[ HIFF SPRING '04 ]
COURTESY OF HIFF
Akebono appears in the documentary "Sumo East and West," which screens 6:30 p.m. April 2 at Sunset on the Beach.
HIFF reels in
Spring FlingFilm buffs rejoice: The festival is
offering more domestic and foreign
fare over a seven-day span in April
Chuck Boller, executive director of the Hawaii International Film Festival, is confident that the momentum of its fall festival will carry through to its "Spring Fling," which starts April 2 at the Dole Cannery multiplex.
Nathan Kurosawa's locally produced "The Ride," winner of the festival's audience award, has piqued the interest of at least one major Hollywood studio with distribution in mind. The fall festival's closing-night film, "The Barbarian Invasions," won the Academy Award for best foreign language film, and the festival also screened other films that garnered multiple Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
Seventh annual Hawaii International Film Festival Spring Fling
Where: Dole Cannery multiplex theaters 8 and 9When: April 2 to 8
Tickets: Advance ticket sales begin Thursday. Prices are $8 adults; $7 military, students, seniors and children; and $6 HIFF Ohana members, available at Dole Cannery box office. Tickets are nonrefundable.
Call: 528-4433, or go online at www.hiff.org
Helping hands needed
Festival organizers are still looking for volunteers to help with the Spring Fling, especially for the box office, membership, mailings and theater operations. Those interested can contact the festival by e-mailing volunteer@hiff.org or downloading the volunteer application from www.hiff.org. Volunteer forms are available at www.hiff.org/volunteers/
volunteerform.pdf.
Riding the success of "The Ride," which premiered at a Sunset on the Beach event, Boller says that another film with local ties, "Sumo East and West," will debut April 3 at the popular outdoor Waikiki event as well.
Also debuting will be "The Land Has Eyes," the Fijian feature made by Hawaii filmmakers Vilsoni Hereniko and Jeanette Paulsen that previously screened at the Sundance and Rotterdam film festivals.
Boller and his staff also include on their don't-miss list HIFF's opening-night film, "Touching the Void," a true story of a mountain climbing expedition gone awry, along the lines of Jon Krakauer's book "Into Thin Air," and "Dogville," the latest film from the always provocative Dutch director Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark").
"Dogville," starring Nicole Kidman and Paul Bettany, is described by film critic J. Hoberman as "the tale of a beautiful fugitive named Grace (Kidman) who is harbored, exploited and nearly martyred by the denizens of the eponymous small American town -- and who, in a convulsive finale, brings down upon them God's wrath."
Hoberman, in his article for the British monthly Sight & Sound, goes on to call the film "an austere parable of failed Christian charity and Old Testament payback," and von Trier's strongest film to date. "Dogville" was filmed with a single hand-held digital-video camera on an almost bare stage set.
COURTESY OF HIFF
The opening-night film, "Touching the Void," tells of the disastrous journey of two mountain climbers scaling the Peruvian Andes.
This spring's film festival schedule is as follows:
April 2
» 6:30 p.m. -- "Touching the Void" (USA/UK): The festival's opening-night film will screen simultaneously in both Dole Cannery theaters. See accompanying feature story for more about the film.» 8:45 p.m. -- "Singles" (South Korea): Described as an Asian version of "Sex and the City," the movie is set around the lives of four late-20-something professional women. At the heart of the film is pretty Na Nan (Jang Jin-young), who is about to hit 30 and believes that her life is in need of serious change. Repeats 3:45 p.m. April 3.
» 9:15 p.m. -- "Warriors of Heaven and Earth" (China): This epic costume drama traces the journey of a caravan carrying the sacred remains of the Buddha back to the Imperial City during the Tang Dynasty. The story centers around two warriors -- Lt. Li, a renegade soldier wanted for leading a violent mutiny when he is issued orders to kill women and children, and Lan Qi, a Japanese emissary who longs to return home but is charged by the emperor with capturing the errant Li. The two agree to a temporary truce until the caravan is safely through the territory of the bandit king Master An. (This was the People's Republic of China's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category in this year's Academy Awards.)
