[ HIFF 2003 COVERAGE ]
2003 film fest offers
a dizzying and dazzling
array of choices
The Hawai'i International Film Festival is now in its "young adulthood." At 23 years of age, it has been recognized as one of the better festivals worldwide in showcasing Asian and Pacific Rim films.
Entrants from a record 34 countries have made this year's festival the biggest to date, with 165 films to be screened over a 10-day period in Honolulu, featuring 12 world premieres and 31 U.S. premieres.
23rd Hawaii International Film Fest
Where: Signature Dole Cannery, the Doris Duke Theatre at Honolulu Academy of Arts and Hawaii TheatreWhen: Thursday through Nov. 9
Tickets: $8 adults; $7 children, military, students and seniors 62 years and older; and free to festival Ohana members ($6 each additional ticket). $10 for opening night benefit screening of "The Company" at the Hawaii Theatre.
Call: 538-3456 or visit www.hiff.org
In addition to the usual selection of works by local, mainland, Asian and Pacific Rim filmmakers, there continues to be a large number of European films that festival-goers can choose from.
This could turn out to be a daunting year for HIFF regulars, however, because the lineup of films looks particularly good. Two independent features shot in Hawaii make their debuts, the selection of films in the "Around the World" section is a strong one and the "Reel Life" documentary section is proof of how that genre has blossomed recently.
Old-school martial arts movie fans will be glad to welcome "Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film Tour." In response to the recent flurry of martial arts action found in mainstream U.S. films, eight groundbreaking films from the Shaw Brothers' Hong Kong studio's 1966 to 1980 heydey will be featured.
The only thing missing will be the hilarity of seeing these "chop socky" epics with bad English dubbing, because all of these restored classics will be shown in their near-original glory (thanks to the help of the University of California at Los Angeles' Film and Television department), on 35mm widescreen prints, in Mandarin with new English subtitles.
Coverage of the Hawaii International Film Festival will continue daily in the Today section and Friday in Weekend.
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COURTESY OF HIFF
From left-to-right: "Traces of the Dragon," screening 3:30 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 7; "Tokyo Godfathers," 7 p.m. Friday and 6:45 p.m. Nov. 8; and "They Call Her Lady Fingers (The Betty Loo Taylor Story)," showing 6 p.m. Sunday at the Doris Duke Theatre, with "Living Your Dying".
Hawaii International
Film Festival 2003
NOW, FOR the rest of the Hawaii International Film Festival story. Here are highlights of what will be screening. Except where noted, all will be shown at Signature Dole Cannery:
Golden Maile nominees
Every year, the festival awards the Golden Maile for best feature and best documentary. The jurors are producer, writer and former director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival Roger Garcia; India cinema scholar Lalitha Gopalan; Hollywood Reporter reviewer Kirk Honeycutt; Maori filmmaker and actress Merata Mita; and Hollywood director Mark Rydell.The feature nominees are:
"Blind Shaft": Winner of the Silver Bear award at this year's Berlin Film Festival, this Chinese drama exposes the poor conditions for the thousands of coal miners who risk their lives every day for menial wages at the hands of corrupt mine owners. The bleak picture includes con men who recruit relatives to work in the mines and then murder them to collect family hardship compensation. (10 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday at Signature Dole Cannery)
"The Twilight Samurai": In the twilight of the samurai era, just prior to the Meiji Restoration, a low-ranking samurai is barely able to support his two young daughters and senile mother. When his wife dies from consumption, he is forced to sell his "soul," his sword, to pay for her funeral while continuing his life without bitterness and with dignity. (7 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 8 at Signature Dole Cannery)
"Don't Cry": Kazahstan director Amir Karakulov employs handheld, digital video cinematography for its greatest strength -- to take the audience intimately along the inner journeys and hardships of its players, all non-actors improvising their roles. A voice-strained opera singer moves in with distant relatives while she recovers. But she puts her opera gowns up for sale in the market and sells her blood to the point of anemia to pay for medicine needed by an ailing nephew. (7 p.m. Nov. 3 and 9:45 p.m. Nov. 4 at Signature Dole Cannery)
"Goodbye Dragon Inn": Taiwan's Tsai Ming-Liang presents a minimal and cinematically eloquent look at lonely souls who frequent a local revival theater. (6:45 p.m. Nov. 4 and 3:30 p.m. Nov. 6 at Signature Dole Cannery)
