REGIONAL INTERSECTIONS

The filmmaking of Australia’s own neighbourhood is little seen by local mainstream audiences, apart from film festival and SBSTV screenings. Yet Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines at least have long-standing popular filmmaking traditions that date back to before World War Two, whilst Singapore was the birthplace of Shaw Brothers studios, and eventually the modern Hong Kong film industry. The region’s also had a long tradition of passionate cinema and critical Art cinema making and thinking. In the 1970s, a unique regional brand of ‘Third Cinema’ realism emerged in the Philippines and Vietnam. Since the 1980s, distinctive regional filmmaking has also begun to emerge on the international film circuit, whilst the region’s distinctive popular genres – chilling Ghost Stories, marshal-arts action movies, and the B-movie vigour of its commercial exploitation cinemas – also continues to find Cult movie enthusiasm in the West. The NFSA’s first annual showcase of our ‘local’ cinema is presented in collaboration with the Australian National University’s Southeast Asia Centre and the conference Intersections of Area, Cultural and Media Studies, to be held at the NFSA on 25 and 26 February 2010. Guests include leading Indonesian filmmakers Garin Nugroho and Riri Riza and the Thai documentary filmmaker Uruphong Raksasad. We acknowledge the assistance of The Ford Foundation.

THE DREAMERS

(Sang Pemimpi) Dir: Riri Riza, Indonesia, 2009, tbc mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)

Riza and producer Mira Lesmana’s sequel to their Indonesian box office hit The Rainbow Troops is again based on Andrea Hirata’s immensely popular novels about childhood in the remote Sumatran island of Belitung. The new film carries the story forward to high school days in the 1980s, as Ikal, Arai and Jimbon, all now teens, struggle with love and the passage to manhood. “We want to show how these teenagers stick with their dreams and fight against poverty, traditional values and actually make their dreams come true…” – Riri Riza. Riri Riza and producer Mira Lesmana will introduce this Australian premiere screening.

OPERA JAWA

Dir: Garin Nugroho, Indonesia/Austria, 2006, 120 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)

One of seven films commissioned by festival guru Peter Sellars to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, Indonesian director Garin Nugroho retells the ancient Sanskrit epic of Ramayana as a sensual Javanese tale of the love of two village potters fractured by the allure of power. Nugroho’s film combines the traditional and modernist in a blindingly colourful fusion of Gamelan melodies, Javanese shadow puppetry and traditional dance (by one of Madonna’s collaborators Eko Supriyanto), brought together with the sculpture and performance art of contemporary Yogyakarta. Garin Nugroho will introduce this Canberra premiere screening.

TALENTIME

Dir: Yasmin Ahmad, Malaysia, 2009, 119 mins, 35mm (unclassified 15+)

As teachers and students rush to pull a high school talent contest together, nothing seems like it will be right on the night. Except maybe the teen romance that’s budding between the deaf-mute son of a strict Indian widow and the contest’s rising talent, the gentle daughter of a big-hearted and slightly zany Muslim family. Does a Malaysian cross between Romeo and Juliet and High School Musical sound a little cheesy? Well, in the delicate hands of the great director Yasmin Ahmad, the rom-com starts off as tender and funny, but builds into a deeply moving call for reconciliation between the diverse communities that make up a modern multi-cultural Asian society. The Malaysian box office hit of 2009 will have its Canberra premiere screening in honour of director Ahmad, who passed away soon after the film’s completion.

A POET

(Puisi Tak Terkuburkan) Dir: Garin Nugroho, Indonesia, 1996, 83 mins, video, (unclassified 18+)

Shot on video in seven days, Nugroho’s work is still one of the few Indonesian films to confront Indonesia’s own ‘killing fields’ of 1965. Famous Aceh poet Ibrahim Kadir plays himself in the film, using the ‘Didong’ style of traditional Acehnese poetic ballad to express the trauma of the thousands of Acehnese (and another estimated 500,000 plus across Indonesia) who were detained and murdered as suspected ‘Communists’ by Indonesian military.

AGRARIAN UTOPIA

(Sawan baan na) Dir: Uruphong Raksasad, Thailand, 2009, 120 mins, (unclassified 18+)

Uruphong Raksasad gave up mainstream filmmaking to return to his North Thai rural roots, and a new career in the hybrid docudrama form. For his new work, Uruphong rented a local rice paddy and convinced two local families to work on the land with him over a number of seasons, meanwhile also building a relationship with a former sociologist gone back-to-nature and his own eccentric agricultural methods. The result is a hauntingly beautiful testament to a passing way of living off and with the land, and the winner of the UNESCO prize at the 2009 Asia- Pacific film awards. Uruphong Raksasad will introduce this Canberra premiere screening.

