The Pusan International Film Festival, which took place Oct. 6-14, marked its 10th year with its biggest program ever -- 307 films from 73 countries. These numbers alone make PIFF the largest annual film-related event in Asia, and with the Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP) taking place in the Korean port city simultaneously, it's also the core of Asia's largest film market. Consequently, it came as no surprise when PIFF announced that it was giving its third Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award not to a filmmaker but to NHK for the valuable work it does co-producing film projects throughout Asia.
PIFF provides a one-stop opportunity to not only preview upcoming releases -- next week's Tokyo International Film Festival and next month's Tokyo FILMeX will feature many movies that premiered at PIFF -- but also to review films released all over Asia in the last year. As such, it's a magnet for South Korea's famously rabid movie fans, and the festival is split between two locations: the Haeundae resort area, where the industry and press events took place, and the downtown Nampo-dong district, which was given over to fans.
Since Pusan will host the APEC Summit in November, security was more intense than at past festivals. In Haeundae, everyone had to pass through a gauntlet of metal detectors to get into the opening ceremony, and Nampo-dong was constantly under the watchful eye of grim-faced security details, who nevertheless proved to be no match for the fans. Even the usually cool Jackie Chan, who appeared at PIFF Square Oct. 7 to plug his new movie, "The Myth," seemed intimidated by the compressed hordes of youngsters brandishing cell phones and digital cameras, and obeyed their commands to pose in every possible direction. "It's nice to be greeted as if I were Korean," he said.