April 3
» 12:30 p.m. -- "Dolls" (Japan): The latest film from acclaimed director-actor "Beat" Takeshi Kitano is a departure from his earlier and violent yakuza thrillers. It's a whimsical allegory about dolls -- specifically the ones of traditional bunraku theater -- who inform the film's main fairy-tale story of a pair of star-crossed lovers driven mad by the vagaries of fate. The sumptuous theatrical costumes were designed by Yohji Yamamoto.» 12:45 p.m. -- "A Good Lawyer's Wife" (South Korea): Director-writer Im Sang-soo, known in his home country for his two controversial films on sexual themes, helms this provocatively erotic portrait of infidelity. A housewife rebels against her husband, a successful lawyer who's cheating on her. The wife begins an affair with a moody teenage boy who lives across the street. This film has been described as a Korean version of "American Beauty." Repeats at 8:45 p.m. April 7.
» 3:30 p.m. -- "Last Life in the Universe" (Thailand): A quiet Japanese librarian living in Bangkok is obsessed with suicide. His attempts are often interrupted by his brother who, on one of his unexpected visits, is accompanied by a yakuza gangster. A gunfight breaks out, leaving both visitors dead. The librarian can't dispose of the corpses, so he leaves his place and meets a feisty Thai bargirl, and a relationship develops despite their language barrier and clashing personalities. The film was shot by longtime festival favorite Christopher Doyle, who's worked with Wong Kar-wai and Zhang Yimou. (This was Thailand's Oscar submission for best foreign language film.)
» 6:30 p.m. -- "Dogville" (USA/UK/Denmark): See story for description. Repeats at 6:30 p.m. April 6.
» 6:30 p.m. at Sunset on the Beach -- "Sumo East and West" (Hawaii/USA): A documentary shows how outside forces are changing the look of the ancient Japanese sport, partly told through the story of Wayne Vierra, an amateur champion who runs the Oahu Sumo Club in Punaluu. But the film is mainly about how an increasing number of foreigners, from Hawaii, the mainland and Europe, are rising through Japan's professional ranks. Jesse Kuhaulua, Akebono and Konishiki also appear in the documentary. Repeats 6:30 p.m. April 8 at Dole Cannery multiplex.
» 6:45 p.m. -- "Last Scene" (Japan/South Korea): Hideo Nakata, usually known for creepy horror films -- the original "Ringu" ("The Ring") and "Dark Water" -- has created a touching tribute to a golden age of filmmaking. A washed-up former star is called in to play a dying cancer patient and, through his knowledge and enthusiasm for his craft, galvanizes the usually jaded crew of a long-running TV medical drama. Repeats at 6:45 p.m. April 7.
» 9 p.m. -- "Undead" (Australia): Forget about the current remake of "Dawn of the Dead!" Horror fans should be licking their chops instead over this low-budget, splatterfest debut from twins Peter and Michael Spierig. A small fishing town is bombarded by meteorites that bring a plague of zombies. Six locals find themselves together to do battle with the messy undead, including the town's newly crowned "Miss Catch of the Day," the resident loony, a young (and expecting) couple and two cops trying to keep things together. Oh, and did we mention the aliens, acid rain and killer fish? Repeats at 8:45 p.m. April 6.
» 9:15 p.m. -- "The Legend of the Evil Lake" (South Korea): This lavish, widescreen fantasy-horror film plays like the best Hong Kong genre films of the late 1980s, such as "The Bride with White Hair." A girl, fleeing from a vengeful queen for daring to fall in love with a powerful general, accidentally throws herself into a lake where an evil spirit dwells. Now possessing a human form, the spirit decides to wreak its revenge against the queen's dynasty. Repeats at 9 p.m. April 4.
April 4
» 12:30 p.m. -- "Jealousy Is My Middle Name" (South Korea): A slow-burning story of a graduate student who apprentices himself to the magazine editor who stole his girlfriend. The young man quickly becomes the trusted protégé of his enemy, and even when he loses his new lover to the same man, what seems like a quest for revenge becomes something else altogether. It's a promising debut from Park Chan-Ok, one of South Korea's few female directors.» 12:45 p.m. -- "The Twilight Samurai" (Japan): An encore presentation of the Oscar-nominated and HIFF Golden Maile Award winning film of last fall. Directed by Yoji Yamada, it's a story that takes place in 19th-century Japan. A widowed samurai, caring for his mother and two young daughters, has little time or inclination to pick up his former warrior life. That changes, however, when he steps forward to defend a young woman from an attack by her drunken ex-husband.
