The water of the East Sea was restless in boundless joy, wave after wave of its sparkling water washing the Haeundae beach in great elation as the Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF), South Korea unfolded in October. The inaugural ceremony was brief, the father figure of the festival and its director Kim Dong Ho delivered the welcome address and the chief programmer Kim Ji Seok elucidated about the programmes and a beautiful, soul stirring opera song later, the festival was declared open.

The inaugural film was Kazakhstani The Gift to Stalin by Rustem Abdrashev. It narrates a heart-rending tale of young Jewish kid Saska whose rhythm of childhood goes haywire as the oppressive regime of Stalin relocated him to Kazakhstan with his grandfather as part of forced repatriation in 1940s. Along the way, upon his grandfather’s death, he is dumped with the dead bodies of other exiles who did not survive the journey. Little Saska is saved by Kasym, a one-eyed Kazakh rail worker. Saska is rechristened Sabyr and he begins to live with refugees of diverse religious origin in a small village that becomes a haunt for Russian soldiers, entertaining themselves with the food and ‘flesh’ of the refugees.

As Abdrashev highlights the value of trust and hope even in most difficult times, the film takes another dimension when it takes one to Stalin’s 70th birthday — a day when young Saska sends a gift to Stalin in the hope of securing his parents’ release. Stalin conducts a nuclear test in the area killing many innocents and unleashing endless devastation. With a powerful script by famous Russian screen writer Pavel Finn and great acting by famous actor Nurzhuman Ikhtimbaev as Kasym and of course, nine-year-old Dalen Shintemirov in the role of Saska, the film is basically a journey to the past by adult Sabyr. Without being direct critique of the communism or the cult of Stalin, yet more eloquent and reproachful in effect, The Gift to Stalin was an unforgettable experience.

It was actually a responsibility thrust upon me by the International Film Critic Federation (FIPRESCI) to serve as a jury member that I was invited to PIFF, which was held in Busan, the second largest city of South Korea, from October 2 to 10. My colleagues in the five-member jury were Elise Dominach (France), Hynek Pallas (Sweden), Dubravka Lakik (Serbia) and Kang Ho Chin (South Korea). The competition section of the festival was New Currents section, which showcased the best of Asian cinema; mostly low-budget independent films. There were fourteen films from nine Asian countries — all manifested solid narratives, varied contents with deep social concerns and bold experimentation, reasserting the strength of Asian cinema.

One such impressive film was Chinese Ye Zhao’s Jalainur, which shined bright with apt handling of cinematic space and a narrative where stress was laid on expression of characters alone to carry forward the story. With a script having very sparse dialogues, cinematographer Yi Zhang makes every moment of it heart wrenchingly evocative. Zhang practically creates a canvas of moods and emotions with grimness spread all over, capturing all hues and colours in splendid compositions.

Jalainur (a Mongolian word meaning ocean-like lake) is actually a colliery in the Manzhouli city of Inner Mongolia autonomous region north China. Hundred years of exploration has created a huge crater in the ground of the colliery that is on the verge of closure. The hopelessness of the situation compels ageing Zhu to retire early. His young apprentice Zhizhong is stunned and finds it difficult to accept Zhu’s retirement. If his old companion has nothing much to lose except for years of attachment to the colliery, Zhizhong has in store for him a bleak future and finds himself in limbo. He wanders along the border, misses the train to go back to his work, which he might know well an exercise in futility. The beauty of Jalainur, however, lies in its ability to carry this concern as an underlying issue though more pronounced than the crisis in camaraderie of its protagonists. Amid these crises of the protagonists, however, a recurrent, much-used Angelopoulosian metaphor of a mobile music troupe emits hope at the end of the tunnel and highlights the ability of man in rising from ashes like a phoenix. With his deep working class concerns with oblique reference to apathy of the system, Zhao has accomplished a great job in Jalainur, throughout poetic and allegorical, which promises a lot from this young director. The film bagged the FIPRESCI nomination for the International Critics Award.

Another impressive film was The Land of Scarecrows by Korean director Roh Gyeong-tae that deals with subjects of gender, sexuality, individual and national identity, and the growing irreversible consequence of pollution on human life with haunting affect. The film, adjudged best by the Ana Karina-headed main jury of the festival, takes rather an unusual approach to unfold the trauma, dilemma and isolation of its three protagonists as they go through deep existential crisis. The film traces the life of an installation artist Jang Ji-Younga, a seemingly pollution afflicted transgender, her foster son Loi Tan and a young Filipino girl Rain, who wants to settle in Korea enticed by its good life. Taking a cue from installation method of art and juxtaposing independent, yet distantly related, shots to narrate the story, the filmmaker tries to vividly portray the isolation and inner crisis of its characters.

Apart from Jalainur and The Land of Scarecrows, few other films in this section were equally interesting, both by their content and style, and it is evident that young Asian directors are fairly proficient in the medium. While the Filipino film 100 portrays a cancer-diagnosed woman’s preparation to embrace death gracefully, Iranian film Saman Estereki’s Empty Chair unfolds destiny of its sundry characters in a cinema within cinema narration, which often blurs the thin line between reality and fiction impressively. A Light in the Fog by Iranian Panahbarkhoda Rezaeevis is another film that somberly portrays with very evocative visuals, the grimness of a painful wait by the father and the wife of a soldier, who remains untraced in the battlefront. Chinese film Jin Yang’s Er Dong is narrated in a simple documentary style, following Er Dong’s daily chore with an observer camera (Kino Eye) throughout, but at the same time unfailingly captures the pitiable condition all around that reflects the underdevelopment of the place and miserable poverty of people, far removed from the fast paced economy in the mainland China. Thai film A Moment in June beautifully traces three young and old couple’s tumultuous emotional journey as destiny plays hide and seek, while Japanese film Masahide Ichi’s Naked of Defenses movingly unfolds one childless woman’s emotional agony and predicament while helping out a pregnant co-worker to deliver her child. The lone Indian entry in the section, Rajesh Shera’s Ocean of an Old Man was a disappointment though.

Started under the stewardship of legendary Kim Dong Ho, PIFF is now an important festival of Asia and it has even outshone festivals like Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai by its grandeur, substance and significance. This year’s statistics just reaffirm the fact. With the screening of 315 films from across the globe, 85 world premiers, 95 Asian premiers, a record attendance of about 199,000, about 1,000 overseas guests, four juries and about ten awards, the festival is undoubtedly in the same bracket with world’s best of the film festivals. Said festival director Kim Dong Ho in an interview to film magazine Variety: “There are many festivals in Asia, but there are few festivals that benefit Asian film production in a substantial way. As the representative film festival in Asia, we think that we should play a big role (in promotion and distribution). ...PIFF has been concentrating on finding ways to revive Asian cinema and support Asian film production, which has resulted in such programs as Asian film Academy and Asian Cinema Fund... I think this is one of the differences of PIFF from other film festivals.”

Bitopan Borborah