THE SCREEN AT KAMCHANOD

(Pee Chang Nang) Dir: Songsak Mongkolthong, Thailand, 2007, 97 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)

In 1987, an outdoor movie screening in rural Thailand was reportedly attended by spirits, who emerged from the forest to watch and then suddenly disappeared. From this urban myth, director Mongkolthong has fashioned one of the most chilling hits of recent Thai horror cinema, resetting the story to a team of investigators who borrow the film print and a deserted Bangkok cinema to look for the truth – and find their screening being invaded by invisible patrons who just love to put their feet up on the seats! Canberra Premiere.

AT THE END OF DAYBREAK

(Sham moh) Dir: HoYuhang, South Korea/ Hong Kong/ Malaysia, 2009, 94 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)

In a story that could be by S.E. Hinton or filmed by Nick Ray, working-class boy Chai loves middle-class schoolgirl Ying even more than his motorcycle. But he’s 23 and she’s 15. When they are found out, her greedy parents plot to blackmail his struggling alcoholic mother (a surprising bit of off-casting for HK action heroine Kara Hui) to pay for their childrens’ Australian university tuition. HoYuhang (Rain Dogs) is the master of a new sort of Malaysian neo-noir, using its gleam and style to comment on the class, gender and race relationships of a complex modern Asian society. Australian Premiere.

ADRIFT

(Choi voi) Dir: Bui Thac Chuyn, Vietnam, 2009, 102 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)

Naïve middle-class bride Duyen marries taxi driver Hai for his good-looks and stable income. But Hai quickly retreats from the marital bed to his mother’s cooking, leaving Duyen to the consolation of writer friend Cam and her circle of western-lifestyle hedonists. This is a tale from modern Hanoi City that surprises in its sensuality, Art movie production design and erotic power. “After all the lean years in which Vietnamese cinema was kept alive by émigrés… here at last… a home-grown movie to compare with the best in current East-Asian cinema.” – Shelly Kraicer. Australian premiere.

THE MAIN THING IS TO STAY ALIVE

(L’important c’est de rester vivant) Dir: Roshane Saidnattar, France/Cambodia, 2009, 97 mins, video, (unclassified 18+)

A childhood slave and then survivor of refugee camps, before settling with her mother in France, Roshane Saidnattar returns to Cambodia to interview Khieu Samphan, the unrepentant and (when the film was shot) still at-liberty Khmer Rouge ideologue. Then, alongside her mother and own daughter, three generations make an emotional journey back to the hamlet where she’d been born into Year Zero. Saidnattar’s film is a stunning reminder of the stories still to be told about the 'killing fields'. Canberra premiere.

INDEPENDENCIA and MEMORIES OF A FORGOTTEN WAR

Total tunning time 129 mins. Both films (unclassified 18+)

Raya Martin's Independencia (Philippines, 2009, 76 mins, 35mm) is an allegory of 20th century Filipino history and America’s beginnings as a colonial power, shot in homage in the poverty-row style of Filipino studio movies of the 1930s, with a '…dreamlike poetry that… (shows) the spirit of resistance… to be mysterious, unending.' - Tony Rayns. Preceded by Memories of a Forgotten War (USA/Philippines, 2001, 55 mins, video); Sari Lluch Dalena and Camilla Benolirao Griggers’ docu-dramatisation of the brutal Philippine–American Wars of the early 20th century; little-known, but resonating in future US conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. Canberra Premieres.

SLICE!

Dir: Kongkiat Komesiri, Thailand, 2009, 95 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)

A red-suitcase wheeling killer is carving up Bangkok’s sleazy nouvelle riche and tourists. A deeply undercover cop remembers a bullied childhood friend from his village and begins to make a connection between the friend and the killer’s M.O. The cop’s no longer certain which side of the law he’s on, but his police handlers send him back home to track the lead down. An inventive genre diversion for its co-scriptwriters, Thai New Wave master directors Wisit Sasanatieng (Tears of the Black Tiger) and Kongkiat Komesiri, Slice! gives the modern serial killer genre movie a very Thai twist. Canberra premiere.

THE MAIN THING IS TO STAY ALIVE

(L’important c’est de rester vivant) Dir: Roshane Saidnattar, France/Cambodia, 2009, 97 mins, video, (unclassified 18+)

Year Zero survivor Roshane Saidnattar makes an emotional journey back to the Cambodian hamlet where she was a born, confronting the memories and the perpetrators of a childhood as a Khmer Rouge child slave. Canberra premiere.