BCN Sports Film Festival

from 3rd to 19th May

Casa Asia collaborates for the first time with the BCN Sports Film | Barcelona International Film Festival, with a double programme that consists of a discussion and a film series.

Firstly, Jae-Un Do, a Korean expert with a long history in the world of sports as an entrepreneur, a commentator and agent, will discuss the last Olympic Winter Games that just took place in Pyeonchang , South Korea, which brought a new step toward the normalization of relations between the two Koreas. In this talk, he will discuss the special relationship between sport and education, exploring the differences between the learning and training systems of a global and competitive world that makes sport one of its flags. The comparative vision of Jae-Un Do concerning similar phenomena in Korea and Spain cannot only be suggestive but also effective, considering the countries’ relationship with the sector. Subsequently, three titles God of Ice Skate (2018), Home Run (2018) and No More Losing (2017) will be shown, which will undoubtedly contribute to revealing the relationship between sport as a discipline and everyday life.

Program:

GOD OF ICE SKATE | Korea | Dir. Bongkeun Kwon | 2018 | 75’ | VOSE

HOME RUN | Korea | Dir. Kimb Park | 2018 | Cortometraje 19’ | VOSE

NO MORE LOSING | Korea | Dir. Hyungbok Lee | 2017 | Cortometraje 21’ | VOSE

 

Location: Conference – Casa Àsia · Recinto Modernista de Sant Pau, Pabellón de Sant Manuel, c/ Sant Antoni Maria Claret, 167, Barcelona
Film series – Cinemes Girona · c/ Girona, 175, Barcelona
Entrance:
Conference: free entrance with registration required.
Film series: 3,5€ |Associates and partners of Cinemes Girona: 2€

check scheduling

 

Mongolian Film Series

from April 21st to May 26th

Casa Asia turns once again to approach some recent and highlighted titles of Mongolian cinema to our public. Mongolia’s cinematography is beginning to consolidate itself within the Asian panorama.

This is the first time Casa Asia devotes a film programme exclusively to this country. Four films made between 2016 and 2017 have been chosen and they were at the latest edition of Asian Film festival Barcelona.

The Mongolian Film Series is an opportunity to enter a cinematographic world typically difficult to access that commercial distribution tends to disregard. Through rural and urban cinema we view a fascinating culture where the coexistence of local tradition and urbanization is a part of people’s everyday lives and is transforming their society.

Program:

WHITE BLESSING, Dir. Sengedorj Janchivdorj| 2016 | 104’ | Drama | VOSE

HERS, Dir: Galbayar Dashkhuu | 2017 | 83’| Drama | VOSE

WINTER STORY, Dir: Tulga Bayarkhuu | 2017 | 93’| Drama | VOSE

GANGSTER GIRLS, Dir: Zolbayar Tsagaantogtokh | 2017 | 103’| Comedia | VOSE

Location: Cinemes Girona · c/ Girona, 175, Barcelona
Entrance: Price: 3,5€ |Associates and partners of Cinemes Girona: 2€

check scheduling

Iranian Film Series: “Films at Cotxeres Borrell”

from april 19th to june 14th

Cotxeres Borrell, in collaboration with Casa Asia, organises an Iranian film display with three recent films, as well as very relevant in the international panorama.

We can see films like Nader and Simin, a separation, from Asghar Farhadi (2011), in which all the characters need to hide something to preserve their truth, and that amount of lies, which is triggered according to the logic of the domino effect, allows to talk about the particularities of Iranian society, from the impositions of religion to the difficulties of being a woman in such a repressive context, even though this can happen anywhere on the planet; or as Taxi Tehran by Jafar Panahi (2015), winner of the Berlin Bear and the FIPRESCI Award of the 65th edition of the Berlinale, is a film that goes into daily life without restrictions; and, finally, The Traveler of Ashgar Farhadi (2016), a detailed analysis of a relationship that, as happens with the apartment where they live at the beginning of the film, cracks and deteriorates, with the danger of a total collapse. Farhadi poses a moral dilemma, a provocation to elucidate on topics such as anger, compassion and, above all, forgiveness.

Program:

NADER Y SIMIN, Dir. Asghar Farhadi | 2011 | 123’ | VOSE

TAXI TEHERÁN, Dir. Jafar Panhi | 2015 | 82’ │VOSE

EL VIAJANTEDir. Asghar Farhadi | 2016 | 125’│VOSE

Location: Cotxeres Borrell · c/ Viladomat, 2-8, Barcelona
Free entrance.

check scheduling

Asian Films 2018

from March 24th to July 7th

Casa Asia, in collaboration with Barcelona County Council, for the second year in a row, presents the project Asian Films, through which there is an approach to Asian author cinema to towns of the province of Barcelona, films that are not usually available in commercial routes.

