`Spectacular lineup’

What in the world could renowned Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski of The Decalogue fame and American actress Christina Applegate of television’s MarriedÉWith Children possibly have in common? Surprisingly, they’ll both be rubbing shoulders in Vancouver while attending screenings of their films at the 13th annual Vancouver International Film Festival.

Vancouver’s festival has always been known for its eclectic and populist choice of films. ‘We’re an anthology festival,’ says festival executive director Alan Franey, ‘and as such, we try to show the best films from around the world – that’s what the audience here wants.’

This year’s festival has a ‘spectacular lineup’ of films, says Franey. ‘I feel more strongly about the lineup than ever before. There are so many sensational films from so many different countries that we have fallen in love with over the year.’

From Sept. 30 to Oct. 16, North America’s third largest film festival will screen 250 films from 40 different countries.

What’s new this time around, Franey says, ‘is a stronger Latin American lineup than ever before and many more films from the Arab world, even though the festival did not consciously pursue these areas.’

A tribute to Kieslowski is a major coup for the Vancouver festival. The acclaimed Polish filmmaker, considered one of the most important directors in Europe – ‘a cinema moralist in the class of Bergman and Bresson’ – will attend the festival in one of his rare appearances outside Europe for a gala screening of his new film Red (Trois Couleurs – Rouge), the third entry in his award-winning Three Colors trilogy.

The tribute will also include a screening of The Decalogue, Kieslowski’s mammoth 10-hour television series based on the Ten Commandments. ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime screening in Vancouver,’ says Franey. ‘It’s simply one of the best pieces of cinema anyone has done for the last 25 years – a landmark in film history.’

Across the Moon, an American feature directed by Lisa Gottlieb and produced by Robert Michaelson, will have its world premiere in Vancouver, Michaelson’s home town. The film, about a rich Beverly Hills woman and another woman from the Barrios in east l.a. who strike up a friendship when their boyfriends end up in the same jail, stars the aforementioned Applegate and Elizabeth Pena.

Among the North American premieres at this year’s viff is the powerful and moving documentary, Screenplay: Three Decades With The Golzow Children and defa. Directed by well-known German filmmakers Barbara and Winfried Junge, the five-hour film began shooting in the early ’60s and continued through the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Kicking off the festival is Whale Music, a Canadian feature directed by Richard Lewis and based on author Paul Quarrington’s Governor General Award-winning novel of the same name about a washed-up rock star on a quest for redemption through love and a symphony for whales.

The film marks the first interprovincial coproduction between b.c. and Ontario. Produced by Raymond Massey and David Hauka of Vancouver’s Cape Scott Motion Pictures, and Steven DeNure of Toronto-based Alliance Communications, Whale Music also opened the Perspective Canada program at this month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

While many in the local industry questioned the repeat choice given the wealth of local films this year, Franey defends the decision.

‘It’s simply the most suitable film for an opening gala from all the Vancouver productions,’ he says. ‘There is a particular type of experience that the sponsors and opening gala audience expect. We like to have something that has very large production values, films that will have a broad reach and recognizable names. We also like a film that shows some of the Vancouver scenery for visiting guests.’

He says the other Vancouver films this year ‘are chamber pieces. They are smaller and interesting films, but they don’t quite have the sweep of Whale Music.’

Despite the elitist treatment accorded Whale Music by both the Toronto and Vancouver festivals, Franey says viff will have a very different lineup from tiff. ‘The majority of our films were not at either Toronto’s or Montreal’s festivals.’

Canadian Images programmer Alison Vermee says with 49 new films being screened in the series, this is definitely one of the best years for Canadian cinema.

Among the 23 features and 26 shorts, a record 20 are from Western Canada. Never before have Western-produced films had such a strong presence at the festival.

‘It seems as if there’s been a whole leap ahead,’ says Vermee. ‘There’s more consistency in the quality of the films, the scripts are better, the dialogue is strong, and the films are more character- rather than event-driven.’

It’s no wonder this is the festival’s most popular series. Canadian films rarely survive more than one week in the theaters, so catch them while you can.

Testimony to the maturation and increased output of the local production industry are the three other gala screenings for local films: first-time feature director Mina Shum’s Double Happiness, Charles Wilkinson’s Max and Kathy Garneau’s Tokyo Cowboy.

Double Happiness, a film about a 22-year-old aspiring Chinese-Canadian actress who is trying to coalesce the constraints of her Chinese family life while exploring the freedom of a young woman growing up in the ’90s, garnered rave reviews at the Toronto festival and promises to be a hot ticket in Vancouver.

Rounding out the West’s big six feature films are Highway To Heartache, directed by Greg Wild of Vancouver, Hellbent, directed by John Kozak of Winnipeg, and the feature documentary In Darkest Hollywood: Cinema and Apartheid, directed by Peter Davis and Daniel Riesenfeld.

While many other major international film festivals only recently recognized the growing significance of Asian films, Vancouver’s Asian component, Dragons and Tigers, has always represented its strongest suit.

This year, longtime Asian series programmer, London, Eng.-based Tony Rayns, has assembled 45 films – the largest festival selection of Asian films screened outside East Asia.

Rayns says what was most striking in selecting films for the East Asian program this year was the caliber and level of creativity of the Chinese films (including Taiwan and Hong Kong) in spite of the social, economic and political difficulties filmmakers are experiencing there.

‘In terms of content, there seems to be fresh ways of seeing very basic human problems. I can’t remember a year when I’ve seen more moving and intense pictures about things that anybody could relate to. This becomes even more remarkable given that they are coming from this background of crisis.’

Rayns says in carving out a niche in Asian cinema, the Vancouver festival particularly wants to promote young independent filmmakers, ‘the hope of the future.’

He adds: ‘There are too many festivals in the world, and if Vancouver is to become distinctive in its programming, we must cultivate areas that are specific to our festival.’

With this in mind, viff will also present the first Young Cinema from Pacific Asia Award for the most creative and innovative first or second feature by a new director as judged by an international jury.

Among the seven Asian films competing for the award at the festival are This Window is Yours (Kono Mado Wa Kimi No Mono) from Japan, a fresh and swooningly sensual take on puberty blues by director Tomoyuki Furumaya, and La Vie En Rose (Chang-Mi Ui Insaeng), a South Korean film directed by Kim Hong June that’s described as a hallucinatory descent into Seoul’s ‘lower depths’ in the months before the 1988 Olympics.

Two new series have been added to the festival this year: Russia Now, a program of 15 films from or about Russia, and Faultlines: Non-Fiction Features of 1994, 25 new documentaries from around the world.

Franey says certain themes appear to have emerged in the documentary series this year. ‘We certainly weren’t selecting them based on it, but many seemed to deal with the African-American experience, the conflict in the Balkans, and the fate of the world’s major cities.’

Venues remain the same with six theaters participating – three in the downtown area and three on Vancouver’s west side.

The dispersal of tickets has been improved. Franey says they found the trend was to advanced ticket sales, so a new computer system has been developed to improve service with more operators manning the phones, call waiting, and new technology to process the orders more quickly.

Among the guests confirmed for this year’s festival are British director Michael Apted, Australian filmmaker Pauline Chan, actor Sami Frey, Canadian filmmakers Atom Egoyan, Micheline Lanctot and Paul Donovan, British director Nick Broomfield, and Hong Kong director Jackie Chan.

u