This year's Busan International Film Festival may have lacked some of the festive atmosphere it enjoyed in the past, but it still did well highlighting the latest trends in the film industry as a whole that could lay the foundation for a fresh start going forward.
(Yonhap)
The 21st edition of the festival is scheduled to end on Saturday, wrapping up its 10-day run.
Everything went smoothly except the outdoor events scheduled to take place on Haeundae beach, which the festival had to move to the Busan Cinema Center, the main festival venue, as Typhoon Chaba tore down various makeshift facilities on the beach on the eve of opening day.
The typhoon left at least seven people dead on South Korea's southern coast before heading towards Japan through the East Sea.
But even before Chaba's arrival, the Busan festival went through another typhoon: strife over allegations of "municipal interference" between organizers and the Busan metropolitan government, which funds around half of the festival's annual budget.
It looked unclear whether this year's festival would be able to be held as usual when an emergency task force composed of nine film groups decided in April to boycott it, escalating a crisis that threatened the BIFF's status as Asia's premier film festival.
The trouble began in 2014 when then-festival director Lee Yong-kwan pushed for the screening of a controversial documentary in spite of opposition from Busan mayor and then-BIFF organizing committee Chairman Suh Byung-soo.
The film "The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol," also known as "Diving Bell," criticized the central government's handling of the Sewol ferry sinking in April that claimed more than 300 lives, mostly teenage students.
The Busan metropolitan government conducted an unprecedented audit into Lee and other executive committee members and cut about half of its annual funding for the festival in what some filmmakers claimed as "political retaliation."
The tense standoff relaxed a little when Kim Dong-ho, the festival's founding director, took over the chairmanship from the Busan mayor. In July, both sides amended the Busan festival's bylaws to include a clause that guarantees its artistic freedom. Of the nine groups, four decided to end the boycott as the festival opening neared, while four, including the Directors' Guild of Korea, chose not to attend. One group stayed undecided.
Without major Korean filmmakers and actors attending, the festival acquired a largely sedate atmosphere.
It was hard to see the enthusiasm of local fans that heated up events on Haeundae beach in previous years.
This atmosphere brought only 165,149 people to see the films at the festival this year, down 27.4 percent from last year's 227,377.
Another factor behind the lessened festivities was the strict anti-corruption law that came into force about a week before the festival's opening.
The so-called Kim Young-ran law, named after the former head of the Anti-Corruption Civil Rights Commission, bans public servants, educators and journalists from receiving free meals valued over 30,000 won ($27), gifts worth more than 50,000 won or congratulatory or condolence money of more than 100,000 won. For fear of breaking the law, the nation's four major film distributors -- CJ Entertainment, Showbox, Next Entertainment World and Lotte Entertainment -- skipped their annual events to announce upcoming film projects to reporters. The announcement used to be followed by a late-night party where film industry figures and reporters mingled.
Film scholars and those who rate films for the state-run Korea Media Rating Board were not invited to the festival because their hotel and flight fees could no longer be covered by the festival budget with the law's enactment.
Despite all the trouble, there is common consensus from film reporters from around the world that this year's lineup, the essence of any film festival, was pretty good.
Kang Soo-youn, the festival's executive director, said during an interview with Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday that "it was close to a miracle" that BIFF put together a lineup that largely holds up against previous editions. The festival featured 299 films from 69 countries around the world.
She said focusing on the essentials of the Busan festival was the only thing that the organizers could do amid the festival's uncertainty. They were discovering, supporting and educating young up-and-coming Asian directors and promoting solidarity for, and presenting a vision of, Asian film.
"I and other BIFF organizers shared the thought that we should scale down not a single program dedicated to the roles. Fortunately, many people said that we did well in this regard."
Four films invited to the Gala Presentation section for screening the latest works from contemporary master directors -- "Bleed for This" by Ben Younger, "Daguerrotype" by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, "Rage" by Lee Sang-il, and "Your Name" by Makoto Shinkai -- received positive reviews from both critics and audiences.
A Window on Asian Cinema section fulfilled its role as a credible channel to let the world know of new Asian films. Despite the large share of Chinese and Japanese films, experimental and diverse Asian films such as "A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery"
from the Philippines, "A Woman from Java" from Indonesia and "#BKKY" from Thailand were shown in the category.
Although film fans had less chances than before to meet their favorite stars, a special forum featuring Asia's master directors -- Lee Chang-dong of South Korea, Japan's Hirokazu Koreeda and Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien -- was crowded with cinephiles and journalists. The three auteurs visited the fest as a show of support for the event even though they didn't have any recent film invited.
Eleven films from 10 countries, including Indian director Padmakumar Narasimhamurthy's "A Billion Colour Story" and "In Between Seasons" by South Korea's Lee Dong-eun, vied for awards in the "New Currents" section for up-and-coming Asian directors.
Leading the 299 titles was Korean-Chinese director Zhang Lu's "A Quiet Dream," which depicts the story of a young Korean woman who runs a bar and takes care of her paralyzed father and the three men trying to woo her.
Special programs included retrospectives for veteran Korean filmmaker Lee Doo-young and Abbas Kiarostami, the multi-award-winning Iranian director who died in July, and a focus on Colombian cinema.
Unlike the quietness of the film festival, the Asian Film Market at BEXCO convention center bustled with film industry people coming to buy Asian films from all around the world.
It drew 157 exhibitors from 24 countries and a daily average of 3,000 visitors during the Oct. 8-11 period, resulting in more business contracts and film sales than last year.
The Entertainment Intellectual Property Market, which the Busan festival opened last year for the first time in the world, already consolidated its footing as a new type of film market.
The market, where original stories can be bought and sold for film adaptations across a number of media platforms, drew a lot of attention from overseas buyers.
The Busan festival is set to close on Saturday with the screening of Iraqi director Hussein Hassan's "The Dark Wind," a film about innocent love, traditional values and the collision of conflicting religious beliefs. (Yonhap)
