Hong Kong movie comes third in poll of best Asian films
A new list of the best Asian films of all time has been published, as the region's increasingly vibrant cinema scene celebrated another bonanza in Busan.
The 20th anniversary of the Busan International Film Festival, in South Korea, marked its milestone with a poll of noted Asian filmmakers and international critics of Asian film, who were all asked for their top 10.
, Wong Kar-wai's richly evocative tale of longing and simmering passions in 1960s Hong Kong, came third in the poll. Japanese master auteur Yasujiro Ozu topped the list with seminal family drama from 1953, while Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's breakthrough work was ranked fifth best.
Hou's new film, atmospheric martial arts epic , which he has brought to Busan, is among the critics' early favourites for this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar after last week picking up 11 nominations for the Golden Horse Awards, the most prestigious given to Chinese-language films.
But its mood and mysticism are a far cry from the harsh realities of Taiwanese history portrayed in , which follows the destruction of a family under the "White Terror" campaign instigated when martial law was imposed across the island in the late 1940s.
It is widely acknowledged that the film was the first to confront this dark period of the island's past and was a major critical success, winning the island its first Golden Bear award at the Venice Film Festival.
"If it had not been for the awards overseas it would not have been screened in Taiwan," said 68-year-old Hou. "It was a turning point for me. If not for this film the work that has followed would not exist and it allowed Taiwanese filmmakers to look at our history."
In the runner-up position was Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's . The poll also rated Asia's top directors of all time with Japan's Ozu coming out ahead of Hou, and Iran's Abbas Kiarostami, whose highest-ranked film was 1994's , coming tied 10th with the highest-ranked Korean film, Kim Ki-young's sexually charged drama (1960).
Festival organisers said they had created the list of the region's greatest films to widen the world's knowledge about its cinematic history.
Asia's most successful film in terms of global box office is the Oscar-winning, Ang Lee-directed martial arts epic (2000) from Taiwan. It collected an estimated US$128 million and was voted in joint 18th position.
Japan accounted for 26 films on the list, followed by Iran (19) and South Korea (15). The oldest film chosen was Ozu's from 1932, which was ranked 48th of all time.
The top animated film to make the cut was Hayao Miyasaki's (2001) from Japan, also an Oscar winner, which was joint 18th.
"We ... wanted to rewrite the history of Asian cinema with an Asian perspective, different from the Western ones," the festival's Asian Cinema programmer Kim Young-woo said. "We want to discover and value Asian films that might be relatively less known to the world."
