Part of my on-going coverage of VIFF 2013. Here is an index.
One week from today, I'll be arriving in lovely Vancouver, BC for my fifth trip to the Vancouver International Film Festival. I'll be there for a week, about half of the festival's run, which is as long as I could trick the wife into taking care of the kids for me. Over the next few days, I'll be watching a few movies to get me in the mood, films I haven't seen yet from directors I've discovered over the years at the festival: Johnnie To, Hong Sangsoo and Liu Jiayin.
But before then, I thought I'd start with a list of the films I'm hoping to see while I'm there. As usual, there's a ton of stuff I'd like to see, much more than I'll physically be able to make it to, for reasons of geography, chronology and my own health (there seems to be a limit to how many four and five movie days in a row I can manage before catching a cold). So I look at this list as more aspirational than a prediction of what I'll actually make it to see. Some of the films overlap and so I'll have to choose only one, these are marked with an * while I try and decide. If you've got a case for or against any of these (or if you think I'm overlooking something), feel free to let me know.
Sean's Theoretical VIFF 2013 Schedule:
Saturday, Sep 28
The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh)
The Great Passage (Ishii Yuya)
Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D'Sa & Glenn Leyburn)
Sunday, Sep 29
Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira)
Bends (Flora Lau)*
A Field in England (Ben Wheatley)*
Burn, Release, Explode, the Invincible (Kim Soohyun)
Four Ways to Die in My Hometown (Chai Chunya)
Monday, Sep 30
Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
Yumen (Xu Ruotao, J.P. Sniadecki, Huang Xiang)
My First Love (Tsuruoka Keiko)
Our Sunhi (Hong Sangsoo)
Tuesday, Oct 01
New World (Park Hoonjung)
Boomerang Family (Song Haesung)*
Heli (Amat Escalante)*
9 Muses of Star Empire (Lee Harkjoon)*
A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (Ben Rivers, Ben Russell)
The Past (Asghar Farhadi)*
3x3D (Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Greenaway, Edgar Pêra)*
Wednesday, Oct 02
Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (Sam Fleischner)
Trap Street (Vivian Qu)*
Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi, Kambuzia Partovi)*
The Summer of Flying Fish (Marcela Said)*
The Spider's Lair (Jason Paul Laxamana)*
The Dirties (Matt Johnson)*
Distant (Yang Zhengfan)
La última película (Raya Martin, Mark Peranson)
Thursday, Oct 03
The Invisible Woman (Ralph Fiennes)
Anatomy of a Paperclip (Ikeda Akira)
Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Jeff Barnaby)*
A Time in Quchi (Chang Tso-chi)*
A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
Redemption/The King's Body/Mahjong (Miguel Gomes, João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata)
Friday, Oct 04
Exhibition (Joanna Hogg)
Once Upon a Forest (Luc Jacquet)
Camille Claudel, 1915 (Bruno Dumont)
The Story of My Death (Albert Serra)
Saturday, Oct 05
The Gardener (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)*
Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)*
Like Father, Like Son (Koreeda Hirokazu)*
Wolf Children (Hosoda Mamoru)*
Longing for the Rain (Yang Lina)*
I'm only going off names and synopses, weighed with the chance the films get distribution (making leaving something off easier), but I have Bends over A Field in England on my schedule, am seeing Harmony Lessons over where you have The Invisible Woman, and really don't know what I'm going to do with tickets to both The Gardener and Like Father Like Son. I guess I'll find out how long it takes to get between the different venues and hope the Kore-eda starts a little late or with slow credits or something. I can only go on Thurs-Sundays, making Closed Curtain and Manakamana are my biggest regretted misses, so I'd jump at any chance to see the former (did you see This Is Not a Film at VIFF '11?)
ReplyDeleteI didn't, 2011 is the one time I didn't go in the last six years (my first kid was born two weeks before the Fest started). I actually haven't seen anything by Farhadi, Panahi or Makhmalbaf, so this might be my chance to remedy that. I would like to see all the Dragons & Tigers Competition films though, and those guys will probably all get a decent release.
ReplyDeleteBends vs. A Field in England is a tough one for me. I don't know anything about Ben Wheatley, but this movie sounds like something I might like a lot. On the other hand, a big starting role for Carina Lau in a film that will likely never make it here in any form.
I could really take or leave the Fiennes. Haven't heard anything about it yet. That'll probably be a space where I just stay in and write or sleep.