Here’s the listing of Asian films that the VIFF sent out this morning.

2005 DRAGONS & TIGERS SCREENINGS BY COUNTRY TO DATE

CHINA

GRAIN IN EAR (Zhang Lu) North American Premiere
Zhang Lu follows up the deadpan Tang Poetry with the more overtly funny /sad tale of a woman kimchi vendor and her terrible revenge on the men who wrong her. A single parent living next to a gaggle of hookers, Shunji is drawn into an affair with a married man and befriends a young cop —but both men betray her expectations. A prizewinner in Cannes this year.

KEKEXILI: MOUNTAIN PATROL (Lu Chuan)
Up there with Herzog’s Aguirre as fact-based drama with the kick of documentary, Lu Chuan’s Kekexili (rough pronunciation guide: Cur-cur-shee-lee) reconstructs a fateful clash between poachers and volunteer game reservists in the vast, mountainous Kekexili National Park in Tibet. At stake are the survival of the chinu, a Tibetan antelope—and of the men themselves. Staggeringly beautiful, deeply chilling.

MONGOLIAN PING-PONG (Ning Hao) Canadian Premiere
Ning Hao follows last year’s Incense with a film reflecting the inexorable social changes that are sweeping through Mongolia. Bilike, the young son of nomadic parents, finds a mysterious object on the steppes (it’s a ping-pong ball); his quest to discover its meaning or function alters his life forever.

OX HIDE (Liu Jiayin) 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.

PEACOCK (Gu Changwei) North American Premiere
Ace cinematographer Gu Changwei turns director with this vivid panorama of small-town family life in the early 1980s. Focused on the family’s three contrasted adolescent kids, it’s a patchwork of domestic incidents, crises and small, surreal epiphanies…the best of its kind since Edward Yang’s A One and a Two. A top prizewinner in Berlin.

SEASON OF THE HORSE (Ning Cai) Canadian Premiere
Directed by and starring China’s most famous Mongolian actor Ning Cai, this moving debut feature focuses on a nomadic herdsman whose pride won’t let him see that economic and cultural changes are forcing him to give up his traditional way of life. Handsome images, fine performances and a script that turns on several sharp ironies.

SHANGHAI DREAMS (Wang Xiaoshuai)
Wang Xiaoshuai’s Cannes prizewinner centres on a father-daughter conflict with ruinous consequences. A middle-aged couple who idealistically gave up their home in Shanghai to “serve the nation” in a remote backwater are now determined to cut their ties with the place and move back to the big city. But this means sabotaging their teenage daughter’s burgeoning romance with a local boy…Piercing drama with a powerful political backbeat.

THE SILENT HOLY STONES (Wanma-caidan) 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) 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.

STAR APPEAL (Cui Zi’en) International Premiere
Cui Zi’en, doyen of China’s New Queer Cinema, gives his idiosyncratic ideas about the alienness of queer identity and the queerness of angels a good working-out in this characteristic tragi-comedy. A naked Martian visits Earth. Xiao Bo picks him up as a hitch-hiker and brings him home so that they can learn from and about each other. But will the visitor come between Xiao Bo and his girlfriend? With Lin Tay-Jou’s experimental short BARDO (Taiwan), which applies the Christian concepts of Judgment Day and purgatory to the Buddhist realm between life and death.

STOLEN LIFE (Li Shaohong) Canadian Premiere
Again working with the extraordinary Zhou Xun as her lead actress, Li Shaohong adapts a shocking story by An Dun, itself based on fact. Yan-ni is a sullen and reclusive girl, raised by relatives in Beijing and alienated from her parents; she meets deliveryman Muyu on her first day in college and begins a relationship, little suspecting that she is locking herself into a hideous trap …

INDONESIA

GIE (Riri Riza) 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.

