discoveries like Chung Chang-wha or
Kim Ki-young during the previous editions, the fete this year illuminates Lee Man-hee, nicknamed "poet of the night" in the Korean Cinema Retrospective section. In another special program, the festival also reintroduces three lost cineastes, Sohrab Shahid Saless from Iran, R.D.Pestonji from Indonesia and Teguh Karya from India.
To the delight of cinephiles, the festival dishes out a gift set presenting a special program of "Asian Pantheon". The program, dedicated to 30 "classics among classics" in the Asian film history, will feature notorious Dariush Mehrjui's "The Cow" and Stanley Kwan's "Center Stage".
Another trademark of the festival, the PPP, or the Pusan Promotional Plan, will serve as a marketplace to connect filmmakers and investors from Oct. 10 for three days. This year's program will present 27 projects from 19 nations including proposals by familiar
Kim Ki-duk, Shinya Tsucamoto and Fruit Chan. The New Directors in Focus (NDIF) program is also expected to serve as springboard for Korean talents to catch investments for their projects.
In addition, the festival has also launched the Asian Film Academy to invite some talented Asian young filmmakers to the educational program, led by greats such as Abbas Kiarostami. Together with the PPP and NDIF, the academic program is expected to play as a seed bed to flourish the Asian film scenes.
The festival this year has procured 31 screens, a sharp jump from 17 last year for the convenience of the filmgoers, who had to wait in long queue, sometimes even over-night, in front of box offices. More than 280 out of the total paid 631 screenings were already sold out a week before the opening day.
