In its infancy: 5th Beijing International Film Festival
The event as a whole was rather low-key, but that may have been because I live in the Haidian area of Beijing and not the Chaoyang area where a lot of the participating cinemas and conference halls were located. But was only part of the problem. The festival did make an effort to extend its reach all over the city by offering both free public screenings and at universities (most of which are clustered in the Haidian district of Beijing). However, I believe the festival would benefit by a central location in which most of the “festivities” would take place.
Beijing is a huge city. Some 23 million people crammed into one place. In order to serve the city, the festival was spread out. Unlike other film festivals that have one central location in which the majority of the cinemas are located, the BJIFF didn’t really have a central focal point. Some 23 cinemas around the city were showing movies as a part of the festival. That made it quite difficult to cinema hop as you can do in other cities (Montreal was probably the easiest). So that’s one complaint. Another complaint is that the cinemas didn’t start showing films until 630 pm on weekdays which meant that if you had the day off you still couldn’t go until later in the day. I suppose there were some exceptions, such as at the China Film Archive, which started its screenings at 10 am. So, technically, films ran all day, just not in one location.
As for the selection of films. My impression is that the festival had a lot of classic films and new, “blockbuster” films. That is, the Avengers films, The Godfather trilogy was heralded, among other recently released (in the US) movies. Polish movies were prominent though I seemed to see a lot of French films. And, of course, Chinese films were well represented, while Korea and Japan also had their share of movies shown. Iran, again, surprised me. For a country that is so poorly represented in the media they seem to make some interesting films, albeit more philosophical “talkies” than any sort of action or thriller flicks.
The festival had all the trappings of a major film festival, red carpet events, conferences, paper dailies (published by the festival, not by any major trade paper). Since I didn’t really know where much of the stuff was being held (the televised events were also held in different locations), I never saw anybody that would draw any envy. Further, the festival sold tickets through an affiliate website, gewara.com, which was a pain in the ass because I needed to either link my bank or credit card to their website in order to buy tickets, a feat I will have to explain later. This troubled me only because I wasn’t sure how good the turn outs would be for each screening. In the end, those doubts were unfounded as most movies played to half-full cinemas.
However, since most movies cost around 40-60RMB (~$8-12 CAD or $6.50-$9.70 USD), if I chose a bad film it wasn’t the end of the world. The festival lacked any sort of special offers, such as buying 10 tickets for 30% off or something similar. So that’s one plus to this festival, cheap tickets, which, in my opinion, encourages people to go out and take a chance on something new instead of sticking to the over-hyped films.
One of the great things about going to the cinema, and I’ve found this to be true all over Asia, is the caramel popcorn. For whatever reason this trend hasn’t caught on in the West. I mean, you can buy caramel popcorn but you have to go to a specialty shop for it since the west usually serves butter on its popcorn. Here in Asia, however, it’s caramel.
Overall, it was low-key and slightly lacklustre. I chalk this up to the relative infancy of the film festival. China is opening its doors, albeit slowly, to foreign culture by way of movies. But I think they’re more interested in the business of the movies than the actual content. I have little doubt that the films shown at the 5th BJIFF were vetted to ensure that they met the powers-that-be’s standards.
Without further adieu, here is the list of films I managed to take in during the week-long event. You’ll notice I managed to see quite a few, mostly because it was midterms which meant I didn’t have much prep to do during that time. Favourites are in bold.
Two Days, One Night (France)
Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart (France)
Police Diary (China)
Miss Granny (China)
Unknown / Nobody From Nowhere (France)
Our Family (Japan)
The Salt of the Earth (Brazil, Italy, France)
A Girl at my Door (South Korea)
Malavita (USA)
Manglehorn (USA)
The Choice (Italy)
Impermanent (Iran)
Whiplash (USA)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (USA)
American Sniper (USA)
The Judge (USA)