22nd Busan International Film Festival

Being a film student at Dongguk University has come with a fair number of perks, such as the opportunity to engage in practical filmmaking in a workshop class and handling a collection of equipment that I never actually thought I’d touch. But by far, the best experience thus far was receiving a cinephile special pass to attend Busan International Film Festival. Insanity. The pass allowed us to watch four films for free per day that we attended and some of these screenings included talks/interviews with the directors and actors, but most importantly FOUR FREE FILMS.

A group of us booked our tickets and funnily enough arrived at the exact train platform set in the Korean zombie film Train to Busan– very mad- and after a five-hour and something, sleepless journey we arrived at a sweet hostel, dropped off our bags and went straight to collect tickets for our first films. Due to our late arrival, we were only able to watch three films that day, but what amazing films they were (I’ll include a full list of the films watched over the course of the week at the bottom of this post). First was a double screening of two of Masaaki Yuasa’s short animated films that left my brain swollen from trying to read the subtitles matched to the impossibly fast and witty, Japanese dialogue and visuals that could beat out any acid trip with its vibrant splashes of colour and creative transitions. The later film could not have been more different. Silent Mist. A Chinese thriller that leaves behind commercial pacing and slowly delves deeper into the darkness (literally) of a canal town that is plagued with serial rapes. I may have fallen asleep for five minutes, but as I later found out that was an inevitability in at least two of four screenings a day and luckily, in most cases it did not take away from my like or dislike of any of the films I saw. I do wish however that I had fallen asleep throughout the whole of The Shape of Water; that film sucked and I’m not even going to waste time talking about it. Sue me, Del Toro.

Something funny actually happened. I went to one of my many lone screenings and I want to say that the film was a documentary on an illiterate old woman but I couldn’t say for certain as I fell asleep the minute I sat in my chair, and then woke up half way through the post-screening chat with the director. However, the situation wasn’t all that calm because rather than being somewhere in the back of a large theatre, I was sat front row, something like seat 12; right in the damn centre. There was no sneaking out through a fire exit. The director was stood maybe a meter from me with a microphone stand and I still had dribble on my face. It’s been months since this happened but I’m still wondering, did I sleep through the applause? Why did the person next to me not save me the embarrassment and wake me up? Whatever, at the time I just grabbed my bag and ran out, leaving my trail of dropped popcorn as the only evidence that that ever happened.

Black Summer and Dragonfly Eyes were objectively the best films at the festival and I cannot listen to anything different. Two incredibly different films but each with an agenda for change. Director of Dragonfly Eyes, Xu Bing played with film form and constructed a narrative from actual, found CCTV footage and scripted voice over. Although the film’s plot was nothing more than a modern telling of a relationship, the footage continuously surprised me and sometimes placed me in extreme discomfort, but in the best way possible if we’re talking filmic impact on an audience.

Black Summer on the other hand seemed to promote change in social ideas; those of which effect what is put on screen. Whilst Seoul and Korea as a whole presents itself as a rapidly developing, modern land, it remains one of the most homogenous countries on the planet and this includes its social awareness and sensitivity towards what it classifies as taboos- one of which is homosexuality. The story presents one of the very few gay love stories on the original Korean screen with a pastel aesthetic and 4:3 screen ratio which achieved to provide a sense of nostalgia and intimacy in the film. Just beautiful. I was even able to ask the director a question in a packed theatre, thanks to sticking out for being foreign.

The whole experience was insane. Sick. See ya.

Films watched:

1. The Tatami Galaxy Episode 1: Tennis Circle/ Cupid (2010) dir. Youasa Masaaki
2. The Night is Short, Walk On Girl (2017) dir. Youasa Masaaki
3. Silent Mist (2017) dir. Zhang Miaoyan
4. How to Breathe Underwater (2017) dir. Ko Hyunseok
5. Underpants Thief (2017) dir. Somarative Dissanayake
6. Dragonfly Eyes (2017) dir. Xu Bing
7. The Carousel Never Stops Turning (2017) dir. Ismail Basbeth
8. No Date, No Signature (2017) dir. Vahid Jalilvand
9. Glass Garden (2017) dir. Shin Suwon
10. The Whispering Trees (2017) dir. Heo Chulnyung
11. Upside Down (2017) dir. Hugo Martins
12. A Beautiful Star (2017) dir. Daihachi Yoshida
13. February (2017) dir. Kim Joonghyung
14. Madonna (2017) dir. Sinung Winahyoko
15. The Road (2017) dir. Arash Khayatan
16. The Day I Am Gonna Come (2017) dir. Hong Cheng
17. Suerte (2017) dir. Carlo Fajarda
18. Black Summer (2017) dir. Lee Weonyoung
19. Ashwatthama (2017) dir. Pushpendra Singh
20. The Shape of Water (2017) dir. Guillermo Del Toro
21. In the Shadows (2017) dir. Dipesh Jain
22. Sea Serpent (2017) dir. Joseph Israel Laban