Left Flank

We discovered short film at BUDi, and Busan Asian Short Film Festival was even more revelatory, and emotionally vicious. Again, the quality of short film leaves the longer form far behind. The BASF staff was also tops. I'll single out On the Line, of the five I saw, and all were special.

I don't know why every German film I've seen is grungy. Berlin was not all that way.

A department store security guard is secretly in love with a clerk in the book department. Without her knowledge, he observes her via the store's video monitoring system and follows her on the train at night. When he witnesses a seeming rival being attacked in the train, he gets off instead of helping him. Not being able to deal with his bad conscience, his formerly controlled life breaks down.

On one hand, the film captured the isolation of a digital time, where it's easier to trust images than people. There's a real chance, ironically Rolf could get what he wants. If he could commiserate, or perhaps just come clean about witnessing the incident on the train. he would have to break through to the image of his affections. But he balks. Both are lonely in a strange town, and it's so easy. All that technology just ruins communication.

Missing broke ground, because, instead of going easy, it did something more interesting. Bernard was not invisible to his wife, just emotionally unavailable. She spoke to him, as the neighbors and the police could, but no one knew him. So, he cuts his finger off, but the dog eats it. So, he kills the dog to pull the finger out of its guts. Only when his father, wasting away in an old folks; home, confirms his identity at gunpoint, does the town trust Bernard.

Digital is great, but it's absolutely inhibiting.

The Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) lost its cineaste's novelty in April, when BUDi fought and nearly won my affections. BUDi, or the Busan Universiade for Digital Content, is for the short film format what PIFF is for the long form, the conventional (dare I say, classic 120-minute format). Like the LP, I fear PIFF is at a disadvantage in the age of attention deficit disorder and IPODs. So, I started slow this 12th iteration of the venerable autumn convocation for camera-empowered artists in all phases of self-expression, from pic snappers to the silent news crews, the flash-resistant stars and their directors, and finally to the producers and scriptwriters dreaming of the limelight. I picked a selection composed of four short segments, In Our Time,  by four different Taiwanese (or is that the Chinese Taipei contingent?) directors.

I have to say, though, that another charm of BUDi was its amateur-ish facade. Perhaps, it was the venue, Kyungsung University, and all those college volunteers running around. Maybe the short film format was reminiscent of a college final. Or, perhaps, it was the fact that admission was free of charge. Free gifts don't hurt, either, like last years winning films on one CD (I dare PIFF to do that!). Honestly, it took a lot of conviction to convince my wife to spend money for more than one film at PIFF (let alone eight!), when she watched over 20 for free at BUDi. I'm trusting a good deal of my credits for the rest of my married life on this 12th PIFF.

So, too, it was disappointing to have to run through a hollowed-out building in the midst of renovation to get to the movie theater perched atop Daeyoung CGV. With all the money I'm spending for a two-hour film, I might at least have a chance for some free browsing, instead of floors full of hammers, drills, and frantic investors scrambling to fill their stalls before morning. Get it! I'm nostalgic for the days of parking my lazy butt in one theater to watch ten films.

Part of a retrospective featuring Edward Yang, In Our Time (1982) recalls the stages of life, from childhood to adulthood. Each segment reveals flashes of a tell, a directorial gamble. There's the brief flirtation with dream sequences in the opening ode to a frustrating childhood with the parents from hell; unabashed earnestness in Yang's second segment featuring a girl becoming a woman; slapstick featuring a comic hero in the third; and, finally, in the fourth, a naked man running through Taipei at rush hour displaying his commitment to his wife and ignoring all else. My wife said it was all too «funny», which goes to show the film is not realistic in the deadpan sense. It's transcendent.

Once in a while, I realized I was not watching Kansas, or Korea. There were brief moments when universalistic themes took a back seat to cultural incomprehension. Because of the first two segments, I almost believed mornings in Taiwan start with schoolchildren walking out of their homes like convicts head for execution. Chopstick etiquette intruded upon saliva-inducing displays of food, and I am glad Koreans use spoons so much. At some points I thought I was watching Koreans speaking in Chinese, but then there was a schoolboy's military uniform, to disorient me.

So much compacted material in four brief vignettes. Again, I ask, why should I sit through two hours of a single story? Stay tuned, and see if I can!