Love of Asian films led to Mandarin lessons

The first thing you notice about the new Asian programmer at the Vancouver International Film Festival is that he is not Asian.

He is Shelly Kraicer, a good Toronto boy who happens to like Asian films.

That wasn't always the way with him. The rather bookish Kraicer has a background in western classical music rather than cinema.

But a few years back, he attended the Toronto International Film Festival and found a rich motherlode of Asian films.

He was hooked. So much so that he moved to Beijing in 2003 to study Chinese and learn more about Chinese-language films and culture.

That included learning Mandarin Chinese, which was no easy task. In fact, "for this particular western, it's the hardest thing I have ever done." And Kraicer is no slouch. He has studied things such as Greek and quantum mechanics. Mandarin Chinese was harder.

But he had to do it. "Without it, there is a certain ceiling that you bump up against. I wasn't digging into the topic deeply enough."

To say that Kraicer watches a lot of Asian films is a bit like saying it rains a little in Vancouver.

For example, he watched roughly 200 films to come up with his selection of 20 features and three shorts for the VIFF. He programs films from Chinese-speaking countries while his predecessor, Tony Rayns, has stayed on to program films from non-Chinese speaking countries.

Fortunately, watching films is something that Kraicer loves to do. He also relishes the challenge of coming up with a program that appeals to both an Asian and western audience.

And it is a challenge. Sometimes, Asians will find a film easy to understand while westerners might be provoked or baffled or even bored by it. Kraicer is willing to risk an occasional film where people walk out. It's all part of the intrigue.

That being said, he has tried to pull together a diversity of Asian films which are all shown with English subtitles, ranging from the big hits to the challenging art house films.

Kraicer says there is no way of defining how Asian films are different from western ones. There is such a multiplicity in Asian films that come from Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. He programs films from all of these places.

What you will find in the films is "a chorus of all different kinds of voices."

There is also a great breadth in the degree of permissiveness in the film censors of various countries. The latest film by Ang Lee, who won an Oscar for directing Brokeback Mountain, is a case in point. One of the offerings at the VIFF is called Lust, Caution.

It will be shown virtually without restrictions in Taiwan, uncut, but for people over 18 only in Hong Kong and with no lust and plenty of caution in mainland China where all the sex scenes will be cut. In North America, it has the dreaded NC17 rating which means you have to be over 17 to watch it and many theatres won't go near it.

Both Malaysia, which is largely a Muslim society, and Singapore, which has a strict paternalistic government, have tight censorship.

Kraicer has some personal favourites at the festival. One of his favourite filmmakers from mainland China is Jia Zhangke who has produced a new documentary called Useless that is on offer at the VIFF. About the fashion industry in China, it looks at everything from high fashion to mass-produced clothing from the giant factories that feed the Wal Marts of the world to the artisanal tailors who makes pants for 10 cents each.

Another favourite is the Taiwan filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, who has made an enchantingly eccentric film called The Flight of the Red Balloon starring Juliette Binoche, who plays a distracted, frowsy single mother. Shot in Paris, it is Hsiao-hsien's first French film.

One thing Kraicer wants to avoid is falling into the trap of imposing western preconceptions when selecting films. "The kinds of Chinese films that are easy to market in the west are the kind of exotic period costumes beauties with whiffs of exotic oriental sensuality."

Rather, Kraicer tries to bring in films that his Chinese critic friends think are valuable.

"The thing I want to avoid is giving people here an opportunity to see what they have already seen and to know what they already know. That's nice, it is comforting, it is entertainment but that is not really what I am about and that is not what this festival is about."

To find these brave little gems buried in the sand, Kraicer has to wade through a lot of film. He takes good notes and tries to give each film a concentrated amount of attention. "Sometimes you can tell after half an hour that a film is really not going anywhere."

He said Asian filmmakers care whether their films are shown in the west for both economic and cultural reasons. Young filmmakers in particular are interested in entering a dialogue not just with their neighbours but with people around the world who are interested in cinema. "They are interested in broadening the conversation."

Also, directors whose films have been banned by censors in their home countries hope to get a little of their investment back by having them shown in other countries where there is always the chance a distributor will spot it and make a DVD of it.

Kraicer is noticing that co-productions are an increasing phenomenon in Asian countries with companies like Sony and Warner Bros. trying to make films that will fly in Asia and be crossover hits in North America.

"It's a tricky thing to do," he said. "It is easy to do poorly. It is hard to do well. But when done well, it can be really great."

yzacharias@png.canwest.com

News source: Love of Asian films led to Mandarin lessons (The Vancouver Sun)

News tag: Vancouver International Film F Vancouver Shelly Kraicer

Related titles: Lust, Caution (2007) Useless (2007)

Related persons: Ang LEE JIA Zhangke