The 12th Pusan International Film Festival finished its 9-day run on October 12. A typhoon greeted Feng Xiaogang’s epic war film, Assembly, the opening night film, but even that did not keep the crowds away in what became Pusan’s most well-attended edition. Sixty-four countries and 271 films were highlighted in the festival proper. With its Asian Film Market, the Pusan Promotion Plan (in which Film projects from across Asia are invited to explore financing and co-production opportunities with film-industry professionals from around the world), and several other sidebar events, Pusan has become a major player for Asian filmmakers to greenlight projects and premiere new work.

HIGHLIGHTED GUESTS
Among the special guests at Pusan this year was Ennio Morricone, who missed his opening night public hand-printing event because of the inclement weather. He was feted at a private event that enjoyed the oddball entertainment of Korean jazz harmonica player, Jeduk Jeon, playing music from The Mission and Cinema Paradiso.

Peter Greenaway was another special guest who managed to shock a few mainstream journalists with his comments on the death of cinema, and his defense of avant-garde videographer Bill Viola as a better and more important film artist than Martin Scorsese, and other comments snubbing mainstream cinema.

TOKYO SHOCKER
In one respect, the Asian Film Market was not as successful as in past years with buyers from North America noticeably absent. With the untimely announcement by the Tokyo Film Festival that it will shift its dates in 2008 to just before Pusan, from its current status of just after, allowing it to scoop world premieres, Pusan has its work cut out for it to remain a viable market for new Asian film.

AWARDS
In the festival's New Currents section, three $30,000 prizes, went to: Life Track, the feature debut by Korean-Chinese director Guang Hao Jin; Flower in the Pocket, also a debut feature, by Malaysian Seng Tat Liew); and Wonderful Town by Thailand's Aditya Assarat. The trio of winning films was a strong set of small parables dealing with big themes of the human condition.

The Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP) was launched in 1998 as a project market to discover and support promising Asian independent film projects. Through this innovative program, projects by a list of impressive Asian directors - Jia ZhangKe, Wang Xiaoshuai, Jafar Panahi, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, Tsai Ming-liang, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, to name a few - have seen the light of screen, and, in many cases, international success. Of the 35 projects in competition, 11 Flowers took top prize of about $20,000. This film, by well-known Chinese Sixth-Generation director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle) is about a boy who helps an injured fugitive.

Korean documentary maker, Park Ki-bok, who previously won an award at Pusan for his 2002 film on Korean shamanism, Yeongmae: san jawa jugeun ja-ui hwahae, won the Kodak Award, in which Kodak Korea will give $20,000 in negative film for his new drama, Farewell, about a middle-age man running from his creditors.

The Goteburg Film Festival Fund, which provides travel and accommodation expenses, went to Armenian theater director/actor Mikayel Vayinyan for Joan and the Voices.

Japanese director Sion Sono received the Cineclick Asia Award for Room of Dreams, a fantasy about an experimental drug with effects that go totally awry. A potential first-option deal with international sales and co-production outfit Cineclick Asia sweetens the prize package that includes $10,000.

Vietnamese filmmaker Phan Dang Di won the Pusan Film Commission Award, granting $10,000 for his family drama Bi, Don't Be Afraid.

Pusan’s film festival is a juggernaut in the group of continental filmfests. It will no doubt maintain its influential status for many years as one of the most important in Asia.