"Magnifico": The title is the nickname of a 9-year-old boy who tries to live up to his name but who is, at heart, ashamed of it. All the attributes and expectations his father invested in naming his second son "Magnifico" acquire absurd dimensions in their humble town environment of poverty, sickness and suffering. A heart-tugging Philippines film from Maryo J. Delos Reyes. (7:30 p.m. Nov. 5 at Signature Dole Cannery and 8:15 p.m. Nov. 7 at Doris Duke Theatre)
Documentary nominees are:
"Be Good, Smile Pretty": Tracy Droz Tragos' sorrow-filled journey to rediscover her late father, a man killed in a rocket attack in the Mekong Delta in 1969. (3 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 5 at Signature Dole Cannery)
"Dream Cuisine": One of the last chefs of traditional Shandong cuisine -- a culinary style lost during China's Cultural Revolution -- embarks on a quest to return to her home country to teach young chefs how to prepare the cuisine. But she finds that her food values are at odds with the progressive attitude of the modern chefs. (6:45 p.m. Nov. 3 and 12:45 p.m. Nov. 8 at Signature Dole Cannery)
"Burning Dreams": The Shanghai Dreams 52 School is a small dance school that teaches jazz, tap and hip-hop dance to those who dream of becoming professional dancers. Focusing on the lives of three ambitious dancers, the black-and-white cinematography is a work of visual poetry. (7:30 p.m. Nov. 4 and 4 p.m. Nov. 7 at Signature Dole Cannery)
COURTESY OF HIFF
"Twilight Samurai," up for a Golden Maile award, screening 7 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 8 at Signature Dole Cannery.
'Moonlight & Movies' Opening night benefit
"The Company": Robert Altman's latest film examines the intense workings of a ballet company. Neve Campbell (who studied with the National Ballet of Canada) plays a woman poised to become a principal dancer who's struggling with the physical and emotional demands of her vocation. Campbell performs her own dancing, surrounded by real-life Joffrey Ballet members. (6:30 p.m. Thursday at Hawaii Theatre)
Salaam! India
"Flavors": Directed by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, and edited by five-time Oscar nominee Frank Reynolds, this is a hilarious journey through the trials of romance, work, friendship and family among first-generation Indians in America. It's similar in theme to such popular ethno-cultural films as "The Wedding Banquet" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." (6:45 p.m. Friday and 3:30 p.m. Nov. 5)
Planet Anime
"Tokyo Godfathers": "Millennium Actress" creator Satoshi Kon's latest film is about three homeless people -- a former professional bicycle racer, a transvestite and a runaway girl who discover a baby girl at a garbage dump who head for the city in search for the baby's parents. (7 p.m. Friday and 6:45 p.m. Nov. 8)"The Triplets of Belleville": French director Sylvain Chomet's eccentrically designed and surreal film concerns a lonely boy who becomes a champion cyclist, his grandmother, and the title characters, three bizarre female music-hall stars from the 1930s. This was a surprise hit at the Cannes Film Festival this year. (7:15 p.m. Nov. 6)
Signature galas
"Girl with a Pearl Earring": The film lifts the veil shrouding the famous and incandescent Vermeer portrait and the painter's mid-17th-century home life. Scarlett Johansson ("Lost in Translation") plays the girl who goes to live and work in the household of Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth). When Vermeer discovers the girl's growing interest in painting, he turns to her as a sanctuary from domestic stress. (7:15 p.m. Friday)"The Cooler": Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is a walking, talking jinx. His luck ran out in Vegas before he placed a bet, and debt keeps him trapped there until he can repay it. His luck changes for the better, though at the worst time, after he starts an affair with a cocktail waitress. (7:15 p.m. Sunday and 9:45 p.m. Nov. 6)
"Mambo Italiano": Already heralded as the gay Italian version of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," this coming-out farce is set in Montreal's Little Italy. A closeted TV writer has a chance encounter with a childhood friend-turned hunky cop that leads to romance. The lavish production features bright mambo rhythms, effervescent pop songs and an appropriately campy/tacky 1970s look. (7:15 p.m. Nov. 3)
COURTESY OF HIFF
The bus transports its unusual passengers including Teen Angel (Chanel Akiko Hirai), Father Christmas (Mako) and Aka-Chan (Janet Adderley) in "Bus Story," a narrative film written and directed by Donna Choo, which screens at noon Saturday and 4:30 p.m. Nov. 4 with other short Cinema Asia films.