OF LOVE AND EGGS (Garin Nugroho) Canadian Premiere
The ever-surprising Garin Nugroho goes retro for a charming comedy-drama about a working-class Muslim community in Jakarta, shot entirely in the studio. The storylines include the struggle to acquire a cupola for the mosque, the stresses of first love and the selling of eggs. Beneath its benign surface interest in the place of Islam in the lives of believers, this is an angry anti-fundamentalist polemic.

JAPAN

ALTERNATIVE ANIME STRIKES BACK
The return of one of VIFF’s most popular features, a state-of-the-indie-art selection of the year’s best non-mainstream animation from Japan. Here are psychedelic eco-systems, body horrors, nose inspections, line drawings, computerised marvels and animation/live-action combinations—something for everyone! Includes the films BLACK SUN (Hiroshi Kondo), CONSULTATION ROOM (Kei Oyama), DAY OF NOISE (Wada Atsushi), GOODBYE SONG (Iki Norihito), TRILOGY OF CLOUDS (Naoyuki Tsuji), TRIP (Tanaami Keiichi and Aihara Nobuhiro), TWO TRIPS AND COFFEE (Mizumoto Hiroyuki) and YELLOW NIGHT (Aihara Nobuhiro).

BAMBI ? BONE (Shibutani Noriko)
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.

BASHING (Kobayashi Masahiro) North American Premiere
Directly inspired by the cases of Japanese volunteer workers in Iraq who were taken hostage and freed—only to find themselves ostracised and blamed back home in Japan for their “reckless, selfish behaviour.” Kobayashi Masahiro’s film centres on Yuko, a young woman who finds her community, her ex-boyfriend and finally even her father and step-mother turning against her.

HEART, BEATING IN THE DARK (1982) (Nagasaki Shunichi)
A milestone in Japanese indie film history, Nagasaki Shunichi’s outlaw classic stars Muroi Shigeru and Naito Takashi as a young couple on the run, holing up for the night in a borrowed room. Between episodes of rough sex their terrible secret is revealed in flashbacks—in which, amazingly, they switch genders and roles. With LONDON CALLING, in which Nagasaki has ulterior motives for visiting the London Film Festival.

HEART, BEATING IN THE DARK (Nagasaki Shunichi) World Premiere
Nagasaki Shunichi’s superb new film has a complex relationship with his original classic from 1982: it’s part remake, part sequel and part rethink. Muroi Shigeru and Naito Takashi return as Inako and Ringo, older and maybe wiser, while a new young couple go on the run. Nagasaki asks which are more delinquent: the kids or the grown-ups?

LINDA, KINDA, LINDA! (Yamashita Nobuhiro)
Yamashita Nobuhiro (director of slacker-comedy classics Hazy Life and No-one’s Ark) reinvents the high-school movie with the tale of an all-girl rock band trying to compete for a music prize with a several handicaps—including a non-Japanese speaking Korean vocalist (the incomparable Bae Du-Na, from Barking Dogs Never Bite). Riotously enjoyable.

PRINCESS RACCOON (Suzuki Seijun) Canadian Premiere
Remember our pioneering tribute to Suzuki Seijun back in 1991? Well, the grand old man is still at it, and here finally delivers his long-promised musical, starring (who else?) Odagiri Joe from Bright Future and China’s newest diva Zhang Ziyi. The story is a legend: an abandoned son meets a beautiful woman who is actually a raccoon spirit in human guise. The music ranges from schmalz to hip-hop; the visuals, of course, are out of this world.

TAKESHIS‘ (Takeshi Kitano)
The new Kitano film is his most intriguing and innovative in some while. ‘Beat’ Takeshi is a busy and successful TV star, while his forlorn lookalike Mr Kitano never gets the showbiz break he’s longing for. Around them, other people also seem to have doubles/triples or even quadruples, as the world fragments in a kaleidoscope of alternate realities, alternate possibilities or maybe just random daydreams and nightmares. The mood swings from wild comedy to rueful self-appraisal.

