Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Wisit to build Haunted House in Rotterdam, Art of the Devil 3 added to Hungry Ghosts


The "Hungry Ghosts" program at the upcoming International Film Festival Rotterdam is shaping up. A new press release has details:

'Hungry Ghosts' is a film programme with features from East Asian countries about ghosts and supernatural apparitions. The specific quality of East Asian horror movies is that the people who make them and the people who watch them actually believe in ghosts.

Compiled by Rotterdam festival programmer Gertjan Zuilhof, 'Hungry Ghosts' presents the striking and innovative recent work of, among others, Ronin Team (Art of the Devil 3), Riri Riza (Takut: Faces of Fear), Ekachai Uekrongtham (The Coffin) and Tsukamoto Shinya (Nightmare Detective 2).

Houses are, as seen in these ‘ghost movies’, often the favorite dwelling place of ghosts. A real Haunted House group exhibition will be part of ‘Hungry Ghosts’. Southeast Asian filmmakers Amir Muhammad (Malaysia), Wisit Sasanatieng (Thailand), Nguyen Vinh Son (Vietnam), Lav Diaz (Philippines), Garin Nugroho (Indonesia) and Riri Riza (Indonesia) will each convert a room in the monumental exhibition building into their vision of the house of the spirits.

In addition to The Coffin, which had been previously mentioned as part of the Hungry Ghosts show, and now Five Star's Art of the Devil 3, GTH's four-part omnibus 4bia is also expected to be among the selections.

But more than the films, if I were not limited by time, money and distance, I'd seriously consider travelling to Rotterdam just to see the Haunted House installations by those six heroes of Southeast Asian cinema. Hope somebody takes pictures.

Programmer Zuilhof wrote about his ideas for the Haunted House in a Programmers Chroncles article on the IFFR website. He was in Bangkok earlier this year, scouting around for scary stuff.

Hungry Ghosts is part of the Signals section of the recently revamped festival. Other Signals programs are retrospectives for Jerzy Skolimowski, Paolo Benvenuti and Peter Liechti; "Size Matters", which examines electronic screens and technology; "First Things First", which spotlights first and very films by prominent filmmakers, "Young Turkish Cinema"; and "Regained".

The two other main sections at IFFR are Bright Future, which presents some 70 works of first or second time filmmakers including the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition; and Spectrum, comprising around 100 recent features and shorts by experienced filmmakers.

The festival runs from January 21 to 26.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please, no questions or comments about where to download movies or subtitle files.

Please read the FAQ about Thai films on DVD before asking about where to find a Thai movie on DVD with English subtitles.

Make your comments pertinent to the post you are commenting on. For off-topic comments, general observations or news tips, consider sending an e-mail to me at wisekwai [ a t ] g m a i l [d o t ] c o m.

All comments are moderated. Spam comments will be deleted.