The Story of Film: An Odyssey – Film Critics to join the audience to share their views
Classic Movies Convergence - Retrospective of Georges Franju, Kawashima Yuzo and Kurahara Koreyoshi

[5th April 2012] – Hong Kong audiences were impressed by Director Mark Cousins who visited  Hong Kong for the premiere of his film The Story of Film: An Odyssey last week and post-screening discussions were lively and stimulatingAudiences now have another chance to watch his monumental film this week at the Hong Kong Art Center agnes b. cinema.  Although Mark Cousins has left Hong Kong, each screening this week will be followed by discussion with a renowned local film critic who will share their views on the film.

Screening schedule as follows:

In addition, HKIFF continues its tradition of bringing together film masters from around the world including Georges Franju from France, and Japanese directors Kawashima Yuzo and Kurahara Koreyoshi.

The Tenderness and Savagery of Georges Franju
The late Georges Franju (1912-1987) occupies a pivotal position in the history of French cinema, both as a filmmaker and as one of the founders of the Cinematheque Francaise. His first film was the documentary, The Blood of Beasts (1949) which impressed and shocked audiences with its subject matter (daily life in a Parisian slaughterhouse) and its surreal images. He extended his strong personal aesthetics and style to his later feature films, creating a series of classics including the seminal horror film, Eyes Without a Face.
To commemorate the centenary of Franju’s birth, HKIFF has selected two of his feature films and a series of short films, including:

• Head Against the Wall 1959
• Eyes Without a Face 1960
• Georges Franju Shorts Programme 1949-1959

( Le sang des bêtes 1949, Hotel des Invalides 1952, La premiere nuit 1958, Le grand Melies 1952)

The Aesthetics of Discordance – Kawashima Yuzo
Yuzo's aesthetics of "Discordance” were influenced by his growing up in a poor family, and suffering from muscular atrophy just when he became a director. The last scene of his masterpiece The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate is recognized as the climax of his aesthetic "Discordance". The period film is a part comedy part tragedy set in a brothel with a panorama of characters whose individual struggles to survive create friction in their community. It was considered as one of the best Japanese films of all time and was particularly noteworthy for the comedic performance of the very popular Frankie Sakai.

Yuzo’s other films which are shown during the festival include:

• Our Doctor, Our Chief 1952
• Between Yesterday and Tomorrow 1954
• Burden of Love 1955
• The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate 1957
• Suzaki Paradise: Red Light 1956
• Elegant Beast 1962 

The Irreverent Genre-Buster KURAHARA KOREYOSHI
Internationally acclaimed director Kurahara Koreyoshi (1927-2002) is best-known for his offbeat style, and unbounded imagination that overturned genre conventions and expectations. He was crowned as the “Nikkatsu Trio” along with Nakahira Ko and Imamura Shohei, directing some of the studio’s biggest hits and making cult classics inspired by the film revolution of the French New Wave such as The Warped Ones. Kurahara debuted with I Am Waiting (Ore wa matteru ze) in 1957, and since then pushed film form and content even further than his counterparts in Europe. HKIFF is screening a selection of his work:

• The Warped Ones 1959
• Intimidation 1960
• The Warped Ones 1960
• Black Sun  1964
• Glass-Hearted Johnny 1962
• Thirst for Love  1967

About Hong Kong International Film Festival Society
The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (HKIFFS) is a charitable, non-profit and non-governmental organization dedicated to the discovery and promotion of creativity in the art and culture of film.

Through its year-round programmes, the mission of the Society is to strengthen global appreciation of Chinese film culture and to promote inspiring films from around the world, enriching the cultural life of Hong Kong.

Committed to the development of a vibrant film culture in Hong Kong and Asia, the Society presents three annual flagship events in March and April: The Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) and the Asian Film Awards (AFA).

Passionately believing in the power of films to unite cultures and generations, the HKIFFS is devoted to giving thousands of film lovers around the region direct access to the world’s most inspiring films all year round.

For media enquiries, please contact:
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Appendix
The Story of Film: An Odyssey I (ep. 1-3)
Dir: Mark Cousins
UK 2011 Colour/B&W 180min
In the beginning was the image: we follow the genesis of moving images, starting with pioneers Thomas Edison and the Lumiere Brothers. Discover how film language, from cuts to angles, evolved during the early days of cinema. By the 1920s, Hollywood had become a bustling entertainment industry, giving us grand spectacles during the silent film era. We remember comic icons Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and study the legacy of cinematic masters such as Fritz Lang, Sergei Eisenstein and Carl Theodor Dreyer. In the East, we are introduced to the early works of Ozu Yasujiro, as well as the tragic life of Chinese superstar Ruan Lingyu.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey II (ep. 4-6)
Dir: Mark Cousins
UK 2011 Colour/B&W 180min
In the 1930s, the arrival of sound changed everything. Film genres were expanded to include gangster flicks, musicals and westerns. From post-World War II Italy came neorealism – works by Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. And then came film noir. Alfred Hitchcock is presented as the master of mood and mystery. The works of John Ford; the expressionistic Orson Welles; the Hollywood classic era defined by Howard Hawks. Far from the West, there’s Youssef Chahine and Egyptian films; India’s Satyajit Ray and Guru Dutt; Chinese melodrama by Xie Jin; and Japan’s cinematic rise, led by Kurosawa Akira.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey III (ep. 7-9)
Dir: Mark Cousins
UK 2011 Colour/B&W 180min
The explosion of arthouse cinema in the late 50s and 60s, from Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman and Italy’s Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini to the revolution that was the French New Wave, led by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Elsewhere, from the Soviet bloc came Poland’s Roman Polanski and Russia’s Andrei Tarkovsky. Farther East, Japan’s enfant terrible Nagisa Oshima. The rise of Black African cinema. Back in Hollywood, Easy Rider and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey redefined American films, a trend continued by Martin Scorsese and the seminal Taxi Driver.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey IV (ep. 10-12)
Dir: Mark Cousins
UK 2011 Colour/B&W 180min
1970s European cinema welcomed the German New Wave (Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog) and British social realism (Ken Loach). Hong Kong movie’s explosion – the beginnings of Shaw Studios and the rise of the kung fu craze, as personified by Bruce Lee. Then in the 1980s, John Woo’s and Yuen Woo-ping’s action mastery. Bollywood’s popularity and the impact of the classic Sholay. The rise of the 5th Generation Chinese filmmakers. A giant of Eastern European cinema: Krzysztof Kieslowski. But in Hollywood, it was the birth of multiplexes and blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey V (ep. 13-15)
Dir: Mark Cousins UK 2011 Colour/B&W 180min
The final episodes chronicle ‘the last days of celluloid’ and the beginning of digital cinema. Cousins begins with Iranian cinema: Abbas Kiarostami and the Makhmalbafs. Crossing to the Far East, auteurs such as Wong Kar Wai, Tsai Ming-Liang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien. But Japan was making new kinds of horror: Tetsuo, The Ring, and Audition. And in Europe: Lars von Trier, Bruno Dumont, Claire Denis and Michael Haneke. In America, we discover the rapid wordplay of Quentin Tarantino, the edginess of the Coen Brothers, and the dreamlike world of David Lynch.

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