Talks, film screenings mark final day of AIFFA 2017
KUCHING: A ‘Café Crawl’ saw film screenings and talks held at selected cafés here yesterday on the final day of the Asean International Film Festival and Awards (AIFFA).
At The White Barouk, Laos’ first female director Mattie Do shared her experience through a talk ‘Laos Tales from a First Timer’ where she spoke of her directorial debut for the 2012 film ‘Chanthaly’, which was the first horror flick written and directed entirely in Laos.
The talk continued with Jaclyn Jose, a Philippine soap star who won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival last year.
In her talk ‘Toward Cannes’, Jose shared about her journey playing the role of a sweet shop owner and small-time drug dealer in the film ‘Ma’ Rosa’, which earned her the award for Best Actress at Cannes.
“Before this, I really thought winning the Best Actress Award at Cannes was impossible,” she said, adding it was her hope that her win would open more doors overseas for Filipino actors and actresses.
Meanwhile, at Magenta Restaurant at The Square Tower, the Café Crawl took off with Marrie Lee talking about her transition from being an actress to a director in Singapore, while Tim Franklin from Beach House Pictures discussed ‘Documentaries for the International Market’.
He also shared behind the scenes work of Beach House Pictures’ documentaries namely Wild City, China from Above, and Frontier Borneo.
According to Franklin, although Wild City- an urban wildlife documentary- was initially slated for regional viewing, they were able to bring Sir David Attenborough onboard as narrator which resulted in the documentary being able to sell globally.
“If you are looking into selling internationally, generally the language you have to do is in English. Unfortunately, that is how it is in the world right now,” he said to those in attendance.
Apart from the talks, the public were also treated to free screenings of the films ‘One Hour to Daylight’, ‘Kung Fu Pho’, and ‘They Way Station’ at the Old Courthouse auditorium.