tears of the black tiger

The colours of nostalgia: Stella Malucchi as Rompoey and Chartchai Ngamsan (above) as Dum in Tears of the Black Tiger

This time last year, in the run-up to the Cannes Film Festival, there were articles in every industry paper and magazine noting that 2000 would be the year of ‘Asian cinema’ at Cannes. In reality, what this meant was that those Far Eastern film industries which had been developing an international profile since the late eighties were present as usual, but with larger-budgeted, more ambitious films. The only significant ‘newcomer’ was Korea, which had a film in competition at the Festival for the first time.

Since Cannes, of course, Asian films have gone on to win over international audiences as well as festival-goers, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon becoming the first foreign-language film to go past the $100-million mark at the US box office. It also nabbed an Oscar or two at the end of its run: what was once too exotic for most cinemagoers’ tastes now has a definite and ever-growing niche.

But Taiwan, China, Korea - and Hong Kong, whose home-based industry is on the up again after half a decade in crisis - do not represent the whole of ‘Asian cinema’, any more than France, Italy and Spain make up the entirety of the mainland European film industry. And Cannes 2001 will see the highest-profile presence yet of an industry that has been busily reinventing itself since the mid-nineties: that of Thailand.

There are a number of reasons for this. First, there is the all-important idea that Thai film is now ‘hot’, in the aftermath of the worldwide success of Yongyooth Thongkonthun’s Satreelex (The Iron Ladies), based on the true story of how a team consisting mainly of gays, transvestites and transsexuals won the Thai national volleyball championships in 1996. Thongkonthun’s film has gone way beyond the cult audience that might have been expected, and has done a lot to raise awareness of Thai cinema outside the festival circuit. The good-natured promotional presence of the volleyball players themselves on that same circuit didn’t do any harm, either.

Nonzee Nimibutr’s tales of sex, guilt and retribution, Jan Dara (now in post-production)

Much of the recent success of Thai cinema is due to the efforts of arthouse sales outfit Fortissimo Film Sales, set up at Cannes exactly a decade ago with the aim of selling and promoting high-quality films from auteur film-makers. Initially acquiring films from Hong Kong and China through local producer (and champion of arthouse films) Shu Kei, Fortissimo became an established presence in the Far East four years ago, when company chief Wouter Barendrecht relocated from Amsterdam to Hong Kong. He did so, he says, partly in recognition of the fact that, if the company were to develop its relationships with the region’s film-makers, it would have to adapt to the Chinese way of doing business. “In the Asian market,” says Barendrecht, “you tend only to do business with your family, so in a way we have become part of the ‘family’ ourselves.”