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HAF PROFILES


Elephant Soldiers


Dirs Vardan Hovhannisyan, Inna Sahakyan Country of origin Armenia


Armenian co-directors Vardan Hovhan- nisyan and Inna Sahakyan have worked together at Bars Media Documentary Film Studio in Armenia for more than eight years, where their credits include A Story Of People In War And Peace and The Last Tight- rope Dancer In Armenia, both of which were picked up by international broadcasters. Their latest feature-doc explores the


near-genocidal rise in elephant poaching fuelled by demand for ivory in Asia, focus- ing on the work of Space For Giants, a con- servation project set up in Kenya by Max Graham. “He is extraordinary,” says Sahakyan about Graham, who uses GPS technology to track the poachers. “He is huge… he looks like a big, strong elephant.” When it comes to their films, the duo


tend to switch roles, with one producing while the other directs. “But this time we are very much involved in the story,” Sahakyan says of their HAF project, for which they already have around $19,000 of their $390,000 budget in place. Swedish broadcaster SVT has boarded


the project and the film-makers have some Armenian backing. Their previous work has been seen largely on TV but they feel this project has potential for a theatrical release. As a result, there are likely to be two versions of Elephant Soldiers: a 52-minute edit for TV and a feature-length cut. With a few days shooting completed, the


aim is to attract support from broadcasters, funds, distributors and co-producers. “We are searching for all kinds of co-financing,” Sahakyan says of their goals in Hong Kong. Geoffrey Macnab


Imperial Exam Dir Tan Chui Mui Country of origin China


Malaysia-born Tan Chui Mui burst onto the scene in 2006 when her first feature, Love Conquers All, won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the New Currents Award at Busan. Having moved to Beijing two years ago,


she returns with her first mainland Chinese project, a period comedy about China’s imperial exam system which theoretically allowed anyone in China to take an exam to become an aristocrat. The idea for the film began with an argument in which Tan was trying to explain to a European friend why there is such cultural uniformity in China. “There is a very interesting and unique


background to the story — the exam system, the rules, the venues and the people who spent their whole life taking the exams. I don’t think there has been a film made about it,” says Tan who has co-written the script with Taiwanese author Chang Ta-chuen. Based loosely on Chinese novel The


Scholars, the film takes place in the 17th century and centres around a young scholar who, while travelling to attend the imperial exam in Beijing, encounters a blind knight, an orphan girl and a teahouse owner, mak- ing him realise he would rather be a peas- ant. Tan plans to shoot in Nanjing City, to take advantage of a well-preserved ancient imperial-exam venue. The project is at the script stage, with film-maker Jia Zhangke producing for his company Xstream Pic- tures, which has put up half the budget. Jia and Tan are looking for co-producers on the film, which is likely to include A-list Chi- nese actors to boost its commercial appeal. Sen-lun Yu


The Enemy — 1949 Dir Chang Tso-chi Country of origin Taiwan


Renowned for his humanist stories about people from the lower end of the social lad- der, such as the 2010 Golden Horse winner When Love Comes and 2001’s The Best Of Times, Taiwanese director Chang Tso-chi makes an about-turn with his latest project, a humorous film about the absurdity of war. Unsure whether to make the film as a


30-minute short or a feature, Chang shot a 10-minute test version last year. When the project was chosen as one of 10 chapters for Taiwanese portmanteau feature 10+10, he decided to turn it into a feature. Chang has recruited veteran scriptwriter


Hsiao Yeh to co-write the script, which is set in 1949 during the Chinese Civil War. It focuses on a local conflict involving a fish- erman and his son from Kinmen Island who are stuck in the rival neighbouring city of Xiamen after it is taken over by the Peo- ple’s Liberation Army. “The absurdity between Kinmen and


Xiamen is that they were so close to each other, and people’s lives were so related, but they were enemies for almost half a century. During the war, a lot of local people did not know who to fight for,” says Chang, who will focus on the way ordinary people coped with the situation while delivering “a real war film with brutal and vivid battle scenes”. Chang is producing through his outfit


Chang Tso Chi Film Studio, which has already put up $500,000 of the film’s $3.3m budget. Currently in pre-produc- tion, Chang hopes to attract international and mainland China partners, especially support from the Xiamen city government. Sen-lun Yu


Lost In Poetry Dir Fridrik Thor Fridriksson Country of origin Iceland


East meets west in the new project by Ice- land’s maverick writer-producer-director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson. Set in China, Italy and Iceland, Lost In


Poetry is inspired by a real-life incident in which Chairman Mao asked Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni to make a docu- mentary about China. Fridriksson’s fictional film is about a group of children who appeared in the documentary and decide some years later to make their own film about Antonioni, taking them to the Italian island of Stromboli. The main character is a film-maker whose wife is in Iceland during the Eyjafjallajokull volcanic eruption of 2010 and who disappears, just as a woman does in Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960). Fridriksson, who has made more than


30 features including Children Of Nature in 1992 for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, compares his latest project to Cold Fever, another of his films, which takes place in Japan and Italy. If Iceland’s most prolific film-maker has


been less prominent than usual on the inter- national market and festival scene in recent years, it is because he was working on docu- mentary A Mother’s Courage (2010) about autistic children, narrated by Kate Winslet. But Fridriksson is back and hopes to shoot Lost In Poetry in 2013. He will produce for his company Icelandic Film Corporation, together with Anna Maria Karlsdottir, with plans to finance the project through Scandi- navian film funds and possibly Eurimages. Fridriksson will be looking to attach co-pro- ducers including Chinese partners at HAF. Geoffrey Macnab


Elephant Soldiers


Budget $390,000 Finance raised to date $19,000 through Bars Media and SVT Contact Vardan Hovhannisyan, Bars Media Documentary Film Studio vardan@barsmedia.am


Imperial Exam


Budget $6.35m Finance raised to date $3.175m from Xstream Pictures Contact Eva Lam, Xstream Pictures evalam267@163.com


The Enemy — 1949


Budget $3.3m Finance raised to date $500,000 through Chang Tso Chi Film Studio Contact Chang Tso Chi Film Studio changtsochi@gmail.com


Lost In Poetry


Budget $1.6m Finance raised to date $807,755 from Icelandic national funds Contact Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Icelandic Film Corporation f.thor@icecorp.is


March 21, 2012 Screen International at Filmart 11 n


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