» 3:30 p.m. -- "Bright Future" (Japan): Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, known for such atmospheric chillers as "Cure," "Charisma" and "Pulse," fuses several genres -- sci-fi thriller, male bonding melodrama and rebellious youth culture -- to create an enigmatic, eerie study of marginalized young men. A laundry worker keeps a poisonous jellyfish in an aquarium with the utopian aim of allowing it to mutate into a freshwater creature. His comparatively dim co-worker seems to have a quiet crush on him. A sudden act of violence, however, leads to a scheme of breeding and setting the poisonous, glowing jellyfish loose into Tokyo's canal system.
» 3:15 p.m. -- "Kal Ho Naa Ho" (India): This Bollywood extravaganza is set in the "exotic" locale of post-9/11 New York City. A serious-minded daughter struggles to keep her financially distressed family together. Things change, however, when a handsome, extroverted young man moves into their tiny Indian neighborhood. Seeing her sadness, he sets about to try to bring happiness into her life. With the help of his Manhattan bachelor friend, the two manage to bring the young woman out of her dull and gloomy moods. But do things remain hunky-dory for long? Repeats 6:45 p.m. April 8.
» 6:30 p.m. -- "Purple Butterfly" (China): Director Lou Ye ("Suzhou River") is known for visually sumptuous and hypnotizing features revolving around topics of love and fate, coincidence and possibility. His latest film touches on a part of Chinese history rarely discussed: the activities of the underground anti-Japanese resistance movement during the 1930s. Zhang Ziyi plays a woman in love with a Japanese man about to be sent home for military service. Her devastation over his departure is compounded when she witnesses the death of her elder brother during an attack by the Japanese extreme right. She goes underground and joins a resistance group that, years later, plans to assassinate her former lover, now a top man in the Japanese secret service. Repeats at 8:45 p.m. April 5.
» 8:45 p.m. -- "Haute Tension" (France): Inspired by the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," this is a tale of two female student friends, Marie and Alex, who take a break between semesters at Alex's parents' remote French homestead. This leads to a night of horror when a mysterious, nomadic serial killer enters the picture. It's a stylish, finely constructed psycho-slasher genre flick that's guaranteed to terrify.
April 5
» 6:30 p.m. -- "Saved" (USA): This gleeful, nondenominational, politically incorrect comedy will ring true for anyone who's been to Bible camp. Brian Dannelly's indie film is a teasing take on the passionate moral convictions of adolescence and features a top-notch cast in Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit and Heather Matarazzo. Check out the tangled relationships between the characters. Good girl Mary, for instance, can't believe it when she gets pregnant by her newly gay boyfriend.» 6:45 p.m. -- "Magic Kitchen" (Hong Kong): This lighthearted Chinese romantic comedy is about a pretty and lovable chef named Yau, who strives to break free from a family curse that destines her to fail in every relationship. When Yau goes to Japan to see if she'll participate on the popular "King Chef" TV cooking contest, she accidentally bumps into an old flame she hasn't gotten over. But he's dating one of her best gal pals. As a result, Yau finds herself with more on her mind besides cooking. Repeats at 6:30 p.m. April 7.
April 6
» 6:45 p.m. -- "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ... and Spring" (South Korea): Kim Ki-duk's serene contemplation on the cycles of life was shot entirely around a floating monastery on a remote man-made lake in the mountains, marking a change from past films often fueled by violence and a radical view of Korean society. Here, an old monk teaches his young disciple the wisdom of Buddha over the many seasons of the film's title, even when the outside world intrudes with its pleasures and sufferings. This was South Korea's entry into the Oscars for best foreign language film.
April 8
» 8:45 p.m. -- "The Land Has Eyes" (Hawaii/Fiji/USA): The closing-night film is playwright and filmmaker Vilsoni Hereniko's directorial debut. Shot on digital video, this visually entrancing film is set in the time of Hereniko's childhood on the island of Rotuma, just before Fiji won its independence from the United Kingdom in 1970. Young Viki (Sapeta Taito) wants to clear the name of her father, who is wrongly accused of a crime by the British authorities. The girl resists the colonial Christian values imposed on them and prefers to be inspired by the local mythical figure of the Warrior Woman (played by Rena Owen, of "Once Were Warriors"), who gives Viki the power she needs.
COURTESY OF HIFF
The closing-night film, "The Land Has Eyes," will be screened at 8:45 p.m. April 8.
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