It is the last of three large film festivals in Canada, yet the Vancouver International Film Festival still manages to showcase a substantial number of premieres.

Last year viff featured around 100 premieres that did not play in the earlier Montreal or Toronto festival venues, and this year will be no exception, with around 10 world premieres, 20 international, 20 North American and 45 English Canada debuts.

While festival director Alan Franey admits that having premieres is always a consideration, he says the point of a festival is to show the best films of the year regardless of whether or not they have unspooled previously. Film festivals exist to provide a venue and a process of curatorial selection which keeps international and domestic culture alive, says Franey.

‘In the universe of so many possibilities, we are limited by our Canadian budgets. When it comes to competing with Hollywood studios’ promo budgets it is very difficult for the Canadian film industry to grow,’ says Franey. ‘If Canadian film is going to mature it needs to be informed by international standards of cinema.’

One event that is stirring up excitement at the 16th annual viff, running Sept. 26 to Oct. 12, is the world premiere of Japanese director Ishii Sogo’s performance piece Mach 1.67, which Franey says is an unprecedented event in the history of film festivals.

Sogo, who has been tagged a leader in Japanese new wave, applies the same principles to his performance of film that a disc jockey would apply to a live club setting, only where the deejay mixes records he is mixing his films. Four projectors will run simultaneously while live music spins in the background.

Another of Sogo’s works, Labyrinth of Dreams, is currently on the festival circuit. According to Franey, viff has shown all of the Japanese director’s films to phenomenal success.

Making its international debut is Waco: The Rules of Engagement by American director William Gazecki, who is making his viff debut this year.

Examining the siege at Waco and the American Congressional hearings which followed, the 35mm film is presently causing a sensation in the u.s. and film festival organizers have already been interviewed by reporters concerning the controversial film.

Plenty of the footage from C-Span broadcasts and overhead spy satellites’ thermal photographs of the siege supply the film with what Franey describes as some ‘amazing’ imagery.

Playing in North America for the first time at viff, but already a hit in its home of Sweden, director Christer Engberg’s film Wild Angel can be best described as the Scandinavian version of The Commitments.

First films by Vancouver filmmakers Stacy Kirk and Mark Tuit will be making their world premieres at viff.

Kirk’s Barbecue: A Love Story is about ‘an unlucky man trapped in an endless cycle of attraction, pleasure, betrayal and dissatisfaction,’ while Barnone is a Gen-x comedy examining the trials and tribulations of four different barkeeps.

According to Franey, viff shows as much local work as possible and attempts to serve a role celebrating the Western Canadian film community. ‘We don’t privilege it to the extent that we underrepresent the rest of the country,’ he adds, ‘but we do consider it important to our mandate.’

When Franey took over as director 10 years ago, Canadian Images was not one of the most popular sections of the festival, whereas today it is among the best received, best attended and most discussed.

Other programs in the festival lineup include: Nonfiction Features, Cinema of our Time, the general international section; Walk on the Wild Side, the midnight section; The Best of Britain; and Dragons and Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia, the largest program of East Asian films anywhere in Europe or North America.

Banned in China, Zhang Yuan’s East Palace, West Palace and Frozen by Wu Min (Chinese for no name) will be making North American premieres at viff.

In addition to the usual programs, this year cinephiles will have the opportunity to experience special sections including films under the banners Spotlight on France, A Season in Brazil, Pre-Millennial Tension and Red Hollywood.

Featuring 15 titles including Genealogies of a Crime and Three Lives and Only One Death by French director Raul Ruiz who will be in attendance, Spotlight on France will explore the heritage of French cinema.

A Season in Brazil will show five current films drawing attention to the resurgence of Brazilian cinema, one of which will be Bruno Barreto’s Four Days in September.

Pre-Millennial Tension is a sociological and historical look at the British films of post-wwii, while Red Hollywood: A Tribute to Abraham Polonsky is in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the McCarthy era and the Hollywood blacklist. Veteran director/screenwriter Polonsky, who Franey considers ‘the greatest talent injured by the blacklist,’ will present a new print of his 1948 film Force of Evil.

Attendance for this year’s festival is expected to be around 130,000. Says Franey: ‘It is important for people to understand that we have three-quarters of the distributors operating in English North America – excluding the majors – here in attendance looking at films for potential acquisitions.’