Dasepo Naughty Girls

Funny that the worst 3 Korean films of last year were all selected for the HKIFF.
Dasepo Naughty Girls is actually quite a refreshing film. And I'm quite pleasantly surprised that South Korean films seems to have come a long way since 2002 when their first gay film Road Movie came out.

Looking back on my HKIFF 2007

The heavy workload of both my E-C Translation Workshop class and my Literary Translation class meant that not only did I watch much fewer films than I liked. I also missed 2 films which I'd bought tickets for because I simply couldn't squeeze the time for that.
But still I saw:

• Pingpong - which I totally regret. I must learn to spot a nihilistic film and avoid them at all costs.
• Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle - is another film I'd rather forget. But it was funny to see so many people walked out after 20 minutes of the film. Those must've been football fans.
• The U.S. vs. John Lennon - You can tell from the film quality that it was a TV documentary but that era alone was enough to move anyway.
• Cashback - My friend who went with me scratched her head trying to put a name to the cute male lead of this film. To be honest, I only went intot the cinema to see Sean Biggerstaff ;) but in the end it was the comic timing of the actors & the directors that really made an impression.
• Optimisti - I don't quite get it & it wasn't really what I expected from an ex-Yugoslavian state. They used to be a safe bet for good films.
• Sønner - I was real shocked at how anti-pedophile this film was. I'd expected perhaps some ambiguity or something to inspire us to look at more perspectives at least.
• Princess - My confusion about was Sønner sort of explained by a friend who pointed out later when we watch the animation Princess that maybe Denmark is on a turn to conservatism right now. Now that's the last thing I expected.
• Like a Virgin - A boy going into a wrestling competition in the hope that he could use the prize money for a sex-change operation. Sounds like a tacky rip-off from the based-on-a-true-story The Iron Ladies but it turns out to be quite a cute little film with some talented young actors. It was the highlight of my experience this year besides...
• Homeless FC - the documentory about the team which represents Hong Kong in the Homeless World Cup. It was frank. It was intimate. It was moving. And it was fun. It was so real and honest that we were all shocked to see "Singapore Film Commission" come up in the ending credits. Which begged the question: Why the hell were 2 Singaporean filmmakers doing this documentary on Hong Kong homeless people? Why not Hong Kong filmmakers? Why didn't they do a documentary about Singaporean homeless people? The question was answered in the Q&A session. The social worker who initiated the Hong Kong team had approached the filmmakers to do the documentary, and no HK filmmakers could promise to follow the team all the way through to the finals in South Africa. I gotta to say I wish HK could provide a better environment for artists.