Theo Angelopoulos mini-retrospective and documentary

Last week, just a day before I headed off to Ningbo China for a short trip over the weekend, I walked past the nearby arthouse theater Waseda Shochiku and paused when I noticed that they were screening three Theo Angelopoulos films in a span of two weeks.



The films were:

Why film festivals matter to me

(UPDATED: This blog post was initially a repost of an email on the Malaysian Cinema mailing list from Venice Film Festival programmer Paolo Bertolin asking for the means to contact FINAS (the National Film Development Corporation of Malaysia). Was hoping that posting this in public would help him get a reply.

He got it, problem solved, so as per his request, I'll remove his email exchanges in the mailing list. And expand more on my last few paragraphs regarding my thoughts about film festivals. It's sort of a love letter for film festivals, perhaps.)

Rest in peace, Theo Angelopoulos

Yesterday, just like many other times, I woke up to the beeping sounds of Facebook chat, alerting me of incoming messages.

It was a film festival programmer friend of mine, his message was this:

Edmund, this has to do with one of your favourite film topics, Theo Angelopoulos. He had just died in a traffic accident, ran over by a motorbike!

Chacun son cinéma (To Each His Own Cinema)

I was originally planning to see SKY CRAWLERS or anything offered at the Shinjuku cinemas after meeting up with Maiko the producer regarding the status of our short film, YUKI (she's going to Kyoto end of this month for a 2-month internship at Toei, so had to see what to do next). But then she mentioned about her watching 'Chacun son cinéma' sometime ago at Shibuya. 'Chacun son cinéma' is an omnibus film commissioned last year to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival.