Third episode happened in 2008.
As I wanted to enjoy more the movies without stress, I moved from the White Tiger pass to the Black dragon pass. This way I had a special queue and a reserved seat for each movie. In addition this makes more incomes for the FEFF and hopefully maintains in life this good festival.
We wanted to arrive on time for the new
sequel of Death Note (see FEFF 2007) called L change the world. And
as the character of L was the good craziest in the first movies, we
were very curious. But traffic jams let us arrive too late for the
20h session.
Anyway we got then an introduction to
Asian comedy with the hilarious Quickie Express, sex comedy coming
from the apparently conservative Indonesia. Other comedies watched
during this FEFF are very good such as the weird In the pool by the
Japanese Miki Satoshi and the awakening Gachi boy, wrestling with a
memory from Japan. Not so good was the Chinese Lucky dog.
A nice characteristic of a film
festival is to discover not only movies but also genres. This way I
discovered the Pinku via an average Japanese movie Love master. It is
a kind of erotic movie with the distance typical from Japan and some
other Asian countries. Other discovery comes from the retrospective
on the South Korean director Shin Sang-ok. The movie A college
woman's confession had been released in 1958. The style was not so
developped but the South Korean film school got much better since
then. Another discovery is the UFO from China PK.COM.CN. I loved this
movie because anything touched me but I was not really able to
explain it. I should watch it again, but this is the typical kind of
film that is not on DVD/Bluray and is shown only a few times around
the world.
Then we watched in another classical
category of drama the sequel of Always – Sunset on third street.
Again very fine story and beautiful pictures. Then Happiness, having
a slice of Romance, from South Korea; The other half, from China, and
Fine, totally fine, from Japan, having a slice of comedy.
Movies from the Philippines let a strange impression on the country, such as the drama Casket for rent with its perspective on the
misery. Then we watched something that might be Science-fiction,
Resiklo. Both show very cheap means but a rich creativity.
The typical action genre has been
represented by the Thai Muay thai chaiya, with a classical story and
very good action scenes; the Japanese Crows-Episode 0, average school
movie; the Hong-Kong Run papa run, Tactical unit – the code and
Sparrow. The last one being the best of these, directed by Johnnie
To. The Chinese epic The assembly did not bring any surprise. Two
thrillers were well mastered from the story and technical point of
view, The glorious team Batista, from Japan and Our town, from South
Korea. The most original movie has been Mad detective, from
Hong-Kong, again directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai. The polar
turns more to a mystery or psycho-drama with extremely creative
directing ideas.
During the Horror day, we have watched
Zombie Kampung Pisang, from Malaysia; Kaidan, from Japan; Altar, from Philippines.
The Malaysian movie was extremely cheap and bad technically but the
story is supposed to mirror the political situation of the country in
2007-2008. Altar has a well-built suspense at the beginning.
Some unexpected movies as well, the
romance Love of Siam from Thailand, very fine, and the war movie from
Vietnam, The rebel.
FEFF night on Saturday, always a bit
boring because we were arriving after the last movie, thus around 3h
and then the Italians are not very open and the cinephiles are going
sleeping to watch the first movie at 9h in the morning. We lived some
good DJ and play-back bands. Our behaviour will get every year worse
towards these parties, because we focuses more and more on the
movies. For 2014, we will try to make at least one party correctly,
so that we can enjoy the real atmosphere and not complain again about
it... We'll see...
PS: Pictures are missing from that year. For next FEFFs, we had more cameras...
Unfortunately I couldn't attend that edition of the FEFF. When reading your article, I realize that if it were not for the FEFF, I would have no other opportunity of discovering this kind of movies. That alone is a good reason to go back this year (in addition to the great city, food and weather). All the genres discoveries that you mention are a great thing about the FEFF.
ReplyDeleteI liked the first two Death Note so I managed to buy and watch L Change the World some years ago and it was pleasant. I would have liked to see the sequel to Always - Sunset on Third Street. I may have heard from Kaidan, Altar and Crows 0 when reading Mad Movies, and I discovered the pinku style in 2011, but from all the movies you mention I think only Mad Detective became known to the general public.
In 2014 the movies will end at midnight, so we may have a better opportunity to enjoy the FEFF parties.