Opening Night Party at Pusan International Film Festival 2009

Due to limited internet connection at Pusan, I could only check my emails in one of those public computers at the PIFF center. But now that I'm back in Tokyo, I'll start posting photos I took from the festival.

On the 8th of October, Tokyo was hit by typhoon in the morning, classes in university were canceled, some flights were rescheduled, ditto with other public transportation too.

My flight was supposedly at 7pm. I headed out of my place at 2pm. To go to the airport. A Narita express would've reached the place in 80-90 minutes, alas all Narita Express trains were canceled that day, so I could only take a longer (but much cheaper) route there. I won't go into details, but I reached the airport at 6pm. The journey to Narita, often a pain in the ass, was an even bigger pain in the ass.

I was shocked to find out that the plane was scheduled to 6:30pm.

Only half an hour to go?

I rushed to the check-in counter, there was someone else who was going to Pusan too. The counters were all closed, I asked an attendant nearby and she made a call. A sour-faced chick (a rarity in Japan, especially at their workplace) appeared, we proceeded with the check-in.

"Wow, I thought the flight was supposed to be 7pm, not 6:30pm!" I said, trying to make small talk.

What on earth do people do at film festivals? (Cinema Online, 6th of October 2009)

I'm flying off to Pusan this evening for the Pusan Film Festival. Tomorrow I'll be attending the premiere of WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER, the film I produced and edited. This is an interview I did with Zee of Cinema Online during my last day at the Venice Film Festival.

Girl group Citrus Kiss performing at Shinjuku

As you all know, I have a certain fascination for street performers, especially in Japan. I like the fact that people perform here free from the silly notion that they were 'begging for money'.

On Sunday, as I was heading to the Uniqlo at the Shinjuku Pepe building, I saw a performance that someone who was with me at the time remarked "belonged to Akihabara" due to the cosplay. Nonetheless, I don't see bands like this much in Shinjuku, so I had to film it.

Meeting Singer Loo Yise at Klang Creative Fest 2009

Two months ago, I have mentioned briefly that I was attending the Klang Creative Fest, which was showing a couple of my short films. Despite taking a couple of videos and photos, I was unable to share them much because of the horrible internet connection at home in Malaysia. Nonetheless, I did mention about the genius kids there who made me feel puny.

During my short film screening sessions, the Malaysian singer Loo Yise was around to watch the first two films, CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY and (my rarely seen experimental video) FLEETING IMAGES. My schoolmate, multitalented singer-songwriter Jasemaine Gan was there too. Alas both had to leave early to prepare for their performances.

Tsukiji's fresh sushi and nocturnal trip to Odaiba

Yesterday (October 3) was the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Mooncake Festival. It was also friend, Yuan Yue's birthday. (also known as Lune, back in 2005 we had a sublime artistic collaboration where she would draw illustrations and I would write stories based on them, it ended up as a novella written in 24 hours, you can still check it out here. By the way, it was also occasional ex-guestblogger Justin's birthday). She had been visiting Japan since the 22nd of September (we came to Tokyo on the same flight, through a serendipitous stroke of coincidence).

She wanted to try out the fresh sushi at the Tsukiji Fish Market, so we went in the morning. (But when I said morning, I meant the relatively-late 10:30am, not the 5-6ish am when they hold the fish auctions, we only wanted to eat fish, not buy them)

As we walked past shops after shops, we found it hard to pick one to eat. Until we saw a crowd gathering in front of one, and an old man having a public demonstration of cutting up tuna outside his shop, Sushisen.

How KINGYO actress Luchino Fujisaki took Venice Film Fest by storm

UPDATED 13th Nov, 2016: This is my short film Kingyo, in its entirety

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Despite enduring some of the worst crises in recent memory (the untimely demises of two hard disks in mere weeks, losing some raw data of my short films, even the new, unreleased ones like AFTERNOON RIVER), I have SURVIVED (re-edited AFTERNOON RIVER from scratch, now in the midst of completing my newest, EVENING SKY). So of course I'm in a better mood, though I'm still disconnected from the rest of the world to get my things done.

I will now continue my recount of the Venice Film Festival.

The KINGYO screening at the Venice Film Festival

Lots of distractions had occurred in the past two days. My hard disk died suddenly, and I lost a couple of short films I made since KINGYO (as in, AFTERNOON RIVER, 3PM, and bits and pieces of EVENING SKY that I've just edited). Since my backup had already died couple of weeks earlier, I've pretty much lost two hard disks in a space of two weeks. Can't exactly say that I'm in the best of moods, but I will be hiding at home re-editing AFTERNOON RIVER (with its DVD as reference), familiarizing myself with Adobe Premiere Pro again. I wanted to weep but my eyes had gone too dry.

So I'll recount the KINGYO screening at the Venice Film Festival back on the 7th of September. Wow, has it been 18 days already?

My newest short film EVENING SKY is a pseudo-sequel of SLOVAK SLING and AFTERNOON RIVER

It all started as a joke. I was on MSN talking to my regular cinematographer Lesly (he shot all my Malaysian short films like CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY, LOVE SUICIDES and the still-unreleased AFTERNOON RIVER) just days before I flew off to the Venice Film Festival. We were discussing the possibilities of shooting another short film after Venice, and before I return to Tokyo (on the 22nd of September, I came back to Tokyo yesterday).

I thought it would be difficult, since, after Venice, I would have to rush off to the Singapore Short Film Festival, and after I return from Singapore on the 20th of September, I would only have ONE DAY before flying off to Tokyo again.

Lesly said that one day's doable, considering that AFTERNOON RIVER was made under similar circumstances (shot that on the 11th of April, also one day before returning to Tokyo).

So I was like "sure, we can make an AFTERNOON RIVER sequel or something, or a spin-off, like following the point of view of the guy who kept on calling Grace in AFTERNOON RIVER." (in AFTERNOON RIVER, the character played by Grace was constantly ignoring phone calls from an unknown caller, until she finally answers it towards the end of the film and utters the only line of the film). And since I don't like to repeat my tricks, while KINGYO is entirely in split screens, I will go for 'DUAL SCREEN' with this! Use two TVs or screens to play AFTERNOON RIVER and the companion piece side by side and the events will actually synchronize with one another!!!"