Thirteen first-time Asian directors are competing at the region’s premier film festival this week for an award that could kick-start their careers and grab international attention.

The 15th Pusan International Film Festival's main award, which will be  presented in South Korea on Friday, is known as New Currents. It offers two $30,000 prizes for first or second time Asian directors.

And this year the award has attracted an eclectic selection of productions from across Asia: South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, mainland China, the  Philippines, India and Iraq.
   
"It is an award that puts the film-maker in the public eye and in the eye of the international film community," said New Currents jury head Emi Wada, an Oscar-winning Japanese costume designer.

Frontrunners
Among the early frontrunners for the award is the Thai  production 'Eternity' by debuting director Sivaroj Kongsakul.  Sivaroj says this film is a chance to ponder the relationship with his father who died when he was a young boy. Set in three parts, it looks at a man searching for his hometown, his first contact with his future wife and what happens to her after his death.

"It was made for relatively no money at all," said Sivaroj. "I am hoping  that through the attention we get here we will be able to take this film to other film festivals all around the world."
   
China's Lu Yang is another first-timer  whose ‘My Spectacular Theatre’  follows the tale of a criminal who finds himself working in a cinema set up for the blind. Lu feels the New Currents award has given him an opportunity which he would not be able to find in his homeland.
   
"People have only really recently started going to the cinema in China," he says. "They want to spend their money on big budget blockbusters, not on small films that might make them think or might reflect on their own  hardships. So I am just happy to get anyone to see my film."

Exposed
Iraqi-Kurd Hassan Ali Mahmoud is hopes that the screening of his film 'The Quarter of Scarecrows' in Busan,  the audience and the film world at large might  be exposed to a story that up until recently might never have been told.
 
Hassan says his film - about a farmer desperate to keep a  flock of crows off his field - was a reflection on the recent politics of his country.

"With the trouble in my homeland over the past few decades we have had  stories to tell - but no way of telling them," he said. 

"About 85 percent of the films that come out of my country now are about  its recent history and what we have lived through. And without festivals the world might never get to see them."

Major achievement
Indian film maker Murali Nair is a member of the New Currents jury board. His 'Marana Simhasanam' picked up the prestigious Camera d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. He says just being included in the running for the award can be considered a major  achievement.

"It is more than just the award," he feels. "It is about turning people's heads towards what you are doing as a film-maker."

   
Source: AFP

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