"Minds are like parachutes: they only work if they're open." Some attribute it to Frank Zappa, some to James Dewar and some to Albert Einstein. But though no one knows who actually said it, no one can dispute that it's true: for the mind to function, our ability to observe things must work. Our ability to use our gaze, which is the mind's trigger. But if the eyes can see, are they also capable of travelling, of voyaging, of going beyond what they are actually looking at? Graphic designer Roberto Rosolin has dedicated the official image of the Far East Film Festival 27 to the vast power of the gaze: an intense female portrait that takes us elsewhere, beyond walls and borders, along a thousand possible trajectories of freedom and imagination.
The twenty-seventh edition of the FEFF, which will fill the “Giovanni da Udine” Teatro Nuovo theatre and the Visionario cinema from the 24th of April to the 2nd of May, is all set to offer up new perspectives on Asian cinema. Those new trajectories of freedom and imagination which for nine days will transform Udine into the Asian epicentre of Europe. Launching on 10 April 1999 in Udine before growing to become what Variety has called one of the world's 50 unmissable events, the Far East Film Festival has never stopped being home to authentic legends such as Jackie Chan and Joe Hisaishi, cult directors like Johnnie To, Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano and Zhang Yimou, divas, superstars and key players of every kind.