HAF PROFILES


Port Of Call Hong Kong Dir: Philip Yung


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Budget $1.5m Finance raised to date $200,000 Contact Philip Yung, Digital Jungle Production, yungtszkwong@yahoo.com.hk


Budget $7m Finance raised to date $3.5m Contact Tsutomu Tsuchikawa, Kadokawa Pictures, tsuchikawa@ kadokawa-pictures.co.jp


Revolution 1911 Japan Dir: Hiroshi Sugawara


Bodyguards And Assassins and upcoming epic The Founding Of A Party. But HAF project Revolution 1911, from director Hiroshi Sugawara, chronicles a lesser- known relationship between Sun and a young Japanese film-maker. The film is drawn from the 2009 non-fiction book, The


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Japanese Man That Created A Revolution. Written by Ayano Kosaka, the book recounts the life of the author’s great grandfather Shokichi Umeya, who as a young man travelling across Asia met Sun and became a devoted follower. Fascinated by film-making, Umeya ultimately shot footage of the 1911 Xinhai revolution. Having promoted the revolution while in exile, Sun was able to see the overthrow of the Qing dynasty as filmed by his dear friend Umeya. With a screenplay currently in development, Revolution


1911 is looking for funding at HAF. Produced by Kadokawa’s Tsutomu Tsuchikawa and Chinese producer Shirley Kao, the film is being set up as a Japan-China co-production to shoot in both territories. Kadokawa — which formed a joint venture with Sun Wah in 2005 to build multiplexes in the then-nascent mainland market — has experience in this area, having produced Sino- Japanese films such as Warriors Of Heaven And Earth and Crossing Over. Completing the core team is director Hiroshi


Sugawara, whose credits include Seven Days’ War and Fireflies: Rivers Of Light. “With an international co-production of this scale,


Hiroshi Sugawara’s experience made him a strong candidate,” explains Tsuchikawa.


Jason Gray n 10 Screen International at Filmart/HAF/HKIFF March 23, 2011


he life story of Chinese revolutionary Dr Sun Yat-sen has already been told on celluloid several times, in such films as Road To Dawn, the semi-fictionalised


ilm critic turned director Philip Yung is basing his second feature, Port Of Call, around the true story of a grisly murder in Hong Kong.


In 2008, the dismembered corpse of a 16-year-old


prostitute was discovered and it emerged she had told her murderer — who was also a customer — that she wanted to die. Yung became interested in the girl’s psychological state and the customer’s motives for killing her. His screenplay also brings in a third character, a detective who crosses the boundary into voyeurism in an attempt to answer these questions. “I’m interested in portraying the realities of Hong Kong,” says Yung. “I find this is a complicated and


Budget $200,000 Finance raised to date $21,000 Contact Extra Virgin, mai@extravirginco.com


BREAKINGNEWS For the latest film business news see ScreenDaily.com


changeable city, and I’m fascinated by the dignity but lack of social norms of the young generation.” His first feature, Glamorous Youth, also delved beneath


the surface gloss of Hong Kong. The film revolved around a typical schoolboy and how his family and friends, who are equally lacking in direction, influence him. Produced by Chang Wen’s Digital Jungle Production, the film played at several festivals including Hong Kong, Filmfest München and the Rome Asian Film Festival, and also bagged Yung a nomination for best new director at last year’s Hong Kong Film Awards. “When I finished the synopsis of Glamorous Youth in


2007, I couldn’t find any investors. But I was lucky to meet a brand new investor who had never worked in film, but really wanted to make a difference in the Hong Kong film industry,” Yung says of Chang, who is also producing Port Of Call. The duo are looking for funds, co-producers and a sales agent for the project, which has a higher budget than Glamorous Youth.


Liz Shackleton


Budget $2m Finance raised to date None Contact Le-joy Animation, le-joy1969@ hotmail.com


Departure Day Thailand Dir: Phuttiphong Aroonpheng


and tensions between a stateless woman in the late stages of pregnancy, a Thai woman who has recently lost her newborn, an unknown man washed up from the sea and the Thai fisherman who rescues him. “Departure Day is about different aspects of human


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identity, and poses the question, ‘How can self-identity attached to us unintentionally lead us to tragedy?’” says Aroonpheng, who has directed several short films including A Tale Of Heaven, which screened at Rotterdam earlier this year. Aroonpheng’s work has attracted backing from outside Thailand: in 2007, his experimental documentary project We All Know Each Other won support from Japan’s Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), while video-art project My Image Observes Your Image, If It Is Possible To Observe It, was supported by IMMA alongside the Thai Ministry of Culture’s Office of Contemporary Art and Culture. “My main objective in doing this project is still a


continuation of my works in exploring the relationship of human identities amid political and social conflicts in the contemporary world,” Aroonpheng explains. A graduate of the Busan film festival’s Asian Film


Academy workshop, he won script development support for Departure Day from the Asian Cinema Fund and the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture. With the script in development, Aroonpheng is


planning to shoot in the Tak province in north-west Thailand and the Ranong province in the south. The project will be produced by Bangkok-based Extra


Virgin, a collective of film-makers, producers and publicity agents co-founded by Pimpaka Towira and Mai Meksawan. Jean Noh


hai visual artist and film-maker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s Departure Day is set on the border between Thailand and Burma and follows the ties


Mr 19 China Dir: Liu Jian


artist. With its edgy narrative and dry humour about the reality of Chinese society, the film won the Green Chameleon award at the Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival and the best animated feature film prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Liu’s follow-up is a sci-fi project about the war for


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survival between humans and robots. The story will begin with mankind being annihilated by robots, leaving mankind’s ‘samsara’ gene hidden around the world in 19 different places to one day be reborn. When a detective sets out to investigate 18 missing robots, he finds himself involved in a revolution planned by the exiled humans. “For me, the subject will be a new direction and its


visual presentation and scenes will be completely different from Piercing I,” says Liu, who adds that his hand-drawn animation style will remain the same. “The core of the story will be about the relations between human beings and their co-existence with time, which is actually similar to Piercing I,” he says. Mr 19 will be the second film in Liu’s Times Trilogy: the


third title will be an animation set in the past, possibly with martial-arts elements. For Piercing I, Liu wrote, directed, designed the


characters, served as animator and conducted some sound recordings. For Mr 19, Liu’s Le-joy Animation is looking to raise a bigger budget and will work with an animation studio to produce the film. The first draft of the script is completed and Liu has


started designing characters and main scenes. At HAF, Le-joy is looking for finance, co-production partners and an international sales company.


Sen-lun Yu


iu Jian surprised the animation world with his impressive 2010 debut feature, Piercing I, a film made on a shoestring budget with only one animation


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