“Now in its 17th year under the influential curatorship of London-based Tony Rayns, the Dragon & Tigers series celebrates the continuing excellence and innovation of East Asian cinema, and aims in particular to introduce new talent to the West. The very extensive program remains a happy marriage of art and entertainment with the dual purpose of pleasing huge Vancouver audiences while well serving international film scholarship,” says Festival Director Alan Franey.

The Vancouver International Film Festival is really not very good at keeping secrets; they keep announcing films that will be screening rather than waiting until the big media conference on September 7th. Today brings us a listing of dozens of films that will be appearing as part of the East Asian program of films, as well as a list of the nominees for the Dragons & Tigers Competition for Young Asian Cinema.

In a later post, I will list the non-competition films that have been announced.

The films in this year’s competition are:

• BAMBI ? BONE (Shibutani Noriko, Japan) International Premiere
• CRYING TIGERS (Santi Taepanich, Thailand) International Premiere
• GIE (Riri Riza, Indonesia) International Premiere
• OX HIDE (Liu Jiayin, China) North American Premiere
• SHIN SUNG-IL IS LOST (Shin Jane, South Korea) North American Premiere
• THE SILENT HOLY STONES (Wanma-caidan, Tibet) World Premiere
• SO MUCH RICE (Li Hongqi, China) North American Premiere
• TEXTURE OF SKIN (Lee Sung-Gang, South Korea) North American Premiere

BAMBI ? BONE (Shibutani Noriko – Japan)

Young Tada, sexually abused by his own father, forms a friendship with Aya, a girl whose promiscuous mother often throws her out. Woman director Shibutani Noriko’s debut feature is not so much an account of paedophilia and child abuse as a celebration of the resilience and creative energies of kids. With Setoguchi Miki’s Mother’s Mother and also her Mother, and her Daughter (Japan), in which a young woman explores her love/hate feelings for her late mother. Grand Prix winner at 2005 Image Forum Festival in Tokyo.

CRYING TIGERS (Santi Taepanich – Thailand)
International Premiere

Drought-plagued Isan is Thailand’s poorest province; many born there migrate to other parts of the country. Santi Taepanich’s vibrant documentary looks at the successes and failures of three men and one woman from Isan who try to make it in Bangkok—from a pop star whose best days are past to a guy who dresses up as a fish to promote a seafood restaurant. A remarkably entertaining movie which broke new ground in Thai cinema.

GIE (Riri Riza – Indonesia)
International Premiere

One of the most ambitious movies ever made in Indonesia, Riri Riza’s film is drawn from the posthumous journals of Soe Hok-Gie, a Chinese-Indonesian activist who opposed the Soekarno government in the 1950s and the Soeharto dictatorship in the 1960s. Nicholas Saputra movingly plays the soulful young rebel amid a vivid evocation of the Jakarta of the period.

OX HIDE (Liu Jiayin – China)
North American Premiere

Already widely acclaimed as the most innovative Chinese film since Xiao Wu, Liu Jiayin’s debut comprises 32 fixed-angle shots of herself and her parents in their cramped Beijing home. Dad’s leather-goods business is going bankrupt, and all three members of the family are stressed and sleeping badly. The film’s obviously factual basis is belied by the fascinatingly stylised structure and compositions.

SHIN SUNG-IL IS LOST (Shin Jane – South Korea)
North American Premiere

Shin Jane (who calls herself “CEO and receptionist of Korea’s smallest film company”) has made a remarkable debut feature, a dark comedy reminiscent of Buñuel and Terayama. In a rural Christian orphanage, the kids are taught that eating is a sin. When the inevitable uprising comes, young Shin Sung-Il runs away into town and discovers the pornographic reality of restaurants …

THE SILENT HOLY STONES (Wanma-caidan – China)
World Premiere

Tibetan director Wanma-caidan shot his debut feature in his home village, and it has the breath of Tibetan realities blowing through it like no other film you’ve seen. A young trainee monk, torn between his prayers and Chinese VCDs, lives and learns a lot during the first three days of the new year, and it’s not hard to see his life as a cipher for Tibet’s future.

SO MUCH RICE (Li Hongqi – China)
North American Premiere

Poet and novelist Li Hongqi is the latest of China’s literary lions to turn to film-making. His ineffably eccentric debut follows Mr Mao, a man who goes through life carrying a bag of rice, as he leaves one girlfriend and lands—temporarily—in the arms of another. Li describes the film as “a clumsy joke, with sadness.” With two remarkable Japanese shorts: Ishiguro Yoshinori’s SILVER BIRCH, which has something to say about smoking, and Hirata Takahiro’s SLIDE 002, shot in Vancouver during his visit to VIFF last year.

TEXTURE OF SKIN (Lee Sung-Gang – China)
North American Premiere

Last year, VIFF profiled Korea’s foremost indie animator Lee Sung-Gang; now he’s back with his first live-action film, an erotic mystery thriller. Photographer Min-Woo meets a former girlfriend, now married, who agrees to have sex with him nine times. But after witnessing a fatal road accident Min-Woo moves into a new apartment and begins to ‘see’ the life of the previous tenant and her trans-sexual best friend …