MAGGIE Q, AWARD-WINNERS AT HIFF
The Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) wrapped up its 29th incarnation this past weekend with encore screenings of its award-winning films and a closing night honoring of actress Maggie Q, who was on hand to introduce her newest film, Tian Zhuangzhuang’s fantasy swordplay epic The Warrior and the Wolf.
A successful Hong Kong fashion model who morphed into a film career there and later in China and Hollywood (she’s appeared in such diverse films as Gen-Y Cops, Rice Rhapsody, Three Kingdoms, and Live Free or Die Hard), Maggie Q (nee Maggie Quigley) is actually not from Hong Kong at all, or even Chinese; in fact, she’s half-Vietnamese and Polish/Irish, and was born and raised in Hawaii. After graduating high school in Honolulu she left to pursue a fashion career in Japan and Hong Kong, but quickly found herself switching from still images to moving ones; unable to speak Cantonese for her first film appearances, she learned her lines phonetically. Ironically, having re-relocated back to the U.S., she’s now often forced to convince casting directors that she’s American.
Q received HIFF’s Maverick Award, given to “honor a a cinema artist who defies the rules, forging a unique film career, transcending labels and thresholds to vacillate between Hollywood and global cinema,” as executive director Chuck Boller notes. Q’s certainly an appropriate choice, one made even more fitting by her deep Hawaii roots (“Class of Mililani High ’95,” noted festival director Anderson Le, to a few shouts from the crowd).
The accompanying screening of The Warrior and the Wolf was also an appropriate choice as a cinematic vision; director Tian, best known for his controversial 1986 Tibet-set masterpiece The Horse Thief and his 1993 The Blue Kite, began his career as part of China’s revered 5th Generation filmmaking movement along with Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and others, with films that directly or indirectly questioned China’s past, present, and future. Now that his colleagues are now making big-budgeted, candy-coated costume-drama epics (Zhang Yimou with swordplay fantasies Hero and House of Flying Daggers; Chen Kaige with The Promise, for instance), Tian appears to have joined them with with The Warrior and the Wolf, but its swordplay premise (Chinese general fighting “rebellious tribes” in the country’s desolate outlying regions long, long ago) is soon fragmented by something utterly surprising, a poetic, moody vision of doomed love and sorrow. Tian appears totally uninterested in the narrative, in fact, or even the action; the result is not for all, but quite lovely in its delirious imagery and ultimate emotional effect.
At a luncheon earlier in the week, the festival also announced its award-winning films. China swept both Best Narrative Feature and Best Documentary Feature, with the former awarded to Yao Shuhua’s 1899-set family epic Empire of Silver and the latter to Zhao Liang’s powerful Petition, about the groups of citizens gathered around Beijing’s many government-complaints offices, waiting patiently or impatiently (often for years) to have their grievances heard. The NETPAC (Network for the promotion of Asian Cinema) Award was received by South Korea’s Castaway on the Moon, by Lee Hey-jun, while the Puma Emerging Filmmaker Award was presented to Tze Chun’s riveting American indie, Children of Invention. The Video-on-Demand Viewers Choice Award was given to the Hawaii-made short, Ajumma! Are You Krazy?, directed by Brent Anbe, a hilarious comedy about a group of star-struck female fans going to any lengths possible during the appearance of their Korean acting idol at, you guessed it, a film festival.
We’ll have a full wrap-up of the festival later next week. To see the first report from this year’s HIFF here.
