HELD : |
September 18 (Fri.) -September 27 (sun.) |
VENUES : |
Elgala Hall, Nishitetsu Hall, Fukuoka International Congress Center |
EXHIBITION OF : |
47 films from 18 nations and regions |
ATTENDANCE: |
The Festival 2009 14,471
Sponsored Events 4,205
Total 18,675 |
OPENING FILM: |
“Go Go 70″ (2008/Korea) |
WINNER OF THE FUKUOKA AUDIENCE AWARD: |
“Don’t Burn” (2009/Vietnam) |
As the year celebrated the 20th Anniversary of Fukuoka’s “Asian Month”, work went into our film festival planning with a stronger emphasis on strengthening cooperation with other Asian Month projects through the co-hosting of anniversary activities with such entities as the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize, the Asian Pacific Festival Fukuoka and the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale.
Following the Fukuoka and Busan declaration designating the year 2009 as “Fukuoka-Busan Friendship Year”, the Festival exhibited a special feature program of 3 Korean films and hosted a symposium, which addressed films in Korea and Japan after Japan’s “Hanryu Korean Wave” fever.
The Festival opened with “Go Go ’70s”, one of the Korean films of our special feature program, a moving motion picture directed by Choi Ho about music and youngsters in Korea during the 70s.
As part of the 20th anniversary celebration of Fukuoka’s “Asian Month”, our Opening Night was held at the Fukuoka International Congress Center for the very first time. When our guests from many countries and regions of Asia entered the main hall on the red carpet, the cheering crowd of 1000 welcomed them with a storm of applause.
The 4th Fukuoka Audience Award went to “Don’t Burn”, a Vietnamese film directed by Dang Nhat Minh, a motion picture based on a true story about the long journey of a diary written during the Vietnamese War, which brought Vietnam and the United States closer together.
The Forum highlighted Asian films directed by Western filmmakers. Examples included “Machan” a film directed by an Italian with a Sri Lankan cast and “Left Handed”, directed by an Englishman with a Japanese cast. Did these films with mostly an Asian cast and staff except for the film director, signify a move transcending “Orientalism”? Both film directors to these films were invited for a discussion to probe into the background of this new trend.
This year, two new co-sponsored projects were held. One was the “Fukuoka Independent Film Festival” organized by a group of local independent film producers. The “Fukuoka Independent Film Festival” was held for the first time with the purpose of promoting communication and activity between the groups of organizers by exhibiting independent films, documentaries and experimental films produced in Fukuoka. The festival also established a sister-festival relationship with the Busan Asian Short Film Festival, which has a 29-year film festival history in Busan Metropolitan City. The festival opened with a memorandum signing ceremony making the sister-festival relationship official.
The other co-hosted project was the presentation of the “East Asian Film Subtitling Project by Students of Fukuoka University”. This was a presentation of a project where students from the Department of East Asian Studies, Faculty of Humanities of Fukuoka University volunteered to produce subtitles for Korean and Chinese films of the 1950s. |