Derek Malcolm recommends: Pan-Asia Film Festival

Seven UK premieres grace this year’s Pan-Asia Film Festival, which features only one British film on the programme, Shah Khan’s Honour, and a ravishing-looking Chinese version of Dangerous Liaisons
28 February 2014

Seven UK premieres grace this year’s Pan-Asia Film Festival, which opened earlier this week with a not entirely convincing Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Unforgiven and ends with Ravi Kumar’s A Prayer For Rain. Starring Martin Sheen, the appealing closing film is a genuine effort to dramatise the Bhopal chemical plant spill, one of the worst ecological disasters the world has known.

Paddy Considine stars in the only British film on the programme, Shah Khan’s Honour, a story about a young Muslim who runs away with her Punjabi boyfriend and suffers the consequences of her family’s wrath.

The ravishing-looking Chinese version of Dangerous Liaisons, meanwhile, set in the Shanghai of the Thirties, features the highly watchable Eastern superstar Zhang Ziyi. Another appetising work from Asia is the restored version of Noburu Nakamura’ s beautifully shot Sixties classic The Shape of the Night, about the travails of a factory worker who moonlights as a bar hostess.

Also on the programme are the Iranian Kanu’s Party, a road movie about Tehran’s wealthier teenagers, and Rithy Panh’s The Missing Picture, a highly outstanding documentary about the Khmer Rouge regime’s cruel attempts at genocide (which gained Panh a prize at Cannes and an Oscar nomination).

Finally, Thailand is represented by two experimental films, 36 and Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy. The second is a free-flowing summation of the life and times of Japan’s more rebellious teenagers.

The Pan-Asia Film Festival (asiahouse.org) runs until March 9 at Asia House, W1; ICA, SW1; Genesis Cinema, E1; Riverside Studios, W6; and the French Institute, SW7.

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