Indie Scene, USA
"Five Years": In a debut for local writer-director Brett Wagner a young man released from juvenile prison goes to live with his brother and his wife in rural Ohio, causing the couple's safe world to crumble. (9:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Nov. 8)"Saints and Soldiers": Ryan Little from the Brigham Young University film school directed this low-budget feature, with the help of enthusiastic World War II re-enactors, about a Mormon soldier who helps his fellow escapees during the Battle of the Bulge. (7:30 p.m. Nov. 3)
"Ghostlight": Legendary dancer Martha Graham is paid homage by male performance artist Richard Move. A documentary filmmaker (played by Ann Magnuson) gains access to the diva's creative process as she attempts to mount a new production of the story of Phaedra. It features cameos by Deborah Harry, Isaac Mizrahi and Mark Morris, who just performed here. (6:45 p.m. Nov. 5 and 9:45 p.m. Nov. 8)
"Girls Will Be Girls": A smart script, sharp timing and outrageous special effects made this "Valley of the Dolls"-meets-"All About Eve" farce a Sundance Film Festival hit. Drag divas gleefully stab each other in the back and juggle eating disorders, men and alcohol. (7 p.m. Nov. 9)
Midnight Dark
"The Grudge": Director Takashi Shimizu has created an urban legend that retools resentment as a 21st-century terror. The ghosts of a murdered family torment anyone who catches them haunting the house that was the scene of the crime, using the details of each of their deaths as weapons against the living. This has been called one of the most frightening films in recent years. (10 p.m. Friday and 10:15 p.m. Nov. 6)
China's New Wave
"Crazy Mind" (formerly titled "Manhole"): A Beijing nightclub diva remains faithful to her ordinary boyfriend more out of a feeling of obligation than love, because he's on parole after serving seven years for a brawl defending the honor of his then-high school sweetheart. When the boyfriend turns for economic help from a now-wealthy classmate, the classmate showers presents on the diva while the boyfriend plans to rob him with the help of two bumbling cohorts. A broad, colorfully visual comic urban romance/caper by Chen Daming. (12:15 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. Nov. 8)"Traces of the Dragon": This engaging documentary is about international superstar Jackie Chan, who learns about the brothers and sisters he never knew he had. His mother's ailing health leads Chan's father to reveal family stories that involve political upheaval, abandonment of the children, black marketing, espionage and opium dealing. (3:30 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 7)
COURTESY OF HIFF
Neve Campbell, right, stars in "The Company," a film about the struggles of an up-and-comer in a ballet troupe, which screens 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Hawaii Theatre.
