Programmers of UdineFar East Film Festival
While Bucheon city was filled with the bustling
Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival(PiFan)and its many guests, KoBiz had a chance to sit down with Udine Far East Film Festival (FEFF) programmers, Sabrina Baracetti and Thomas Bertacche at a café underneath the Koryo Hotel. Sabrina and Thomas took us through the history of FEFF, their careers and shared their thoughts about Korean films.
The official first edition of FEFF was in 1999, following what they call a ‘zero’ edition the year before. While the festival was taking shape in its early years, it was graced with filmmakers who have seen their profile rise high since, including masters like Johnnie TO. The 2000s came with the Korean renaissance; and auteurs like PARK Chan-wook, KIM Jee-woon, E J-yong and more have introduced their works in Italy. Although big filmmakers like these are harder to come across today, their participation at FEFF remain in its history.
FEFF is a nine-day long festival, which typically features about 40-50 key filmmakers and guests. The most unique thing about the festival is that it takes place in one venue, a 1200-seat opera house that encompasses all programming and viewers. This creates an intimate space, a family-like aura, and a chance for all attendees to meet their fellow attendees. Also, no films have overlapping schedules, making it easier for patrons to catch every single selection. The festival is not particularly large, but it is the perfect size for the patrons of FEFF, with about 60 films per year from around ten countries.
Another unique thing about FEFF is that there is no single festival director. It is organized and programmed by a group of people who work year-round. When programming for the festival, Sabrina mentioned that it is important to “know your audience”. FEFF’s audiences are made up of Italians and international audiences in an approximately 50/50 ratio. Italian audiences are keen on horror films, but also martial arts and melodramas. The Japanese film that won the Audience Award this year, The Eternal Zero, is the perfect example of what the FEFF audiences are looking for, as it is a mix of action and melodrama. This year, the Korean film The Attorney starring SONG Kang-ho and directed by YANG Woo-suk also won one of the Audience Awards along with The Eternal Zero and Barber’s Tales.
Perhaps it may seem surprising that there are so many Asian film fans in Italy. But it was the same reaction Sabrina and Thomas experienced when they travelled to Hong Kong in pursuit of discovering genre films. Just before the founding of the festival, Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche (C.E.C.) was their main post, where they run two cinemas with five screens each. While researching popular Italian cinema, they started to focus on genre films. This is when they decided to travel to Hong Kong, which had very strong genre films at the time. While meeting professionals like Jonnie TO, Peter CHAN and Ringo LAM, the two programmers fell in love with Hong Kong cinema, a passion that soon spread to Far East Asian films. The films they chose to play at C.E.C. received positive responses, and the film festival was born. Now the programmers visit as many as nine different countries in pursuit of finding great films for FEFF, and are familiar faces on the film festival circuit. Thomas hints that a programmer must “travel a lot” in order to find great films, and to feel and experience other industries. Following that motto, Sabrina attended this year’s PiFan as a member of the Puchon Choice: Shorts jury.
Thomas explored the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) first, and the following year Sabrina joined him. Among Korean audiences, they saw a lot of younger viewers in comparison to Italian crowds and were interested to find out about such passionate patrons. With the great hospitality they received from KIM Dong-ho, the two programmers felt welcomed, as if a part of the family. KIM Dong-ho, the founder and Honorary Festival Director of BIFF has become a big influence to Sabrina and Thomas. Since then, they have frequently attended BIFF and PiFan which has led to more interest in Korean films, and they recently even released LEE Changdong’s Poetry and HONG Sangsoo’s In Another Country in Italy through their distribution company, Tucker Film. When asked about which new Korean films they’re expecting, Thomas exclaimed “all of them!”