THE VOLATILE WOMAN (Kumakiri Kazuyoshi) International Premiere
The best film yet from Osaka-based indie Kumakiri Kazuyoshi (director of the notorious Kichiku), this is an extremely offbeat romance. Youngish widow Etsuko runs a gas station on her own and gets into a possessive relationship with a guy who comes in to rob her till. He reminds her of her late husband. But she has a rival for his affections, and the police are closing in…

MALAYSIA

THE YEAR OF LIVING VICARIOUSLY (Amir Muhammed) World Premiere
Amir Muhammad, whose dryly witty Big Durian was a highlight of last year’s programme, was invited to shoot a “Making of” documentary about Riri Riza’s Gie. He turned over many hours of footage to the production company, but kept some for himself—and this is it, in a brand new, extended version. Not so much a production report, more a delightfully idiosyncratic investigation of the state of Indonesia in 2004. With the extraordinary short THE WOMAN WHO IS MARRIED TO A DOG (Indonesia) by Edwin, who worked on Gie and appears in Amir’s film.

PHILIPPINES

THE MASSEUR (Brilliante Mendoza)
Like some weird hybrid of Lino Brocka and Maurice Pialat, Brillante Mendoza’s debut feature explores the conflicting pressures in the life of Iliac (Coco Martin): on the one hand dealing with family and the funeral of his father back home in the barrio, and on the other working as a masseur in a gay brothel in Manila. Also starring Alan Paule and Jaclyn José. With Dragons & Tigers favourite Tamano Shinichi’s latest short KISS ME, PLEASE! (Japan), in which it rains men and a giant radish won’t fit in the fridge.

SINGAPORE

BE WITH ME (Eric Khoo)
Eric Khoo’s latest is a haunting fact-fiction hybrid. It juxtaposes a staged portrait of the 60-year-old teacher and autobiographer Theresa Chan (she lost her hearing at 12 and her sight at 14) with three fictions about damaged lives in present-day Singapore. The tragi-comic result explores the ways we respond to our needs to love and be loved—and the ways we seek to articulate our innermost desires.

SOUTH KOREA

APRIL SNOW (Hur Jin-Ho)
In the mood for love? A man and woman meet in a hospital where their respective spouses are being treated after a road accident. The injured pair were having an affair, and the central couple soon find that their own feelings for each other are growing … From Hur Jin-Ho, director of Christmas in August and One Fine Spring Day, and starring Bae Yong-Joon, known to his millions of fans in East Asia as “Yon-sama.”

BLOOD RAIN (Kim Dae-Seung)
An absolutely gripping period detective thriller, set in Joseon Dynasty Korea. Officials arrive on an island to investigate an arson attack, only to be confronted by a series of grisly murders which apparently fulfil a shaman’s prophecy. The best of its kind since The Draughtsman’s Contract, starring Cha Seung-Weon and directed by Kim Dae-Seung, a long-serving assistant to the great Im Kwon-Taek.

CRYING FIST (Ryoo Seung-Wan) Canadian Premiere
Ryoo Seung-Wan, director of Die Bad and Arahan, focuses on two apparent no-hopers: a washed-up boxer (Oldboy star Choi Min-Shik) and a juvenile delinquent (Ryoo Seung-Bum, the director’s brother). Both try to turn their lives around by training for a boxing championship, and we’re rooting for both to succeed. But then they’re matched against each other … Powerful, engrossing drama which gets right inside social and psychological issues.

DIGITAL SHORTS BY THREE FILMMAKERS 2005 (South Korea/Japan/Thailand) North American Premiere
Jeonju Film Festival’s annual project to commission 30-minute films from East Asian directors struck gold this year. Song Il-Gon’s MAGICIAN(S) shows the reunion of surviving members of a rock band on the last night of the year. Tsukamoto Shinya’s HAZE is a visceral, Cube-like puzzle: a man wakes in a narrow space between two spiked walls and tries desperately to escape. And Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s WORLDLY DESIRES juxtaposes a commercial shoot in the jungle with the quest for a sacred tree. With Apichatpong’s latest short GHOST OF ASIA, a game for kids of all ages, made for the Tsunami relief campaign.

