Asian Cinerama - Asian Film Awards
All the best from the Asian mainstream cinema: authorial views on reality and original approaches to genre conventions, in other words – the films nominated and awarded by Asian Film Awards Academy.
Once again together with the Asian Film Awards Academy, we prepared for the Five Flavours audience a special selection of films which are the best representation of the Asian film industry latest achievements.
The mainstream Asian cinema has its own masters, stars and blockbusters that attract millions of viewers to screenings. For many years there was no space to promote and recognize the most outstanding productions – including those which do not reach international film festivals focused on arthouse cinema but find their way into the hearts of mass audience who appreciate brilliant screenplays, grand-scale production, talented actors and sensibility to topics particularly pressing in the region.
In response to this need the three main film festivals in Asia – Hong Kong, Tokyo and Busan – teamed up to create Asian Film Awards Academy, which since 2007 grants statuettes in several industry categories as well as special awards for lifetime achievement, best debut and the greatest commercial triumph. The Best Director’s prize winners include Lee Chang-dong, Jia Zhangke, Hirokazu Koreeda, Ann Hui and Na Hong-jin. The growing prestige of the event attracts attention of viewers and the media to the titles valued in particular Asian countries, encouraging cross-border exchange and film-to-film dialogue.
The list of films nominated to 13th edition of the Awards included "The Blood of Wolves" by Kazuya Shiraishi and "Killing" by Shinya Tsukamoto, both shown at 12th Five Flavours in 2018. From the remaining titles we have chosen six new proposals that demonstrate the broad potential of Asian cinema: from an intimate sensual tale about Indian teenagers “Bulbul Can Sing”, through a moving story of cross-cultural friendship “Still Human” to spectacular "Believer" and dark "Tumbbad".
13th edition of Five Flavours was the third time the Academy cooperated with Five Flavours: our section is a unique mixture of stunning genre cinema and commercial productions of high artistic value. The screenings were followed by meetings with guests: Fruit Chan presented his controversial “Three Husbands”, Pema Tseden spoke about "Jinpa" shot in Tibet and Crisel Consunji – about her role in a touching “Still Human”. Thanks to the Academy’s support Polish viewers also had an opportunity to take part in a masterclass with Fruit Chan – the legend of independent Hong Kong cinema shared his directing skills and experience of almost three decades of work in the dynamic Hong Kong film industry.