Roger Ebert's HIFF Pick
"People I Know": Even though the popular film critic from the Chicago Sun-Times won't be here due to medical complications, his choice for the festival this year is a drama starring Al Pacino, Téa Leoni, Kim Basinger and Ryan O'Neal. A weary New York press agent is called upon to baby-sit a tortured TV actress. Maneuvering through a drug-enhanced night lands him in the middle of a scandal that he cannot survive unscathed. (3:45 p.m. Saturday)
Around the World
"Callas Forever": Fanny Ardent plays the legendary opera star Maria Callas. The effects of a throat ailment, vocal stress and the loss of the love of her life, Aristotle Onassis, left her vocally bankrupt by age 53. But as a recluse in 1977 Paris, she is approached by an old friend (Jeremy Irons) with an idea to immortalize her. (7 p.m. Saturday at Signature Dole Cannery and 4:15 p.m. Nov. 9 at Doris Duke Theatre)"Kops": This zany Swedish comedy follows four small-town cops (including a bickering couple, a lovesick single parent and a wannabe supercop) in a desperate attempt to save their jobs by committing their own petty thefts and amateurish vandalizing. (3:15 p.m. Nov. 3 and 7 p.m. Nov. 4)
"Flower of Evil": Claude Chabrol's 50th feature is about a wealthy French family that starts to splinter when the wife ventures into local politics and a discontented son returns from a long sojourn in America. It isn't long before buried hints of murder, adultery, incest and wartime collaboration emerge. (10:15 p.m. Nov. 4 and 8)
"Salt": Former Hawaii resident Anne Misawa shot this Icelandic drama in a naturalistic, cinema vérité style using a hand-held video camera. Bradley Rust Grey's film is about two sisters who, tired of working in a fish packing plant, take a car trip to the big city and end up unexpectedly in a small town. (9:45 p.m. Nov. 5 and 12:15 p.m. Nov. 8)
The Filipino Experience
"Lumpia": A mysterious, silent warrior who dispenses doses of swift martial arts and a calling card of lumpia keeps an eye on the skirmishes between "The Pack" and "The Crew" amongst the Filipino-American students of Fogtown High School in the "ultimate home-made movie" with comic book panel-action and musical numbers. (3 p.m. Saturday and noon Nov. 8)
Made in Japan
"Shara": Director Naomi Kawase returns to the fest after a six-year absence with an alluring film about two young people who learn details of their past from their shared childhood. (7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3:45 p.m. Nov. 7)"Hotel Hibiscus": Filmed on location in Okinawa's Hotel Sun Palace, a girl learns that in order to preserve her native culture and family bonds with music and traditional stories, she must come to terms with an urban, Western influence that is slowly swallowing the country's spiritual values. A touching comedy from director Yuji Nakae. (3:45 p.m. Sunday and 12:30 p.m. Nov. 8)
Taiwan's Emerging Cinema
"Drifters": Wang Xiaoshuai, the director of "Beijing Bicycle," delivers a severe story of modern life in China. A drifter repatriated from the United States finds a tentative romance with a member of a traveling Shanghai opera troupe. When his former girlfriend's family brings the son he left behind back to China, he's barred from seeing the child. (12:30 p.m. Sunday and 3:15 p.m. Nov. 8)
COURTESY OF HIFF
"Red Hibiscus," a film directed by Robert Pennybacker, screens 6 p.m. Saturday and 6:30 p.m. Nov. 6 with a series of other short films in the Hawaii Cinema category.