DUELIST (Lee Myung-Se)
Lee Myung-Se’s international hit Nowhere to Hide had its world premiere in Vancouver, so we’re thrilled to welcome him back with his first costumed swordplay thriller. A woman detective (Ha Ji-Won), hunting a counterfeiter, encounters a sad-eyed man in a goblin mask; they have two fateful duels. A tale of palace intrigue and martial arts, with stunning production design and incredible visuals. Also starring the great Ahn Song-Gi.

IF YOU WERE ME: ANIMA VISION International Premiere
Made for the National Human Rights Commission, this wildly impressive feature comprises six animated takes on the theme of prejudice. Not one is a dud, and several have stunningly original design, but the stand-outs have to be Lee Sung-Gang’s elegiac BICYCLE TRIP (his live-action feature Texture of Skin is also in VIFF) and political cartoonist Park Jae-Dong’s Orwellian attack on the education system BE A HUMAN BEING.

IF YOU WERE ME 2 International Premiere
An even stronger anthology of shorts than the original If You Were Me (screened in VIFF two years ago), this tackles such subjects as the problems faced by North Korea refugees in South Korea and the case of a sacked Chinese-Korean worker who froze to death on the streets. Its twin peaks are both comic: Ryoo Seung-Wan (director of Crying Fist) brings a drunken salaryman up against all his worst prejudices, while Jang Jin up-ends one of the Left’s most cherished myths, the police torture of student activists in the 1980s.

SHIN SUNG-IL IS LOST (Shin Jane) 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 …

TALE OF CINEMA (Hong Sang-Soo) Canadian Premiere
Tong-Su (Kim Sang-Gyeon, of The Turning Gate and Memories of Murder) is coming out of a movie theatre when he spots the actress from the movie he has just seen. They begin a highly tentative relationship, which uncannily echoes the failed romance in the movie… Hong Sang-Soo, poet of deflated male narcissism and indomitable female resilience, comes up with his funniest and most playful film yet.

TEXTURE OF SKIN (Lee Sung-Gang) 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 …

THIS CHARMING GIRL (Lee Yoon-Ki) Canadian Premiere
The top prizewinner in Pusan Festival, Lee Yoon-Ki’s debut feature gets inside the head of a young woman with problems. Jeong-Hae lives alone and works in the post office; she has a history, of course, and tries to come to terms with it while plucking up courage to date a novelist. But he stands her up … Mobile, inquisitive camerawork and to-the-point pacing make this compulsive and engrossing.

TAIWAN

THREE TIMES (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s most audience-friendly film in some while, this is in three parts, each set in a different year and each starring Shu Qi and Chang Chen. In 1966, she’s a pool-hall girl and he’s doing military service. In 1911, she’s a courtesan and he’s a revolutionary. And in 2005 she’s a bisexual rock singer with epilepsy and he’s a photographer. Hou compares and contrasts social mores and sexual approaches across the years.

THAILAND

CITIZEN DOG (Wisit Sasanatieng)
The long-awaited second feature from Wisit Sasanatieng, director of Dragons & Tigers Award-winner Tears of the Black Tiger (Fa Talai Jone). Village boy comes to Bangkok and gets a crush on a young career woman, but she becomes an eco-warrior determined to rid the world of plastic. Thanks to its amazing visuals and CGI effects, some see this as a Thai answer to Amélie—but it’s darker, funnier and altogether edgier than Jeunet’s film.

CRYING TIGERS (Santi Taepanich) 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.

M.A.I.D (Yongyoot Thongkongtoon) International Premiere
Yongyoot Thongkongtoon follows up his global hit Iron Ladies with another riotous comedy: when various highly trained secret agents are eliminated while trying to expose corruption in high places, four naive but feisty country girls are recruited to pose as maids and flush out the dirty secrets. If you have qualms about laughing at stereotypes, forget them here.

The full line-up will be announced at the Media Conference on September 7 at the Vancouver International Film Centre.