Film Hong Kong — Director's stories on making movies in Hong Kong

NEW YORK ASIAN AMERICAN INT’L FILM FESTIVAL

The Drummer will be screening at the New York's Asian American International Film Festival on July 19th, Saturday at 4:15pm.

The venue is

The Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (@ 70th Street)
New York, NY 10021

Kenneth Bi, writer/director, will be in attendance.

The Drummer was the opening film for the "Year of the Dragon" section at the Munich Film Festival. Jaycee Chan and I were invited to present the film at the festival.



Wir Lieben Kino means We love cinema...






Director Jennifer Lynch (the one holding the mic) and actress Julia Ormond (the one on the right) on the panel before us.



Fans staking Jaycee out everywhere



Opening night interviews

Opening night party


Photo taken by Jaycee's assistant, Alice, with her new Canon camera


Q & A session after the screening. Jaycee Chan, Kenneth Bi, Andre Matthias (composer) and Bernhard Karl (festival programmer)


Q & A session after the screening. Jaycee Chan, Kenneth Bi, Thanassis Karathanos (co-producer), Andre Matthias (composer) and Bernhard Karl (festival programmer)


It's five star treatment all the way. We stayed at the Bayerischer Hof. Rapper Pharrell and Celine Dion were both also staying at the hotel.


Pharrell and Alice



Alice took these great photos of Munich.


This monument commemorates the Kristallnacht, 10 November 1938, where, in one night, 91 Jews were killed and 25,000–30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps by the Nazis. More than 2000 synagogues were also destroyed.

When I was a little boy, my parents' friend, the actor Kenneth Tsang took his son and me to Ocean Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong. We parked at the rooftop parking. As we walked towards the shopping mall, I saw Bruce Lee walking out by himself. He was in his trademark sunglasses, denim jacket and jeans and he had a bag slung over his shoulder. He greeted Kenneth Tsang warmly. I expected him to be all tough and mean like his on screen persona but he was very nice and smiled a lot.

My parents used to have dinners with him and he would always lift up his shirt and ask my mother to punch him in the iron-hard stomach. It's like hitting a brick wall, my mother would later describe it to me. I was never present on those occasions. So this particular occasion was my own special encounter with Bruce Lee.

I wanted to tell all my friends at school right away. I kicked myself afterwards for not telling him that I was his biggest fan. Going to his grave so many years later, it was a strange feeling. He’s buried in Lakeview cemetery in Seattle.



The Crow

 

Right across from the father and son's graves is a bench put there by Bruce's wife, Linda and their daugher Shannon.

Between May 22 and June 15, the Seattle International Film Festival showed more than 400 films. The Drummer came in the top five audience favorites. The other films were Captain Abu Raed, Cherry Blossoms: Hanami, Frozen River and Fugitive Pieces (in alphabetical order). Along with The Drummer, both Frozen River and Captain Abu Raed were selections in this year's Sundance Film Festival.

People lining up for the screening of The Drummer at the Pacific Place Cinemas...



SIFF Artistic Director Carl Spence doing a Q&A with me. The audience was great. Warm and intelligent.

I was in Seattle for four days for the Seattle International Film Festival. On the first day, Bao (Tran Quoc Bao), director of the short film Bookie, drove me around...

The first Starbucks store, founded nearby in 1971, moved to its present location at Pike Place Market in 1976. It’s right next to the Farmer’s Market...




The Drummer is invited to screen at the Munich Film Festival in June. Kenneth Bi and Jaycee Chan will be present at the Q&A after the film.

MUNICH FILM FESTIVAL

Sat June 21st, 2008 19:00
RIO Kino 1

Tues June 24th, 2008 15:00
MaxX 3

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MOSCOW INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Sun, June 22nd, 2008
Multiplex Cinema October, Hall 8

Mon, June 23rd, 2008
Pushkinsky, Hall 1

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NEW YORK ASIAN AMERICAN INT’L FILM FESTIVAL

Sat, July 19th, 2008
The Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (@ 70th Street)
New York, NY 10021

When we were in L.A. we had meetings across the city.


Couldn't resist taking a picture of the iconic Paramount Studios.





Even took a picture of the water towers. Maybe we need to get one of those behind our office.





Rosa, Michelle Krusiec and Fruit Chan at a Korean dinner in Korea town.

From our hotel window, we could see films/TVC shoots almost daily. Here's a car being towed by the camera car in front.

On the left are the midget cans of Coke from L.A. and on the right the Supersize can of Coke in Tokyo. US — small, Japan — big? What's the world coming to? Can you judge a culture by the size of their Cokes...?



I met Jeannot Szwarc, the director of Somewhere in Time, which starred Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour and Christopher Plummer. It was a film I watched many times when I was a teenager. We had a great conversation and he told me many things about the TV world, since he's been shooting TV series for many years now. Shows such as Ally McBeal, Without a Trace, Heroes, The Practice, Cold Case and a new upcoming Steven Bochco series called Raising the Bar.

In Los Angeles we visited Fruit Chan on the set of his first Hollywood film, Don't Look Up. There were about a dozen trucks and trailers outside the studio, common in the US but not for Hong Kong filmmaking.

It was cool to see the three cameras on the set. One Panavision and two high-end digital cameras.

Fruit Chan and I

The continuity/script supervisor uses a tablet PC to record the video from the cameras as well as to make notes on the script and the continuity sheets. I had never seen one before.

