Topic started by virumaandi (@ cache91.156ce.maxonline.com.sg) on Tue Oct 5 20:38:14 EDT 2004.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.
PIFan has to have one of the most "anything goes" approaches to programming of any festival I can think of. This could be taken as criticism, but the end result is a refreshingly broad and exciting selection of movies for its visitors. Out of the 261 films screened from 32 countries under the theme of Love, Fantasy And Adventure, there was truly something for everyone. Personal highpoints included Gagamboy, the Philippino spin on Spiderman; Proteus, a boldly experimental South American/Canadian look at a taboo interracial homosexual relationship in 18th-century South Africa; two immensely enjoyable Norwegian movies that caught me completely off-guard, the perky teen-drama Just Bea (Bare Bea) and the small-time hick black comedy Jonny Vang (which I thought played a little like a Nordic version of Nobuhiro Yamashita's No One's Ark); and the epic prison reform drama Virumaandi from India, shot in the Tamil language and starring, written, and directed by Kamal Haasan. The rousing 30-minute prison break at the film's coda, which featured possibly more skewered torsos and severed limbs than the entire George Romero filmography, had local audiences leaping in their seats, hollering and punching the air with delight.
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