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Festival Reports

On the Edge: a film festival between East and West

Aditya Monday September 17, 2012
At the end of August, Sakhalin Island hosted – for the fourth time – the international film festival, “On the Edge.” There were two noteworthy aspects to this film forum: firstly, the festival’s programme director Alexey Medvedev put together a very strong competition programme, and secondly, it was not only Russian films that were screened at the festival but also films from Russia’s far eastern neighbours. 
Let's start at the beginning. The competition programme comprised eleven films, five of them Russian. Notably, the Russian titles were among the best made here this year. The film Test, by Alexander Kott, won the Grand Prix at the Kinotavr Russian Film Festival in Sochi and is a story about nuclear tests carried out in Kazakhstan in 1953. Star, by Anna Melikyan, won Kinotavr's Best Director prize and in my view is an example of brilliant audience-led cinema. The film tells on one hand the story of a young girl who wants to become a film star but on the other hand a story about a not-so-young woman who realizes that she has only a few months to live.  The third film, Corrections Class, by Ivan Tverdovsky, is about a girl with disabilities on the threshold of adulthood and won Kinotavr’s Best Debut prize. The two other films – Another Year, by Oksana Bychkova, and The Winter Will Not Come, by IlyaDemichev – represented a more youthful Russian cinema.
The films from Russia’s continental neighbours were the Georgian Blind Dates, by LevanKoguashvili, which has won prizes for direction in Sofia, Vilnius and Wiesbaden, and Kasakhstan’s The Owners, by AdilkhanYerzhanov, which was featured in this year’s official programme at the Cannes Film Festival. The four films representing Asia were Ship of Theseus, by Anand Gandhi from India, Still The Water, by Naomi Kawase from Japan, The Monk, by The Maw Naing from Myanmar, and From a Pimple to Nirvana, by AmornHarinnitisuk from Thailand. As we can see, the competition was fierce in this programme in and in a quite unusual context too.  
Despite the jury being mainly Russian – director Vadim Abdrashitov, actor Sergei Puskepalis, film critic Sergei Shumakov –  (also present were Indian director Amit Kumar and me, a film expert from Kazakhstan) - Asian films swept the board. Unanimously loved was Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus, a philosophical yet visually magnificent film, which won the festival’s Grand Prix. The Best Actor prize went to NeerajKabi from the same film, while Miyuki Matsuda from Still The Water pocketed the Best Actress prize. The Best Director prize was awarded to LevanKoguashvili for Blind Dates – a fine, graceful, unhurried film about a 40-year old school teacher who can’t get married. And only the Special Jury Prize went to a Russian effort – Corrections Class. To be honest, this award could just have easily gone to the Burmese film The Monk or the Kazakh film The Owners for their distinctive cinematic language, or to the Russian Test for its artistic expression. But a competition is a Darwinian beast, and choices must be made. Most importantly, this programme provided an excellent selection of films and provoked much discussion as to which was most worthy.
The second feature of the «On The Edge» festival was that most of the out-of-competition selections were from Russia’s far eastern neighbours, to wit:
Japan: Empire of Passion
Hong Kong: the City Where Cinema Dwells
Korea: Korean Dragon 
Japanese Animation: Miyadzaki and Others
The festival's main guest star was the South Korean actress Moon So-Ri, and some of her selected works – Oasis, Forever The Moment and HAHAHA – were screened in a retrospective. 
Other special screenings included films by Alexander Sokurov, as well as various Asian and European films.
The festival’s thematic documentary strand, “Architecture and Film”, deserves special mention. Seven films told stories that were not so much about architects but about urban planning: about how the urban environment is shaped and what must be done to make a city designed not for cars but for people. The programme was supported with a graduation show featuring work by students of Moscow's leading architecture school, MArchI, which was dedicated to an overhaul of Sakhalin's towns – indeed, during the festival, residents of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk could participate in a workshop on the reconstruction of Gagarin Park. Therefore, “On The Edge” existed not only to give the public a chance to experience the best of art-house cinema, but also as a place for public meetings and debates. It's worth mentioning that the festival had no press conferences, but there were Q&A sessions and meetings of filmmakers and audiences after each screening.
This audience dialogue was actually the third noteworthy feature of the festival. Some amazing statistics: over the nine days of the festival, over 80 films were seen by 21,000 people, which represents 10 per cent of the entire population of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The regional government financed the festival with a brief not only to liven up the cultural life of the island, but also for the festival to become one of international note. The programme was thoughtful and wide-ranging and the aforementioned international brief was taken into account: films were subtitled in English, the catalogue was printed in English and the festival had a great website at www.sakhalinfilmfestival.ru.  It is therefore time to think about having the NETPAC jury at this festival, especially given that one half of Russia is European and the other Asian.
Since the festival's Honorary President was AllaSurikova, the famed Russian film director, the event took on one more unexpected function – an educational one. For the third year running, a film workshop took place and, as before, the two highest-placed students get to continue their education in Moscow at the Higher Course for Screenwriters and Directors, where Surikova teaches. The regional Governor funds their school fees for the two-year programme – further plans include opening a film studio on Sakhalin.
In fact, the curator of this workshop, entitled «European-Asian», is YuliaLevitskaya, a filmmaker from Kazakhstan. Together with her team she created the festival trailer in which, as in a shadow-play show, a top-hatted European and a straw-hatted Asian take their seats in a screening room to watch a silent film. One takes out a booklet, the other takes out a fan, and between them we see the white space of the screen silhouetted to form the shape of Sakhalin Island.

 

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1. I entered the cinema through the theatre. I was an actor in our local theatre called Kanibadam, named after Tuhfa Fozilova. After working for five years, I decided to do a theatre director course. I graduated with honors and became a director. We successfully staged performances at international festivals.

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