South Korea’s second-largest city is in a festive mood as the Busan Film Festival passes the midpoint.
The latter half of Asia’s largest film festival will be spiced up with French celebrities in celebration of this year’s special section, My French Cinema. The section screens 10 movies recommended by French directors, actors and festival organisers including Leos Carax.
Sophie Marceau will promote her movie Jailbirds on Haeundae beach on Friday evening, and Fleur Pellerin, the South Korea-born French culture minister, will also attend the festival’s final days.
The festival ends its 10-day run on Saturday with Chinese director Larry Yang’s Mountain Cry.
The 2014 ferry sinking in South Korea that killed more than 300 people, mostly teenagers on a school trip, was at the centre of a festival scandal last year. The festival screened a documentary criticising the botched rescue during the ferry disaster, apparently leading the government to decide to cut its financial support to the festival.
While none of this year’s film selections appear directly related to the ferry tragedy, one South Korean director called his work a requiem for those who died on the ferry.
O Muel, who visited Busan for the world premiere of his feature film Eyelids, said he felt so “frustrated and powerless” watching the news in the aftermath of the ferry disaster.
“I felt so low and unprepared. I took that feeling and wrote a script in three days, and immediately thought about where to shoot it,” O told the Screen International magazine.
Eyelids follows an old man living a monk-like ascetic life on an island. A phone rings, followed by a visitor for whom the man prepares rice cakes, the last meal before the visitor journeys to the next world.
O said his movie does not put forth the Sewol ferry tragedy, but he wanted to offer a way to console the souls of the dead.
“I was approaching it from the side of salvation for those who have died at sea.”
O, who won a top prize at the Sundance Film Festival with 2013 work Jiseul, often uses cinema to put dead soul at rest. O took elements from Korea’s traditional ceremony paid to dead family or relatives in Jiseul, allowing audiences to send consolations to the dead souls by watching the movie. Jiseul was based on a true story of residents on Jeju island who were massacred by government forces in 1948.
For Busan visitors the impact of the government’s budget cut was not apparent. Festival’s co-director Kang Soo-yeon said corporate sponsors and film professionals stepped up in its place.
“Help from the sponsors and film professionals was literally just so moving,” she said. Kang said such outpouring of support from those who love Asian cinema allowed the festival to stand against external pressure.
“The reason that Busan International Film Festival could be established in just 20 years is that aside from any political or social situation, censorship or director’s background, we have selected the movies only based on the film.”
Bahman Ghobadi, an award-winning Kurdish director born in Iran, said he was “shocked” to hear the news of the budget cut. He urged the government and others in South Korea not just to support the economy or military but also artists.
“I don’t like to see Korea just because of LG or Samsung,” said Ghobadi, who visited Busan for the world premiere of A Flag Without A Country. “I want to see South Korea as the key, or the one leading the culture in this area.”