A project through which we try to approach the cultures of this large continent to Catalan population, in order to spread cinematographic culture of the Asian continent, at the same time it promotes the development of activities that encourage a social approach to interculturality. Knowing that there are commonly shared narrations and individual narrations, as well as group and personal experiences that could be saved by their transmission, the approach to other cultures finds in cinema an exception. In fact, these narratives -in long and short stories- communicate us through different media such as literature, cinema, plastic and visual arts, stage arts and witnesses that are gathered of authors, artists and film makers, the works discover local worlds in a global knowledge system. However, films are a great media for this purpose, because movement image is a universal language.

Program:

MINA’S OPTION | Dir: Kamal Tabrizi | Irán| 2015 | 100’ | Drama

HERS | Dir. Galbayar Dashkhuu | Mongolia | 2017 | 83’ | Drama

A FATHER’S WILL | Dir. Bakyt Mukul, Dastan Zhapar Uulu | Kirguistán | 2016 | 112’ | Drama

Ciclo de cine: Sábado 24 de marzo, 19.00h y 22.00h y domingo 25 de marzo, 19.00 h. Jueves 24 de mayo y jueves 7 de junio a las 21.00h
Location: Espai Maragall · Paseig de Joan Maragall, 11, Gavà
Sala Mozart · c/ Església, 91 , Calella, Barcelona
Free entrance.

check scheduling

Cinema of Iran

From February 3rd to April 7th 2018

This new programme of Iranian cinema presented by Casa Asia includes a list of ten films produced by a new generation of cinematographers educated in Iran, whose contribution to the cinema of their country is playing a crucial role. 

Iranian cinema focus on the narration and on the way to confront the domestic and daily life of the characters, as well as the private life of a society that can’t completely be understood, although it seems familiar. Among the films that will be screened, some of the essential ones are “Mina’s option”, “Until Ahmad Returns”, “A House of 41st”, “Bench Cinema”, “Cyanide” and “Sara & Aida”. However, it is remarkable that the winner of the Best Director Award in the Panorama Section of the 2017 Asian Film Festival. Barcelona was Hamid Reza Ghorbani with “A House of 41st”, and “Houra” was awarded with the Best Screenplay by the Young Jury of the Festival.

PROGRAMA

HOURA, Dir. Gholamreza Sagharchiyan | Irán | 2015 | 79’ | VOSE

MINA’S OPTION, Dir. Tamal Tabrizi| Irán | 2015 | 100’ | VOSE

UNTIL AHMAD RETURNS, Dir. Sadegh Daghighi | Irán | 2015 | 82’ | VOSE

A HOUSE OF 41ST, Dir. Hamid Reza Ghorbani | Irán | 2016 | 90’ | VOSE

BENCH CINEMA, Dir. Mohammad Rahmanian| Irán | 2016| 117’ | VOSE

GASHANG & FARANG, Dir. Bijan Mirbagher| Irán | 2016|90 | VOSE

STOLEN, Dir. Bijan Mirbagheri | Irán | 2016 |86’ | VOSE

THE DREAM OF WATER, Dir. Farhad Mehran Far | Irán | 2016 |103 | VOSE

SARA & AIDA, Dir. Maziar Miri | Irán | 2017 |86’ | VOSE

CYANIDE, Dir. Behrouz Shoaibi | Irán | 2015 | 109 | VOSE

Film series: from February 3th to April 7th at 20h
Cinemes Girona · c/ Girona, 175, 08025 Barcelona
Ticket: 3,5 €  Partners and friends of Cinemes Girona: 2 €

To consult the programme

Film season: Retrospective of Hou Hsiao Hsien

From 23rd November to 16th December 2017

This retrospective of Hou Hsiao Hsien, which is presented at Filmoteca de Catalunya, counts on the collaboration of the Asian Film Festival. Barcelona. Hou Hsiao-Hsie, born in continental China (Meixian, Guangdong, 1947), is a film director and representative of new wave of Taiwanese cinema.

With “The Assassin”, this director, representing the new wave of Taiwanese cinema, born in mainland China (Meixian, Guangdong, 1947), was for many of his current followers a big discovery, thanks to the Best Director Award that was granted in the edition of the Cannes Festival of 2015. This discovery was related to the background aesthetics that prevails in his filmography, with more than twenty titles, from his beginning, in 1980, when he made his debut feature, until nowadays. This retrospective traces the film-maker’s career from “The boys from Fengkuei” (1983), his fourth film, to “The Assassin” (2015). Hou Hisao-Hsien is now carrying out his newest project, and he will not be able to attend the presentation of his retrospective for this reason. In spite of being repeatedly awarded in festivals such as the ones held in Venice and in Cannes, his filmography is far from being known in the West as it would be expected of someone who is the author of films such as “A City of Sadness” (Leone d’Oro, in Venice, 1989), “the Puppetmaster” (Special Jury Prize, in Cannes, 1993) or “The Assassin”, already mentioned.

