(Various venues, Barcelona, Spain, www.baff-bcn.org)

"Great! I love Asian film." That was my first reaction when I saw the film festival announced in Barcelona´s local paper La Vanguardia.

But there should be no need for an "Asian Cinema" festival. Ideally, and probably without a whole lot of effort, hundreds of great Asian films could screen in Barcelona (and everywhere) on the normal distribution circuits without labeling them any differently than European or American film. At the moment, only a handful of films from the East trickle down from the winners circles of the major film festivals like Cannes or Berlin. Is it an economic issue, or just laziness on the part of the programmers and distributors? Probably both. Anyway, this is probably the only chance I will have to see any of these films outside of traveling to Asia (and certain excellent film cities like NYC, Toronto or Berlin). It is an ambitious if slightly random program, but still promised many jewels from the east. The festival has major sponsors, including the CCCB contemporary art center, and media giant FNAC, which indicates both conservative and slightly reckless curation. The selection spans an impossible arc from India to Taiwan, Macao, China and Japan. "Asian Cinema" is a pretty big term.

Anime Classics

I am still kicking myself because I missed the Anime Classics, the program of the early days of Japanese animation, from 1924 to 1944. Screened on 16 and 35mm film instead of DVD, these early gems show the development of the style, from the economics of line to the economy of popularity. I have only seen a few on video, so this would have been great.

Strange Fruit

The first film I saw was at the CCCB entrance hall: a daily, sprawling free event with a bar and hundreds of lounging youth. Despite prominent no smoking signs, even the festival staff were chain smoking, and the pale video projection cut a whirly green-grey smudge through the hazy air. I had the additional bad luck to check out Strange Fruit, a compilation DVD of new Tokyo animators. The student quality of the animation matched perfectly with the backpack set in the hall, and I left choking and bored within a half-hour.

Room to Let

Room to Let, (2003, Color, Betacam) by James Lee, seemed like a promisingly frail view on a country with little public face: Malasia. Set in Kuala Lumpur, the film centers around a run-down boarding house and a tense character with a cool name: Berg. The story unfolds very, very slowly at first; a juicy treat that only slightly manages to avoid the traditional independent film standard of "weird" characters in "weird" situations. But as the film attempted to resolve the ambiguity it slowly built in the first 20 minutes, it collapsed into a series of silly scenes which expunged any delicacy it began with. The characters in the house went from quietly sad to loudly unbelievable rapidly and thoroughly. First there is a ghost in the house, next comes the monk who tries on a bra, and finally the fat girl who, kidnapped three years earlier and tied up with ropes, is forced to go on a diet by one of the woman borders. Berg frees the newly skinny girl and she does a little dance interpretation.
The film presents many small philosophical details, simple, un-precious camera work and choice seconds of soundtrack over a steady, unassuming din of city traffic. The director may be someone to check out again in the future, however, the movement of this film falls into disorganization and half-baked comedy.

Pirated Copy

This independent film, also shot on video, was Pirated Copy by He Jianjun (China, 2004, Color, video). The story revolves around DVD film pirates in Beijing. Bootleg films describe essentials of contemporary city life in China: hungry for new films, the public maintains world cinema as a collective dream, despite harsh circumstances. Each of the characters in the film searches for, watches and talks about their preferred films, and these in turn influence how they wish to live their lives. One Pulp Fiction watching couple try to go out on a robbing spree, but end up preventing a gang rape, and later commit suicide together after a botched hold-up "You are as broke as we are! No one has money! No one has money!", shouts the man before turning the gun on himself. Although the arguments, characters, and situations are convincing in their own way, the film is exaggerated, fictionalized and a little manipulative. I would have been happy watching the characters buy, watch, and talk about films, but they behaved within a film plot themselves. However, it was as fun to watch a street vendor try to convince a cop that In the Realm of the Senses was an art film, not pornography, as it was seeing a college professor having quick sex with the street vendor who sold her the banned copies of the Almodovar films she taught in her classes.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring by Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk (South Korea, color 35mm, 2003) was wrenching and quaint at the same time. Shot exclusively around a floating buddhist sanctuary in the middle of a small, deep blue lake surrounded by woods and mountains, the film follows a monk through 5 episodes in his life. The chapter titled Spring shows the monk as a small boy, living in the sanctuary with his master. Each season is a stage in the life of the boy growing up to be a man.

Ki-Duk explores a meditative combination of contemporary world problems with old faith solutions. Although it sounds extreme to shoot the film exclusively at one location, such focus allows him to bring out details in both the landscape and the characters. Also, the scene is extraordinarily gorgeous: you could pass your life here without caring about the world outside.

The problem with the film is that it is too lovely and too religious. There is something altogether too conservative, almost fascist about how the characters resolve their problems. The film maker basks in the light of his own morality, like a Buddhist version of the Passion of Christ. Even as a cultural study, it is too flooded with drama and over-acting to be objective. The horrible soundtrack does not help: a sickly mixture of sweeping synth strings and occasionally wailing Korean contemporary ethnic drama soaks most scenes in painfully typical soul-searching emotion.

A lovely film overall. The first two chapters were highly skilled film craftsmanship. The film is so rich and enjoyable that I didn't notice its questionable motivations and hideous soundtrack almost until the end.

Raghu Romeo

The final film of the festival was a good idea that failed spectacularly: an outside presentation on the Rambla del Raval of a Bollywood film by Rajat Kapoor called Raghu Romeo. (See photo at the top of this page.) The festival organizers wanted to show the film outside, in public, in an immigrant neighborhood to show some solidarity with the city, and take film out into the street. A wild Bollywood production made sense in this setting, but even a three story screen and concert size speakers could not compete with the annoying anarchy of a Barcelona audience. The 100 or so seats set up by the festival filled up immediately, and hundreds of people in the park milled in and around the seats, talking, smoking, knocking bottles over, jostling for space and doing everything but watch the film. There were a few curious locals, but mostly the audience was filled with city hipsters. The movie seemed fun but I quickly tired of getting knocked into, beer dumped on my head, and having smoke blown at my face, so I made a mental note to rent it if it comes to my local video shop and escaped to catch the metro home.

p.s. It was annoyingly predictable that the only film from the festival that returned to Barcelona theaters was Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring.

A. Bergman