Wandering Cinephiles

Last autumn we went for the first time to Ho Chi Minh City, and shortly before that, in July, to the Da Nang Film Festival. It’s exhilarating, after nearly 30 years of traveling in Asia, to still experience that feeling of “absolute discovery.” It wasn’t our first trip to Vietnam, but it was the first time we had felt the excitement of a film industry becoming aware of itself: a community of filmmakers finding a profound connection with their audience, where everyone watches everyone else’s films, meets at premieres and works together. It’s a vibrancy that evokes the Italian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, with its tales of sharing meals and sharing sets, and with a whole community of screenwriters, directors and actors who were constructing the cultural identity of a nation. That’s where we set out from back in 1995, when the festival was still called UdineIncontri Cinema, and in Ho Chi Minh City we felt like we were reliving those same emotions.

It’s been a year since we lost Max Tessier, one of those movie lovers who went to discover cinema in the places where it was made and shown: in Japan, in the Philippines and in Hong Kong. His vision of cinema was inseparable from the context in which it is created, from knowing its creators and stars, and from physical contact with its audiences. Max was one of those “wandering cinephiles” theorised by Serge Daney, for whom travel is the only way to truly connect with a film and its creator.

There’s no more formative experience than watching a film in a theatre packed with locals, perhaps even being lucky enough to find English subtitles to help you comprehend the incomprehensible. Max maintained that true discovery happens not when you identify with a film, but when you feel excluded by the audience’s reactions. It’s that strange moment when the local audience bursts into laughter at a cultural reference you can’t grasp, or remains in icy silence during a scene that would seem moving to a Westerner. Max often said that watching an Asian film in Cannes or Venice was like watching a lion in a zoo, while watching it in a theatre in its own country was like seeing it in its natural habitat.

What we try to do at Far East Film is not just present films, but recreate the experience of seeing those films in Asia, alongside their protagonists.

To make the audience in Udine feel, for the duration of a screening, not just like a distant observer but like part of the crowd that fills theatres in Ho Chi Minh City or in Tokyo, breaking down all geographical distances to finally see the world through their eyes.