In 1995, the San Sebastian Film Festival dedicated him a retrospective, but since then to date, Hou Hsiao-Hsien has made more than eight titles, few of which have been shown on the screens in Spain. The current retrospective of Filmoteca de Catalunya and Casa Asia will allow the audience to access some of the most outstanding films concerning the poetic that goes through them from beginning to end, as it is perceived in “Flowers of Shanghai” (1998), “Millenium Mambo” (2011), which has been so much compared to “In the Mood for Love” by Wong Kar-Wai, “Café Lumière” (2003), a homage to Yasujiro Ozu, or the three romantic tales of “three Times” (2005), among other titles, fifteen of which are now presented in Filmoteca also forming part of the program of the edition of “Asian Film Festival. Barcelona”, 2017.

Long sequence shots together with an unparalleled poetic of time are applied in his cinematographic stories, which go back to the common past as well as to the individual lives of his main characters, whose destiny is usually contextualised in an emotional world that is caught among the ‘I’, the ‘others’, and a darker real world represented in the urban nights in Taipei, and the youngsters that plunge in their artificial paradises. However, the same happens when he refers to the underworlds at the end of the nineteenth century in “Flowers of Shanghai”, to set an exemple, or in IX century China, where the warrior Nie Yianniang (the assassin), belonging to “The order of assassins”, receives her master’s command, and kills the man she loves to fulfil her duty.

 

Menene Gras Balaguer

Director of the Asian Film Festival. Barcelona

 

Consult the programming

(the schedule might be susceptible to changes)

Films of Asia

From 22nd October 2017 to 30th January 2018.

Casa Asia, in collaboration with Barcelona County Council, presents the project Films of Asia, through which Asian author cinema approaches towns of the province of Barcelona, films that are not usually present on commercial circuits or only minority.

In the last term of 2017, Casa Asia, in collaboration with Barcelona County Council and city councils and cultural associations of Bigues i Riells, Castellterçol, La Garriga, Gavà, l’Hospitalet, Igualada, Manresa, Mataró, Premià De Mar, Sant Adrià del Besòs, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Santa Coloma de Gramanet, Terrassa and Vilafranca, organises its author cinema film series.

A project through which we try to approach the cultures of this large continent to Catalan population, in order to spread cinematographic culture of the Asian continent, at the same time it promotes the development of activities that encourage a social approach to interculturality. Knowing that there are commonly shared narrations and individual narrations, as well as group and personal experiences that could be saved by their transmission, the approach to other cultures finds in cinema an exception. In fact, these narratives -in long and short stories- communicate us through different media such as literature, cinema, plastic and visual arts, stage arts and witnesses that are gathered of authors, artists and film makers, the works discover local worlds in a global knowledge system. However, films are a great media for this purpose, because movement image is a universal language.

Consult the programming

(the schedule might be susceptible to changes)

Audience Award

One more year, the audience of the AFFBCN has voted for their favourite films. These are the results:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Memoir of a murderer (South Korea) | Won Shin-yun

2. Mina’s option (Iran) | Kamal Tabrizi

3. Hers (Mongolia) | Galbayar Dashkhuu

4. Hikari – Hacia la luz (Japan) | Naomi Kawase

5. Emma (Indonesia) | Riri Riza

6. Don’t tell (Australia) | Tori Garrett

7. Dawn of the felines (Japan) | Kazuya Shiraishi

8. Happiness (Hong Kong) | Andy Lo

9. The table (South Korea) | Jong-kwan Kim

10. A house of 41st street (Iran) | Hamid Reza

Welcome to the 2017 edition

Menene Gras Balaguer
Director of the Asian Film Festival. Barcelona

Asian Film Festival. Barcelona (2017), an annual event organized by Casa Asia, is based on the cultural turn of geography and the emphasis that critical geography places on the construction of imagery directly related to the territory, starting from the underlying symbiosis between nation and narration. Asian cinema does not form a uniform set of paradigms nor does it present a unique identity panorama, as witnessed by the different stories from the countries that will be part of the festival from Central Asia and Southeast Asia to Oceania. This area covers the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan; Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal,  Sri Lanka, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. Within the distance of 12.000 km that separates from East to West the boundaries of this vast extension, you go through the geographical and cultural borders of more than twenty countries, which claim a local identity in defence of their difference and against the cultural globalization that portrays the current worldwide order. This festival specialized in Asian cinema aims to become an event of international reference, with more than a hundred films to be seen in this edition, which empower us to map the cultures from which they come and represent.