Asia House, the London based centre of expertise on Asia, has announced that its annual film festival will return to London next spring with a diverse programme of films exploring transnationalism and globalisation.
Breaking Boundaries: Asia House Film Festival 2016 will take place from February 22 to March 5, and will include 11 feature films, three documentaries and five short films, from countries including Japan, China, Kazakhstan, Myanmar and Afghanistan.
All films are being screened in London for the first time, and there will be several European premieres. The festival will also include a series of special events at Asia House.
The programme kicks off on February 22 with an opening night gala at the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho. Screenings will subsequently take place at the historic Regent Street Cinema from February 25 to 28 .
The Regent Street Cinema became the birthplace of cinema in the UK in 1896, when the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe machine was first demonstrated to the press. The cinema closed to the public in 1980 and became a lecture theatre. Following a fundraising campaign the 119-year-old cinema re-opened its doors in May 2015, reinstating one of the most historic cinemas in Britain to its former grandeur.
The films selected for 2016 represent a globalised world in which culture, politics and economies are transcending national boundaries. There are a number of international co-productions featured too, reflecting how the film industry has also globalised.
Jasper Sharp, the Festival’s Artistic Director, says: “There are some enthralling, insightful and hugely entertaining titles emerging from places you’d least expect, and which we rarely get a chance to see on-screen. Many of the films selected reflect ideas of how cultures, identities and experiences are increasingly transcending geographical boundaries and, though the Asian continent encompasses such a vast and varied range of peoples and nations, there are commonalities between these that will resonate with everyone.”
Breaking Boundaries will come to a close at The Cinema Museum in Kennington, with a special one-day retrospective entitled Singaporeana, featuring British and American films shot in Singapore during the 1960s and 1970s.
To date the festival has previewed and premiered films including In the Absence of the Sun (Indonesia, 2014); The Last Reel (Cambodia, 2014), Passion (Mongolia, 2010) and Unforgiven (Japan, 2013).
The full programme for 2016 will be available on the Asia House website in January.
To view the program, click here:
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