The Drummer was invited to Los Angeles for the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Rosa and I went with Jaycee Chan to introduce and talk about the film on May 3rd.

Abe Ferrer (Programmer and co-director of the Film Festival) introduced us

I had been to the same festival in 2005 with Rice Rhapsody. It was great to return to the festival because the screenings take place at the prestigious Directors Guild of America. We screened at the biggest and best theatre — Theatre 1. The visual and audio quality is top notch. It’s always a pleasure to watch my films in there.

The Q & A after the screening. Rosa Li (producer), Jaycee Chan, Kenneth Bi

Jaycee meeting David Magdael, organizer of the Film Festival.

Jaycee with Ada and Arlene Tai (the twins in Tim Burton’s Big Fish)

Jaycee and I taking official photos

Doing a little press

Alivenotdead.com founder Terence also came to see the film.



Ken, Jo Addie, Fritz, Tom Holman and Jim Addie

A couple of friends from Chicago, Jo and Jim Addie, the heads of INSITE (International Enthusaists of Somewhere In Time) came with their friends Fritz and Tom Holman. Tom was at Lucasfilm Ltd for 15 years, winding up as the company's Corporate Technical Director and where he developed the THX Sound System and its companions the Theater Alignment Program, Home THX, and the THX Digital Mastering program, among other things. He has been working on 10.2 surround sound, the next generation surround sound system.

Jaycee Chan and I presented Outstanding and the Best Experimental awards at the 6th Global Chinese University Student Film and TV Festival on the 24th April. It was organized by Hong Kong Baptist University and TVB.

I've been teaching Scriptwriting at the 1st year MFA program at the Baptist University for four months now. The photos below were taken by my students Seth Henderson and Candy Wong.

Award winning actor, producer and director, Eric Tsang and director Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs) giving advice to film students.

Amused by the always entertaining Eric Tsang

Andre Matthias, composer for The Drummer, was in Hong Kong for five days. He came from Hamburg to attend the Hong Kong Film Awards where he was nominated for Best Original Film Score. We were proud and happy to have him here.

The last time Andre was here it was 14 years ago. It was terrific that he came back to Hong Kong as a nominee after all the hard work he put in in Germany.

Andre and I just arrived at the Film Awards cocktail party

Introduced Andre to Eugenia who was in The Drummer

Andre and one of The Drummer's producers, Peggy Chiao

Andre and Warlords director, Peter Chan

Andre went around to take some pics of the stars like Andy Lau, arriving at the cocktail reception.

Going into the ceremony

At the Warlords party

Andrew Lau, director of Infernal Affairs, and Andre

Producer/actor John Sham, Actress Shu Qi and Andre

We brought Andre to the Peak to look at the amazing cityscape but alas, it was so foggy we couldn't see 50 meters ahead of us. Actually Andre enjoyed the fog a lot more than we did.


Andre in front of Sogo in Causeway Bay

Outside the Cultural Centre

We saw Once at the Broadway Cinematheque and had a coffee at Kubrick before the film, the cafe bookshop next door


Had lunch with Andre where we shot Tony Leung Ka-Fai's restaurant in The Drummer

The Drummer will be screening at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival on the 3rd of May at 7 pm at the amazing theatre in the Director's Guild of America. The DGA Theatre Complex is located in the Guild's National Headquarters located at 7920 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California.

Click the icon and photos or the links below for more information.

Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

The Directors Guild of America

During the Sundance Film Festival, Entertainment Tonight filmed a segment of Jaycee for the promotion of The Drummer, click to watch the link below to watch the video.

http://www.etonline.com/news/1998/03/59518/

For those of you who live in Hong Kong and missed The Drummer when it was released, here's another chance to see it on the big screen. It will be screening at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. See details below.

《 戰 · 鼓 》 獲選為香港國際電影節
HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

“香港電影面面觀”參展片 HONG KONG PANORAMA

三月二十四號 24-Mar-2008
時間: 10:30 AM
地點: 香港大會堂劇院
Hong Kong City Hall Theatre

Link to Hong Kong International Film Festival Website

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The Drummer will also be screening in Quebec Canada. See details below.

《 戰 · 鼓 》 獲選角逐加拿大魁北克國際電影展
QUEBEC FESTIVAL DE CINEMA
2008年3月26至30日 March 26–30, 2008
March 28, 9:30pm, CHAREST 8
March 29, 9:15pm, CHAREST 7

Link to the Quebec Festival de Cinema

The 25th Miami International Film Festival is over. It was a pleasure to watch the film with the local audience. They were very interested in The Drummer and all stayed behind for the Q&A's.

Miami Beach is quite a beautiful, full of Art Deco architecture everywhere you looked.

The Royal Palm Hotel which served as the Festival headquarters also.

Across the street, there was a great diner that I loved hanging out in. Jerry's Deli. Old style diner.

Award Ceremony

After the freezing cold of Sundance, it's great to be in the warm sun of Miami. Demi Moore was here with the film Flawless and Kate Hudson was also here with a short film she directed.

On my first night here, the festival had a party at Gloria Estefan's nightclub "Bongos."

The next day, we had an amazing Director's lunch at Texas de Brazil restaurant.

There is a Karaoke Bar that a bunch of us go to every night. In the picture are Michelange Quay on the bongos and his wife singing.

The Festival Filmmaker's Lounge.