Hawaii: Cinema No Ka Oi
"They Call Her Lady Fingers (The Betty Loo Taylor Story)": This documentary traces the life and career of the local pianist, from her emergence as a child prodigy to her status today as "Hawaii's First Lady of Jazz." (6 p.m. Sunday at Doris Duke Theatre, screening with "Living Your Dying")"Daniel K. Inouye: An American Story": A detailed portrait of the life and times of Hawaii's senator, as assembled by director and co-producer Heather Giugni (1 p.m. Nov. 5 at Signature Dole Cannery)
"The Symposium": Michael Wurth's ambitious and dialogue-driven modernization of Plato's dialogues about the meaning of love is set during a cocktail party. The cast includes local actors Dann Seki, Cheryl Bartlett and J. Martin Romualdez, plus Hawaii expatriates Michael Hennessy and Anne Marie Selby. (3:30 p.m. Nov. 5 at Doris Duke Theatre)
Action Asia
"Aragami" and "2LDK": In 2002, cutting-edge Japanese directors Ryuhei Kitamura and Yukihiko Tsutsumi challenged each other to the Duel Project, a competition to create the ultimate duel-to-the-death action flick, and the director whose film was less popular would have to shave his head. Kitamura's "Aragami" pits a samurai against a demon, and Tsutsumi's "2LDK" offers a far less cosmic but far more terrifying struggle between two aspiring actresses who are also roommates and up for the same film role. See how they fared. ("Aragami" screens at 10 p.m. Sunday, and "2LDK" at 10 p.m. Nov. 3 and 4 p.m. Nov. 9)"Red Trousers -- The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen": Director and action star Robin Shou documents the art and background of these skilled stuntmen, who work without safety precautions. Shou will be at the screening. (8:45 p.m. Nov. 4, screening with "A Ninja Pays Half My Rent")
Films Down Under
"Molly & Mobarak": A Romeo and Juliet story set in a small Australian town -- he's the handsome Afghan refugee with a temporary visa, and she's the young English teacher he's in love with. (9:30 p.m. Sunday and 3 p.m. Nov. 6, screening with "I Think in White" and "Tolerance PSA")
Centerpiece gala
"Japanese Story": This film encapsulates the richness of Pacific Rim cinema. It's a tale of cultural differences, and the results of this collision of worlds. Toni Collette plays a geologist who finds herself having to baby-sit an aloof Japanese businessman (Gotaro Tsunashima). Hoping to strike up a business deal, she agrees to take him on a field trip around Western Australia's remote Pilbara desert. These two diametrically opposed strangers soon find themselves forced into a life-or-death situation in the harsh Outback. (6:30 p.m. Nov. 4 at Hawaii Theatre)
Heroic Grace: The Martial Arts Film Tour
"Intimate Confessions of Chinese Courtesan": In an example of the self-consciously styled martial arts films of the 1970s, the martial arts school is transposed to a brothel, the martial arts master becomes the madam and the female warrior a vengeful lesbian -- pure pulp poetry. (6:45 p.m. Nov. 6)"The 36th Chamber of Shaolin": The definitive "warrior-in-training" film directed by Lau Kar-leung stars Lau Kar-fai as the novice who progresses from victimhood to spiritual and martial enlightenment. (4 p.m. Nov. 8)
"Drunken Monkey": The hit from the recent Cinema Paradise independent film festival returns. The 2003 film marks a return to the kind of martial arts cinema that made the Shaw Brothers studio productions so popular. Set in China during the early 1930s, the story focuses on a martial arts master who discovers his brother is using their security company for illegal activities. (3:45 p.m. Nov. 9)
O Canada
"Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity": Director Mina Shum and actress Sandra Oh reunite in this ensemble piece about a 12-year-old girl, her single mother, a recently laid-off security guard and a butcher's familyr. The charming, quirky film is about the effects of magic, luck and spirituality. (7 p.m. Nov. 6 at Signature Dole Cannery and 3:30 p.m. Nov. 9 at Doris Duke Theatre)
Spotlight on Korea
"Save the Green Planet!": In a dark comedy that marks the directorial debut of Jang Jun-hwan, a young man convinces his circus-performer girlfriend that the planet Andromeda is approaching a critical point, and only an audience with an alien prince can avert disaster. The pair kidnap a Seoul businessman they believe to be an invader. (10 p.m. Nov. 6 and 7:15 p.m. Nov. 8)"Memories of Murder": Based on a true story, this drama details the failed attempt to solve a series of rape-murders of 10 women in a rural community near Seoul. Bong Joon-ho's film dispassionately investigates the murders and the work of the police. (7:15 p.m. Nov. 7 and 10:15 p.m. Nov. 9)
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