‘Casa Àsia Film Week’ brings the latest Asian cinema productions to Barcelona
From the 6th through to the 12th of June, thirty movies and a retrospective of filmmaker Ann Hui will be on show in Barcelona. The Casa Àsia Film Week takes over from the Barcelona Asian Film Festival (BAFF) in order to introduce the Catalan audience to the movie industry of one of the most active filmmaking areas in the world.
Barcelona (ACN).- Taking over from where the BAFF left off, the Casa Àsia Film Week (CAFW) brings to Barcelona some of the latest Asian cinema productions. 30 Asian movies will be shown in the festival, and 11 of these productions will compete in its official selection. The first edition of the CAFW pays homage to Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, and five of her works will also be screened. The CAFW, up and running through to the 12th of June, plans to attract Catalan Asian movie enthusiasts.
The CAFW will screen not only movies made by well-known directors, but also some works by promising beginners. The director of the CAFW, Àngel Sala, says the festival, which is organised by the Casa Àsia Barcelona will be “a mosaic of the new trends that make up current Asian cinema”. Because of Asia’s leadership in today’s economy, the festival will also analyse the “trends” from a social and political point of view.
Comedy, drama, horror or documentary. All the genres of today’s Asian cinema have their place in the first edition of the Casa Àsia Film Week. The festival will show 30 movies and 11 productions will compete in the official selection, where films like Wi Ding’s ‘Pinoy Sunday’, Feng Xiaogang’s ‘Aftershock’ or Tetsuya Nakashima’s ‘Confessions’ stand out.
Hong Kong cinema has a special place of honour in the CAFW. This is largely due to the fact that the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office of Brussels is an important sponsor of the festival. Movies from Hong Kong directors like John Woo, Chow-Bin Su or Dante Lam will be a constant in the CAFW, which has a budget of 45,000 euros.
In the ‘Panorama’ section of the festival, the audience will be able to watch movies that summarise the last two years of Asian cinema. Productions like ‘The man from nowhere’ by Lee Jeong-Beom; ‘I wish I knew’ by Jia Zhang Ke or ‘I saw the devil’ by Kim Jee-Woon, are just some examples.
The purpose of the festival is to turn Barcelona into the Spanish entrance gate for Asian cinema. Organisers believe that in addition to the BAFF’s faithful audience which they hope will now be attracted to the Casa Àsia Film Week, they also want to reach out to all serious cinema-goers.
Retrospective and Honorary Award to Ann Hui
One of the most representative directors of Hong Kong cinema is Ann Hui, who will attend the first edition of the CAFW on June 9th. She belongs to Allen Fong’s New Wave of Asian filmmakers: lucky directors who were born after the war, could study cinema abroad and could take advantage of television’s peak.
Ann Hui, who made her debut in 1979, has directed more than twenty movies. Five of them will be shown in Barcelona: ‘Boat people’, ‘July Rapsody’, ‘AhKam’, ‘The postmodern life of my aunt’ and ‘All about love’.
Chinese director Hu Mei will also travel to Barcelona. Mei is the big hope of the first edition of the Casa Àsia Film Week and will present ‘Confucius’, the first movie based on probably the most important figure in Chinese history. In ‘Confucius’, Hu Mei shows the nature of the Chinese nation. This is her fifth movie, but it is the first one to be opened on Western screens. ‘Confucius’ opened the festival.