Continental shift
Filmmakers from the West are heading east to Asia with its potentially huge, cinema-going market and other resources, writes Mathew Scott
A growing band of European filmmakers are realising their cinematic ambitions in the East, lured by a healthy box office, investment prospects and the potential for more eye-catching stories.
Leading the pack is Welsh director Gareth Evans, whose Indonesia-shot crime actioner The Raid picked up US$15 million in global takings last year on a budget of about US$1 million. Evans is now filming a sequel.
“The growing size of the Asian market is obviously a source of motivation,” says French producer Christophe Bruncher, who heads the annual “Ties That Bind” programme at film festivals in South Korea’s Busan and Udine in Italy that bring together producers and filmmakers from Asia and Europe.
The region’s box office takings hit about US$10.4 billion in 2012, up 15 per cent year on year, compared to about 6 per cent growth in the North American market, which collected US$10.8 billion. “But Asia is seen first as an incredible reserve of good stories and unique pictures,” Bruncher says.
For example, British director-writer Sean Ellis – Oscar-nominated for his short film Cashback in 2006 – headed to Asia to produce a thriller he calls his “love letter to … Manila”. Metro Manila explores big city life through the story of an armed guard and won the audience award at the influential Sundance Film Festival in Utah in January.
“Most of my research was done in the Philippines before we started principal photography,” Ellis says. “I took every little gift of detail I was given. I wanted the film to be authentic. I didn’t want people saying ‘What does this white kid think he knows about the streets of Manila?’ I wanted to live it, process it and then tell a story about it.”