APSA NOMINEES FEATURE AT GOLD COAST FILM FESTIVAL

The Gold Coast Film Festival (GCFF) will celebrate films of Asia-Pacific with a program of films nominated in the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA). 

The fourth annual APSA’s will take place on the Gold Coast on December 2 when 31 films from 15 countries and areas will compete for the region’s highest accolade in film.

Headlining the GCFF APSA Program is China’s highest grossing film of all time, Aftershock, nominated for a record six awards in the 2010 APSA’s and China’s Official Entry for the 2010 Academy Awards. Aftershock, directed by Feng Xiaogang, follows the story of one family in the aftermath of the devastating 1976 Tangshan earthquake that took the lives of 240,000 people.

Winner of two awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and last week awarded Best Film at the London Film Festival, How I Ended This Summer is a tense Russian thriller set on a remote meteorological station in the Arctic Ocean and features a stand-out performance by APSA Best Performance by an Actor nominee Sergei Puskepalis.

APSA Best Screenplay nominee Samuel Maoz drew on personal experience in writing Lebanon, the story of a lone tank manned by four young men in their 20s in the First Lebanon War. What seems to be a simple mission becomes increasingly out of control. This Israeli co-production has won many awards including the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival.

Three animated Japanese films complete the line up.
2010 Best Animated Feature Film nominee King of Thorn is Japanese manga at its best. A virus known as "Medusa” which turns the body to stone has become a worldwide epidemic. Clinging to the hope of a future cure, a group of infected patients are cryogenically frozen. Woken from their slumber they find the curtain opens on a mystery-veiled escape drama.

Anime science fiction Summer Wars, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film in 2009, centres on the story of timid mathematical genius Kenji who is falsely implicated in the hacking of a virtual world. Summer Wars won the 2009 Japan Academy Award for Animation of the Year.

A special free screening of 2007 APSA Best Animated Feature Film, 5cm Per Second, is part of the Film Festival’s Anime Showcase, and filmmaker Noritaka Kawaguchi returns to the Gold Coast three years after his APSA win as a special guest to present free animation workshops on Thursday 11 November at the Robina Community Centre.

APSA Chairman Des Power said: “The Asia Pacific Screen Awards were created with the objective of achieving shared cultural understanding through promoting cinematic stories that best reflect their cultural origins. It is a thrill to bring these outstanding films to the big screen on the Gold Coast and give audiences the opportunity to see some of the best films from our region. I congratulate the GCFF for their excellent 2010 program and for bringing so many wonderful films to Gold Coast cinema-goers that they may not otherwise have the opportunity to see.” 

The Gold Coast Film Festival presented by Australia Fair Shopping Centre, will be held November 10-16 at Australia Fair Birch Carroll and Coyle Cinemas in Southport. Gold Coast City Council’s Film Gold Coast is the major Government sponsor of the event. The full program of films and events is online now. For more details
please see www.gcfilmfestival.com