SAPFF Opening Night
The Sydney Asia Pacific Film Festival kicked off for its third year in fine style at the Dendy Opera Quays cinema on Thursday 8 August 2002. Plenty of well-dressed folks gathered in the cinema forecourt to rub shoulders, network like fiends, knock back free plonk and to bask in the general ambience (not hard when the Sydney Harbour Bridge forms the backdrop!). But they also came to pay respect to festival directors Juanita Kwok & Paul de Carvalho, who year after year put together a world class festival on a rice cracker budget.
The SAPFF mission statement is threefold:
- to promote the best in Asian cinema;
- to promote the work of Asian-Australian film-makers, or films about the Asian-Australian experience;
- and to forge new ties between Asia and Australia.
On these terms, the 2002 festival is already a success. The best in Asian cinema is in evidence with 16 terrific films from throughout the Asian region, from the Korean smash hit
Friend to the porcine Hong Kong animation My Life as McDull to the dangerous
Dead or Alive movies of Miike Takashi to the shot-in-Sydney Bollywood blockbuster
Heart's Desire to the Australian classic The Year of Living
Dangerously; the festival's annual Short Soup film-making competition attracted nearly 30 entries from around Australia, perhaps each of them a feature director of tomorrow; and ties were enthusiastically forged by the huge crowd of delegates, business folk, film-makers, TV crews and journos at the opening, so energetically in fact that it was hard to hear some of the speeches!
The joint certainly quietened down for Paul Keating, the festival's patron. For those of you from overseas, Keating was Australia's Prime Minister from 1991-1996, and during that time always held the view that Australia is part of Asia, not Europe or America. In his rousing speech from the "Mussolini-like podium" he expressed regret that this pan-Asian view is not held by the current conservative government (he joked that he and Chris Doyle were working on a new film,
Liberal-Proof Fence). Keating talked about visiting China in 1991 and seeing Chen Kaige directing at the Beijing Film Studio, and thinking even then that this was something that Australia should be a part of.
Making a direct link, Chinese film-maker Zhang Yimou was in attendance. He gave a short speech via a translator that although the festival was not as large as some, it was big in spirit. The festival was officially launched with the annual ribbon cutting. Rogue Australian cinematographer Chris Doyle grabbed his scissors and with a devilish grin mimed a cutting motion with the cry "Think Miramax!"
(An exhibition of Doyle's photo collage work is running concurrent with the
festival at the Asia Australia Arts Centre, Hay Street, Chinatown.)
The crowd then ambled into two cinemas to enjoy the winner of the Short Soup competition, Eliza Johnson's short film
Tree, a beautiful short film about a young Indian-Australian girl who adopts an old tree after the death of her mother. It was followed by Zhang's
Happy Times, a bittersweet comedy starring Dong Jie and Zhao Benshan. Look for a full review on Heroic-Cinema when the film has its Australian season starting 5 September, but suffice to say it was beautifully made and perfectly set the benchmark for quality Asian cinema that SAPFF represents.
After the screening most folks headed to the nearby Aqualuna bar to continue forging ties until well into the night. SAPFF was well and truly launched. The festival runs from 9 - 17 August at the new venue of Dendy
Martin Place, and is in my view the highlight of the Australian festival season; as old Zhang says, it may be small, but it has a very big heart. (And a musical Thai western. C'mon, what's not to like about that?)
For more about this year's program, visit the festival website at www.sapff.com.au
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