Toronto continues to spotlight Asian film industry

Legendary East CEO Peter Loehr, left, in conversation with Toronto International Film Festival’s Artistic Director Cameron Bailey during the keynote address. / Courtesy of TIFF

By Jason Bechervaise

TORONTO

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The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which has just concluded its 39th edition from Sept. 4 to 14, is now known as a launching pad for potential award winning films

along with the Venice and Telluride festivals

as the Oscar race gets underway. But the festival has also successfully devoted a significant amount of its resources to highlight the growing presence of Asian cinema and its ever-expanding industry.

One area where this has manifested itself is in the Asian Film Summit that seeks to establish connections between Asian cinema and the West. This year the third edition of the summit, which took place on Sept. 9 at the Shangri-La Hotel in downtown Toronto, largely focused on China’s potentially very lucrative market, which kicked off with a keynote address by Legendary East CEO and film producer Peter Loehr who fielded questions from the festival’s artistic director Cameron Bailey.

Loehr provided attendees with some compelling statistics when asked by Bailey about the real scale of the Chinese market. “This year, China will be the first box office market outside the U.S. to cross $5 billion in a single year” and according to Leohr, the film industry’s biggest international market is set to continue to grow.

Four of the directors who had films in the Seoul City to City Program pose for a photo call in Toronto: From left, Boo Ji-young (“Cart”), Park Jung-bum (“Alive”), July Jung (“A Girl At My Door”) and Kim Seong-hun (“A Hard Day”).

“There are real macroeconomic reasons for that to be the case. There is currently a major lack of screens for the country's 1.3 billion people. There are only 22,000 screens nationwide, which is a per capita screen ratio of 68,000:1, compared to 8000:1 in the U.S. There should be 159,000 screens if China ever caught up with the U.S. If one compares the market to that of Korea, where there is a screen ratio of 20,000:1, then there should be 70,000 screens at a minimum in China. But somewhere between the two is probably where it will land.”

Interestingly, with box office sales generating 99 percent of a film’s revenue, the ancillary market could yield further lucrative returns in a yet untapped market. “In the U.S., the majority of revenue comes from other income streams, including home video and theme parks that can reduce the levels of risk. But there is really just a single income stream in China.”

This is because the industry has just grown so fast

“six years ago the market was a quarter of the size it is now,” but going forward, “There will be a huge market for both local and international films in that space.”

Much like Hollywood as seen with the success of “Iron Man 3” and “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” the Korean film industry is trying to expand into China’s potentially highly profitable market. Isabelle Glachant, a Beijing-based producer who was on one of the panels said in an interview with The Korea Times that “on the Korean side, they are doing so much to put forward co-production and organize regular events bringing together producers and directors and organize one on one meetings in Beijing.”

Why the push? “The Koreans are succeeding where the Chinese would like to succeed but are not succeeding yet, which is to have a certain standard quality of films and having those films being successful locally and internationally,” Glachant said.

That is why she thinks several producers in China want to look for a Korean director to do their own local films where the film looks Chinese, but you don’t see the Korean element, as illustrated with the success of “A Wedding Invitation” that generated $30 million in China in 2013.

Genre films are also a point of interest for the Chinese because they are limited when it comes to genre films. “Koreans are really good at making genre films such as horror films” which includes features such as the Chinese remake “Bunshinsaba” (2012) along with the two sequels directed by Korean filmmaker Ahn Byung-ki.

“The production is mostly for the local market. The goal is not to do an international production that will travel, but to bring Korean knowhow into the Chinese market,” she said.

The high standard of Korean films also came up in another panel discussion when the North American distributor Well Go USA CEO Doris Pfardrescher responded to a question about why the company distributes so many Korean films: “I think Korean films have some of the best stories, quality, and production values in Asia. A lot of times some of them don’t even cross over but they’re so well made and they’re so well done.”

Seoul flies into Toronto

In fact, this year, running alongside the Asian Film Summit was the City to City program, which spotlighted Seoul featuring eight feature length Korean films that included the well-received “A Hard Day” and “A Girl At My Door” that both premiered in Cannes along with the world premieres of Yim Pil-sung’s contemporary fairy tale adaptation “Scarlet Innocence” starring Jung Woo-sung, and Boo Ji-young’s “Cart” about workers unfairly laid off at a supermarket that both enjoyed positive responses from the audience.

Bailey who also co-programmed the films with one of the festival programmers Giovanna Fulvi said in an interview with The Korea Times earlier this year “We've always looked for cities where the quality of production is high, and where we can find new innovations in cinema. Seoul has all that. The difference this year is the depth of production. There are so many well-made, interesting films from Seoul's filmmakers every year”.

Korean films weren’t restricted to the Seoul City to City Program either with Shim Sung-bo’s “Sea Fog” having its international premiere as a gala presentation, with Im Kwon-taek’s “Revivre” and Hong Sang-soo’s “Hill of Freedom” as well as the Korean/Canadian co-production “In Her Place” also featuring in the lineup reflecting the festival’s appetite for Korean cinema.

Jason Bechervaise is a film columnist for The Korea Times.