PRESS RELEASES – PAGE 5

DRAGONS & TIGERS:
THE CINEMAS OF EAST ASIA

With the wild success of the winner of last year’s Dragons & Tigers competition, Wisit Sasanatieng’s TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER (FA TALAI JONE) – which screened in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard selection after the Vancouver World Premiere – Asian cinema may have reached a new peak of international acclaim. This year’s Dragons & Tigers program acknowledges this by presenting the largest number of East Asian features ever programmed in a festival outside of Asia, an astonishing total of 41, and features an especially large selection of films from China, including the North American Premiere of Ann Hui’s VISIBLE SECRET. In the Dragons & Tigers series there are two World Premieres, nine International Premieres, 13 North American Premieres and four English-Canadian Premieres.

We are welcoming back new films by some of the greatest directors working in Asia today including grand masters Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Imamura Shohei with MILLENNIUM MAMBO and WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE. Festival regular Tsai Ming-Liang returns to Vancouver with his 2001 Cannes Competition feature WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?, featuring French icon Jean-Pierre Léaud. Nonzee Nimbutr, the leading figure in New Thai cinema, who wowed local audiences with NANG NAK in 1999, returns with JAN DARA, a haunting adaptation of Thailand’s most controversial novel. The VIFF presented the World Premiere of Wang Xiaoshuai’s "underground" film THE DAYS in 1993. This year he took several of the top prizes at the Berlin Festival with his very contemporary Chinese riff on THE BICYCLE THIEF, BEIJING BICYCLE, which we are happy to present.

As a follow-up to last year’s Korean Skew of antisocial South Korean comedies, we are presenting the International Premieres of two films from up-and-coming comedic talents. An admirably bad-taste satire, Park Jae-Dong’s JUST DO IT takes a worm’s eye view of Korea’s "economic miracle." And in KICK THE MOON, Kim Sang-Jim follows up ATTACK THE GAS STATION with a very moral comedy in gangster-movie drag. Finally, as a Special Presentation in the Walk on the Wild Side program, Vancouver stalwart Miike Takashi offers up ICHI THE KILLER, an adaptation of Yamamato Hideo’s notorious manga that marks a new extreme in visceral violence. (ICHI THE KILLER is one of three Miike films in this year’s line-up, joining DEAD OR ALIVE 2 and VISITOR Q.)

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