News

Tony Rayns is choking back tears. It's Saturday night at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Festival director Alan Franey has just announced that Rayns, one of the world's pre-eminent East Asian film scholars and programmer of the festival's distinguished Dragons and Tigers program, is stepping down after 14 years. His impending retirement, however, is the not the cause of the emotional outburst.

"This film opened in Korea at the beginning of the year against some cast-iron blockbusters," Rayns says, introducing Lee Jun-ik's The King and The Clown, a witty historical drama set in the 16th century and performed by a bunch of unknown stage actors.

"And it wiped the floor with them," he proudly trumpets, leaning suddenly over the podium for support and biting his knuckles to stave off the tears. Indeed, The King and the Clown went on to become Korea's highest-grossing film ever -- until The Host (also featured at VIFF this year) came along.

"I'm sorry," he continues, as the crowd bursts into applause. "But I think it's rather wonderful that a film as simple as this did better than those blockbuster films with very big stars, huge production budgets, lots of special effects and all the stuff that is supposed to make a hit these days."

This story of a little engine that could can be applied just as triumphantly to VIFF's Dragons and Tigers program, originally an offbeat section with a limited audience that helped a small regional festival gain an international profile. VIFF now boasts more premieres from Asia than any film festival outside of Asia. The program has made a name for itself by being the first to introduce numerous young filmmakers -- Kitano Takeshi, Miike Takashi and Hong Sang-soo, for example -- who have gone on to international acclaim. And it is the single reason most foreign guests, critics and film-festival directors visit each year.

Although Rayns didn't launch the program in 1988 (he joined the festival a year later), its success can be attributed to his unmatched passion for Asian film and the dogged legwork that keeps him trolling the globe for one-third of the year. On his relentless quests for the next big thing, he has found himself gagging on dog and rotted stingray steak (both of which have been offered to him as special delicacies over the years), performing countless renditions of The House of the Rising Sun (his karaoke standard) and watching hundreds of lousy films (often in the editing room).

"Tony is probably the world's single most influential figure in discovering Asian film and introducing young voices to North America," says Dennis Lim, film editor of New York's Village Voice.

"He and Vancouver's Dragons and Tigers program are inseparable," Lim adds. "It's hard to say what it would have been without him, or what it will be."

Franey says he hopes Rayns will stay on as a consultant, but admits that his full-time departure represents a real challenge. "The program will have to be reinvented," he explains. "It's been a signature program and Tony has really been its author. We'll likely move to a more general approach with several programmers."

On the other hand, some local film critics with more pedestrian tastes will be happy to see Rayns go. "Perverse, downbeat and ugly," is how one has described Rayns' proclivity for challenging, idiosyncratic, avant-garde fare.

Rayns, whose home base is in London, scoffs at his critics. "I think if you scan the program, you'll see we offer the broadest cross-section of East Asia's film culture anywhere east of Guam," he says, pointing to the aforementioned The King and The Clown and The Host. The latter, a satiric horror movie directed by Bong Joon-Ho, is about a dysfunctional family and the deformed monsters that rise from Seoul's Han River after a U.S. army medic orders a junior officer to pour gallons of formaldehyde down the drain.

"Bong Joon-Ho was an indie director when he came to Vancouver for the first time with his first film," Rayns explains. "That was 11 years ago. We've shown almost everything he's done since then. And this year, he came back with a huge hit film that sold out three large screenings. We spotted his talent early. And the audience saw him grow from a callow, young student to a rock star, which is how they treated him this year.

"That absolutely justifies what we do."

Rayns isn't sad about leaving, though. "I've done it a long time," he says, "and I feel a bit tired." He also argues that he's no longer needed, at least not in such a pivotal position. "When we started, we basically had the field to ourselves. Nobody was interested, really. In the early nineties, Korean films couldn't get arrested in North America, let alone find a screening.

"It's very different now," he adds. "The whole world is clamouring for films from East Asia. We played an important role, but it's time for a change. It will benefit the festival to have some renewal."

VIFF winners

The 25th Vancouver International Film Festival screened its final film last night, but the 16-day event officially ends this evening with a gala closing party at the new Rocky Mountaineer train station. The juried and people's choice awards were announced Thursday night, prior to the closing-gala screening of Stephen Frears's The Queen. The winners are:

The People's Choice Award for Most Popular International Film: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Das Leben Der Anderen/The Lives of Others (Germany)

Federal Express Award for Most Popular Canadian Feature Film: Greg Hamilton's Mystic Ball

The National Film Board Award for Best Documentary Feature: Connie Field's Have You Heard From Johannesburg? (U.S.)

The Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema: John Torres's Todo Todo Teros (Philippines)

CITY-TV Western Canada Feature Film Award: Paul Fox's Everything's Gone Green (B.C.)

Women in Film & Video Vancouver's Artistic Merit Award:

Carmen Moore for her performance in Unnatural and Accidental, directed by Carl Bessai (B.C.)

-- Alexandra Gill