July 16, 2007 Archives

I do find it a little illogical to bundle Asian films with fantastic films, into something called "genre", but with a limited market for Asian films in Montreal, there does not seem to be an alternative way.

A quick search on the Internet indicates that Toronto has a Toronto Reel Asian International Film Fest since 2002 (with After This Our Exile as North American premiere on opening night), whereas Vancouver has a Vancouver Asian Film Festival since 1996, which are both relatively smaller festivals than Fantasia, in terms of movies shown (80-90 and 40-50, respectively, versus Fantasia's 200+).

In a sense, it's absolutely fine like this, because the end result is still the screening of recent high-quality Asian/Chinese films in theatres for a ridiculously low price ($6.50) which no mainstream cinema is able to match. Besides, my movie list never ever matches those of the fantastic/horror film seekers... Whereas I was not attracted to last year's festival premiere The Descent, they probably were not towards this year's Tekkon Kinkreet. I suppose that we eventually meet at (the rather cheap) The Matrimony, but not at (the movie-award gatherer) After This Our Exile.