In the 30 degree celcius heat of the bustling Egyptian capital, 25 Asian films are unspooling at the 29th Cairo International Film Festival, which runs from November 29th to December 9th.
Festival director Chérif El Shoubashy has chosen to make Asian cinema the focus of this year's festival, and has invited a host of Asian co-productions involving Hong Kong, Chinese and Taiwanese talent.
The prestigious position of opening night film was bestowed upon the much-lauded Chinese/HK production House of Flying Daggers which took HKD7,000,000 at the HK box office on its opening weekend in 2004, and which cemented Zhang Yimou's name in Western countries such as America and Australia. Together with Lu Qi's A Bright Moon, Flying Daggers is competing in the International Competition against films from France, Germany, Yemen and Hungary for the festival's Golden Pyramid award.
The festival will also be screening a selection of Asian films dating back to 1989, amongst which are many award winners, allowing Egyptian audiences to catch up on cinematic developments and high-points that they may have missed from their Eastern neighbors. Amongst these were Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which recently reinvigorated the wuxia genre, and the recent Kung Fu Hustle from HK's golden-haired boy Stephen Chow, which thankfully received US distribution through Sony Pictures Classics in the wake of the Miramax-Weinstein butchery of Chow's earlier Shaolin Soccer.
Hong Kong cinema in particular, and Asian cinema in general, has been making a splash on the international festival circuit of late. Marco Mueller's deep connections with the Orient already made Venice one of this year's best showcases for what HK and the PRC have to offer. With the recent boom in popularity and international box office figures being chalked up for HK and Chinese cinema, one can't help but wonder if Cairo's Asian focus is an attempt to help its sagging attendance numbers rise, and thereby boost the investment it needs to compete against the larger festivals in Dubai and Marrakesh.
Wonder we might, but whatever the underlying reasons, there's no doubt that Hong Kong cinema is flowering richly on the banks of the Nile.
(hkfilmart December 5, 2005)
