Programme curator Natalya Timofeeva who was in Hong Kong for the first time shared with us her impressions.

Hong Kong Film Festival is called the most important and influential film forum in the eastern hemisphere. Apparently, it's because several important events connected to cinematography take place in this megalopolis at the time of the festival. I want to draw your attention to some of them.

FILMMART is a film market that is among world's biggest ones. Right there we negotiate about recieving films for the "Pacific Meridian" selection. In the halls of the film market shows and new projects presentations can be seen around the clock. Among numerous participants, and this year there were more that 5000, I met Chinese producer Chou Ken. We arranged that he would arrive in Vladivostok and hold the workshop "Producer Job". Almost 10 years ago Chou Ken with director Dzya Djanke and cameraman Ju Lik Wy founded an independent company "Xstream Pictures". Nowadays, their names are heard among Cannes, Venice and Berlin prize winners and Chou Ken knows what a successful festival film must look like!

ASIA FILM AWARD is an annual awards ceremony for the best Asian films that are shown worldwide. It is a ceremony that is called an Asian Oscar. Besides nominees from China, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Korea, a Kyrgyzstan film "Svet-Ake" was included in the shortlist, though in the past but still "our cinema". The main award, as expected by many, received Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul for the film "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives". Apichatpong is not a shy youth anymore like he was in Vladivostok in 2006. Now he is the one who dictates fashion in Asian cinema.

HAF — Asia film financial forum. It is the place where those who have ideas, scripts and unfinished films meet with those who are willing to provide financial or any other kind of support. And for us it is the place to gather information about films for our future festivals.

And finally, Hong Kong International Film Festival itself. This year it was held for the 35th time. 330 films from 56 countries were screened during 17 days. There were lot's of temptations for qualified spectators. It seemed like the organizers had decided to show the best contemporary and archival films. There are several competition programmes at the festival. The main — Asian Digital Competition. As a rule, low-budget debut films, recorded on digital cameras, take part in it. This year there were films that had already received awards at international film festivals, like "Good Morning to the World" directed by 25 year old Japanese director Hirohara Satoru and "Eternity" of a Thai director Sivaroj Kongsakul. But the winner this year was the film of Tibetan director Pema Tsedan "Old Dog" — tragicomic history of a shepherd Dragpa and his dog. There are no actors in the film, narration is very discreet, even ascetic, maybe that’s why the final leaves such an impression.

There was also a special masters section where the latest works of Wim Wenders, Béla Tarr, Otar Iosseliani, Jerzy Skolimowski, Raul Ruiz were screened. Eternal classical films were shown like Federico Fellini’s "La Dolce Vita", Dziga Vertov’s "Man with a Movie Camera", film that by Entertainment Weekly opinion changed the world — "The Night of Counting the Years" released in 1969 by an Egyptian film director Shadi Abdel Salam is still considered the best Egyptian film. Fascinating, poetic animation by the Japanese Kawamoto Kihachiro. Best Russian films of the past year — "Ovsyanki", "How I Ended This Summer", "The Edge".

The opening film was Johnnie To’s romantic comedy "Don’t go breaking my heart". The film turned out to be brilliant despite the fact that the genre was peculiar to Johnnie To who was the master of gangster films. The second opening film was omnibus "Quattro Hong Kong 2". This project was produced by Hong Kong Festival for the second time. Filipino Brillante Mendoza, Malaysian Ho Yu-hang, Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul and representative of Hong Kong Stanley Kwan expressed their opinions on Hong Kong. Stanley Kwan’s opinion was very similar to mine — cacophony that had it’s own music but not not everyone was capable of hearing it…