BEST ASIAN SHORT FILMS - 2
Below are four more of the best short films from Asia, including our competition winner from Iran and major festival winners from the East.
Tonight Is Not A Good Night For Dying by A Asgari (12) (Iran) (4m)
Tonight Is Not A Good Night For Dying by Iranian filmmaker Ali Asgari was selected as the overall winner of the summer 2012 competition. It is a simple idea beautifully executed with great performances. It's also nice to see a film outside of the UK or US taking the competition prize. In Tonight Is Not A Good Night For Dying we are given a POV shot of a man who has fallen or jumped from an apartment above...
Mei by Arvin Chen (2006) (USA/Tawain) (11m)
One of those sweet, understated romantic dramas, Mei is the story of a young man who works on a noodles stall run by a father and daughter. He is, of course, in love with the daughter but the eponymous girl in question plans to use her English language skills to leave Taiwan and find a job in New York. Will our reticent hero pluck up the courage to tell her how he feels or will something else come out of his mouth..? It won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
The God by Konstantin Bronzit (2004) (Russia) (4m) *
Russian animator Konstantin Bronzit was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009 with his simple, hand-drawn animated film, Lavatory Lovestory. But in 2004 he created this truly brilliant computer animation. A bronze statue of the Hindu deity, Shiva, the personifaction of calm, is irritated by a pesky fly and comes to life in order to rid himself of it. But in his increasingly frustated attempts, Shiva causes himself more and more problems until...
Bean Cake by David Greenspan (2001) (Japan) (14m)
Filmmaker David Greenspan spent a year of his University of Southern California degree in Japan. It was there that he made this simple Palme d'Or winning tale about a young boy's indoctrination into both the Japanese Empire and the world of girls. It has a porposefully old-fashioned feel to it (consider Yasujirô Ozu's perfect Tokyo Story) that suits the story of a young boy battling to hold on to the one truth he knows to be real: that he loves his mother's bean cakes.
