BUSAN 2011 NEW VENUE
a bridge that links Cine Mountain to BIFF Hill, which will later house the festival’s offices, the Cinematheque Busan, Busan Asian Film Archive and a 36-seat screening room. This year only BIFF will use space in BIFF Hill for guest and press facilities. The Sooyoung River and APEC com-
memorative park are next door, and can also be seen from the third and fourth- floor restaurant and bar. The planned restaurant and bar will not be ready in time for this year’s festival, but organis- ers are considering the space for guest facilities and parties instead. This year’s opening ceremony will be
held in the outdoor screening area of the BCC. Limousines will arrive along the riverside to let guests out onto the red carpet that will wind along the Dou- ble Cone into the outdoor screening arena. The outdoor cinema has perma- nently fitted surround-sound equip- ment, unlike the Yachting Center where sound equipment had to be brought in every year.
Why the new venue? BIFF veterans remember when the fes- tival started out in the Nampo-dong theatre district with the newly dubbed ‘PIFF Square’ bustling with enthusias- t i c audiences and gawker s . A couple of years later the Pusan Pro- motion Plan (now the Asian Project Market) opened at the Commodore Hotel nearby. A few years after that, the partial move to the more recently developed Haeundae beach area took place. While some screenings were still held in Nampo-dong, many were moved to the Megabox and other cinemas in Haeundae, with the PPP and newly opened Asian Film Market held at different hotels along the beachfront. Participants complained the com-
mute between Haeundae and Nampo- dong made it difficult to schedule films, and the split venues made it nearly impossible for market and festival peo- ple to interact during the day. “Since our fifth edition, we realised
we would need a dedicated festival venue,” recalls executive programmer Kim Ji-seok. “We even held seminars about whether we needed one, and in the last presidential election both can- didates made it part of their campaign promises.” The original PIFF venues in Nampo-
n 8 Screen International October 2011
‘We made sure the Busan Cinema Center theatres had a dual system of 35mm and
digital projection’ Kim Ji-seok, BIFF
The reorganisation of BIFF venues will help the festival and market to work together
dong were notorious for raising rents, but Kim says this was not the only rea- son to construct a dedicated festival venue. “At first, renting was difficult and
inconvenient, but with the disappear- ance of the Buyoung and Kukdo thea- tres [in Nampo-dong], we realised it could become even riskier at some point. Apart from the issues of rents, there was the issue of stability,” he says. The rapid conversion of Korea’s mul-
tiplexes to digital screening technology also became a factor. “While we were proceeding with the
plans for the dedicated cinema centre, we saw CGV and Lotte taking out their 35mm projectors to go exclusively digital in some screening rooms. All over the world, people still shoot on
35mm but we could end up in a situa- tion where we couldn’t screen anything but digital. So we made sure the BCC theatres would have a dual system of 35mm and digital projection. Of course, this was something that hadn’t occurred to us in the beginning, but it could have affected how the festi- val selected and invited films,” Kim explains. Nampo-dong will no longer be part
of the festival. This year, the festival’s screenings will be held in the BCC, the CGV and Lotte cinemas in Centum City, and the Megabox in Haeundae. With the Asian Film Market and Asian Project Market moving to BEXCO, mar- ket screenings will also be held at CGV and Lotte (see p28 for further details of the Asian Film Market). n
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