Asian cinema takes centre stage at Berlin Film Festival

By Andrew McCathie Feb 15, 2012, 8:01 GMT

Berlin - Asian cinema has taken centre stage at the Berlin Film Festival this year with premieres of movies by three of the rising stars of the region's motion picture business.

Indonesian director Edwin explores personal concerns about loneliness and isolation in his movie Kebun Binatang (Postcards From the Zoo) and Chinese director Wang Quan'an and Filipino director Brillante Mendoza depict key moments in their nation's histories.

All three films are part of the 18-movie race for the Berlinale's top prize - the Golden Bear for best picture.

Still, one of the greatest problems facing many Asian directors is moving beyond the international festival circuit and gaining box office recognition, often in their own nations.

'Internationally you have to compete with Hollywood,' said Jacob Wong from the Hong Kong Film Festival. 'You have to come up with a dream that everyone would buy.'

In a bid to cash in on Hollywood's dream machine, private and public Chinese groups have announced in recent weeks plans to move to the world film financing stage. For Hollywood, it also means gaining a foot in the door of China's large and booming movie market.

Last month, one of China's leading media tycoons Bruno Wu said he had linked up with Chinese investment group Harvest Fund Management to create a new private equity fund aimed at pouring up to 800 million dollars into Hollywood films.

This was followed by the creation last week of the nation's first government-backed Chinese film fund to co-finance and co-produce movies in both China and the United States.

'Chinese film needs to go out in the world,' said Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who presented his latest film The Flowers of War at the festival. The film was not part of the main competition.

But as a reminder of the many hurdles facing Chinese filmmakers, Wang told a press conference in Berlin that his film, Bai Lu Yuan (White Deer Plain), had been screened at the festival after the censors had made 'corrections' to its contents.

'China is a country where changes are happening at the moment,' said Wang. 'But censorship in the system still exists. It has not been changed yet. Even before shooting started, questions were raised.'

Wang's White Deer Plain is an epic three-hour look at the dramatic social and political change that has engulfed modern China.

In Mendoza's film Captive, leading French actress Isabelle Huppert plays a volunteer worker in the Philippines, who is among 20 people kidnapped from a beach resort by a radical Islamist group.

Based on a true story, Captive is also a war film with the hostages quickly finding themselves caught up in a battle between their kidnappers and the Philippines' army.

Seen as part of a new wave of filmmakers from across South East Asia, Mendoza does not shy away from portraying the violence and grimness of modern life.

'As filmmakers we are responsible for what is happening around us,' Menodoza told reporters in Berlin. 'There are a lot things that are happening around us and these are stories that have to be told.'

Captive is the 10th film that the 51-year-old director has made since 2005 but it is by far his most ambitious movie and is aimed at a wider audience.

The 34-year-old Edwin's dreamlike Postcards From the Zoo, which is his second feature film, tells the story of Lana who grew up in a zoo after her father left her there to be raised by zookeepers.

The story of White Deer Plain also forms part of the buildup to the horrors of Japan's brutal invasion of China during the 1930's and the civil war that emerged after the Second World War.

This is the second time this year that the Berlinale has screened a film which focuses on this period of Chinese history.

Sixty-year Zhang's The Flowers of War was also set against the Japanese invasion of the 1930's. It stars British-born Christian Bale as an American forced into the role of protector for a group of Chinese schoolgirls.