A clutch of awards at the Cannes Film Festival in France has given global prominence to what insiders say is a bold era in Asian filmmaking, where China is emerging as a creative power.
\nDirectors from China, Japan, Singapore and Cambodia took to the stage at the Palais des Festivals yesterday at the festival ended.
\nPraise was heaped on China’s Jia Zhangke (pictured with his wife) for his screenwriting of \u201cA Touch of Sin” (Tian Zhu Ding), which he also directed \u2013 a tale of corruption, greed and exploitation in modern China that festival jury boss Steven Spielberg said was nothing less than \u201cvisionary.”
\nJia, 43, was born in the poverty-stricken province of Shanxi, which has frequently provided a grim tableau for his lens.
\nAfter graduating from Beijing’s prestigious national Film Academy, he produced a series of gritty films portraying low-life characters including pickpockets, thugs and prostitutes, set in Shanxi and filled with long, meandering dialogue in local dialect.
\n\u201cA Touch of Sin,\u2019\u2019 based on four true stories of poor people driven to acts of desperation, contains his most outspoken criticism yet of capitalist-communist China.
\n\u201cCinema makes me live,” Jia said in faltering English as he received the best screenwriting award. \u201cChina is now changing so fast. I think film is the best way to me to look for freedom.”
\nSpielberg and a fellow Oscar winner, Taiwanese-born American Ang Lee, pointed to exciting times in China, although Lee also warned of risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina is coming on strong not just as a marketplace for international motion pictures, but coming on strong as a creative force,” Spielberg said.
\nLee said \u201cA Touch of Sin” was \u201can important movie” that the jury had unanimously liked. \u201cThe Chinese market and the people who love movies is growing up to be very sizeable, [and] perhaps [will] even one day surpass English-speaking territories,” said Lee. \u201cSo I really hope it grows, whether it is commercially or artistically or anything in between, [and] that everybody can grow healthily.
\n\u201cA vicious cycle… is a big trap we need to look out for,” he warned, without elaborating.
\nAnother laureate was Japan’s Hirokazu Koreeda, 50, whose \u201cLike Father Like Son\u2019\u2019 \u2013 a portrayal of two families who discover their boys were swapped at birth \u2013 won the third-ranked award, the Jury Prize.
\nThe movie is based on a real-life story in which four children were abandoned by their mother and left to fend for themselves.
\nSingapore’s Anthony Chen won the Camera d’Or for a debut feature.
\n\u201cIlo Ilo,\u2019\u2019 set during the Asian financial crisis in 1997, explores the lives of Singapore’s workaholic, ambitious middle classes and the domestic help on which they depend.
\nIt tells the tale of a Singaporean family and their Filipina maid, who befriends the family’s troubled son.
\nOn Saturday, a documentary on the Khmer Rouge earned Cambodia’s Rithy Panh the top award in the “Un Certain Regard” category, which showcases emerging directors.
\nEntitled \u201cL’Image Manquante” \u2013 \u201cThe Missing Picture\u2019\u2019 in English — the 95-minute work mixes archive footage of Khmer Rouge atrocities with hand-carved, painted figurines to represent Panh’s lost relatives.<\/p>\n
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