In Florence the first edition of the of the festival dedicated to contemporary Chinese cinema
The first edition of the Dragon Film festival, an event dedicated to the contemporary Chinese cinema, will take place from May 26th to 29th at the Odeon movie theatre in Florence, and will close the Primavera di cinema orientale, opened by the Florence Korea Film fest last March. The Dragon Film Festival, is born thanks to the union of the Hong Kong Film Panorama, dedicated to the Hong Kong cinema that previously took place in Florence four times, and a selection of films from the Shanghai International Film Festival. Promoters of the event are Quelli della Compagnia Fst, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office di Bruxelles and Riccardo Gelli from Florence Eurasia Association, with the sponsorship of Chinese Embassy in Roma and Chinese Consulate in Florence.
The festival has a program of 11 movies, divided in two sections Hong Kong and continental China, international guests and some side events. The opening film is the Hong Kong police thriller “Cold war” by Longman Leung and Sunny Luk, blockbuster in 2012, about the kidnapping of 5 police agents, a bomb in a movie theatre and how these two tragic events reveal dark side of the law enforcement. Closing film will be “The Flowers of war” by Zhang Yimou and starring Christian Bale. The movie, presented out of competition at the Berlin Film festival 2012 and nominated as best foreign Film at the Golden Globes, tells the horrible Nanjing massacre happened in China in 1937. Bale plays a funeral director who pretends to be a priest in order to save Chinese women and young girls from the brutality of the Japanese army.
Both sections propose different genres of films. In the Hong Kong one there is the dramatic “A Fig” directed by Vincent Chui, the moving love story “Love me not” cinema debut by Gilitte Leung, “Diva” by Heiward Mak an homage to the musical Hong Kong motion-picture industry. The continental China proposes “Beijing Flickers”, by Zhang Yuan about the misfortunes occurred in the same day to a young man and his attempts to commit suicide, the dramatic “The stolen years” by Barbara Wong, story of a woman who after the awakening from coma doesn’t remember anything happened to her, then the crime-thriller “Lethal hostage” by Cheng Er, and Unbeatable” by Dante Lam.
Three international guests will be present at Dragon Film festival: director Zhang Yuan and Asian stars Li Xinyun e Jian Ye lan, who after the screenings of their films, will meet the audience at the Odeon movie theatre. Among the side events, there is the concert of musicians NieXin e Liu Xia on Monday 26th before the opening film and the presentation of “Il nuovo cinema di Hong Kong e sguardi oltre l’handover” a book by Stefano Locati e Emanuele Sacchi, on Wednesday May 28th at Libreria Feltrinelli in Florence.
