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It's by doing the International version of
the site HK CINEMAGIC and by keeping in touch with other
worldwide webmasters that I understood the true relationship we had, French people, to the
cinema. My foreign friends helped me to realise that we have a very cultural approach, not
only to the French cinema but also the foreign one. Hence the numerous festivals we have
here and all the foreign films released each year in France. For most of us, cinema is
more an art issue than a business.
It seems that we have a particular attraction to Asian
cinema. Little by little, the French audience discovers new cinemas from other countries
and seems to love it. This year was the year of the Indian and Korean cinema awareness,
for instance. Bollywood film Lagaan was nationally released and Korean films and
DVDs had a decent popularisation through the mass media (Internet, DVD & cinema
magazines, TV coverage, etc…).
The
Chinese cinema is well acclaimed as well. Lot of French investors help out the Chinese
cinema. Both countries have been very close in terms of producing and making movies.
Recently Chen Kaige's The Emperor And The Assassin was co-produced by Le Studio
Canal and The Hole by Tsai Ming Lang was ordered and produced by French-German TV
Channel Arte. Chinese cinema in any form and shape has been in fact accepted on the French
soil for several decades. The HK cinema has been acclaimed since the seventies. King Hu
even won the Technical Grand Prix for A Touch of Zen at the 1975 Cannes Film
Festival. Recently, In the Mood For Love had a huge success here and has
attracted more than a million of moviegoers in theatres. Fist Of Legend by Gordon
Chan was seen by over 300 000 people.
Superb magazines such as HK EXTREME ORIENT CINEMA or fan websites have contributed to make
films from the former Crown colony publicly acclaimed and sometimes well respected here in
France.
This peculiar love for eastern movies has motivated DVD
publishers to release some of the best films in gorgeous DVD collectors or limited
editions. There are four main movie distributors that have a serious distribution policy
toward Chinese films:
Ocean films, HK
Video, MK2 and Le Studio Canal /Asian
Classic.
Ocean films/
TF1 struck very hard once with the released of what can be considered as the most
beautiful DVD version of In the Mood For Love. A double DVD collector packed with
great info, reports, interviews, and alternative endings. The film on itself has been
brilliantly transferred from a very clean master.
A
year ago, The Mission by Johnnie To hit the French Theatres. Although the success
was moderate (30 000 tickets sold), Ocean Films decided to release a DVD edition that
easily outdid the poor Mei Ah version. The sole view of the tremendous animated menu is
worth the purchase. Some people could regret the lack of AC3 5.1 for such amazing audio
track (e.g. during the mall gunfight). But the editor chose to respect the original mono
sound and didn't fiddle with it to provide a pseudo-Ac3 5.1 track. As a bonus, Johnnie To
talks about his film and the HK movie industry in an exclusive 15-min interview.
Last
August, the Taiwanese movie Millennium Mambo by Hou Hsiao Hsien was released in
DVD by Ocean. Once again, they made a fantastic job with this 2-DVD set that shares with
the In The Mood For Love DVD set a great design and they both show that the
editor is not only concerned about delivering a great copy of the film but also about
proposing various attractive bonuses to carry on the movie experience or to help the
viewer to understand the world of the film.
Their next move should be the theatrical release by the end
of 2002 of Johnnie To's Fulltime Killer. They plan to work out as well a great
DVD of this Milkyway Image production for 2003. No doubt that worldwide fans will be
waiting eagerly for it.
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HK Video
is a film editor and distribution company that is much more involved than 
others in
Chinese cinema. Created by French director Christophe Gans, the HK Video label guarantees
a high quality standard. The label used to be one of the collections of editor Seven Sept,
a branch of the big film distributor Metropolitan Film Export. It first started with a
series of 14 magazines written by HK cinema experts and lovers, who taught the readers the
different facets of the HK movie world.
Two of the journalist working for HK Magazine became scriptwriters for Johnnie To and Tsui
Hark on Running Out Of Time and on Black Mask 2.
At the same time, HK Video released about 80 good-quality VHS tapes of the best movies
from Far East Asia (Tsui Hark, John Woo, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Kung Fu, Wu Xia Pian,
Kitano, Godzilla…).
Their DVD collection was launched a year ago by the release of
top notch wonderful packaged DVDs of fully restored and re-mastered films, transferred
from an original copy of the master. Undoubtedly they created the very best versions of
DVDs in the world by fully respecting the will of directors and fans: original audio
track, original picture format, uncut and exclusive versions (The Killer DVD has
the exclusive 20-min longer Taiwanese cut!), original version with French subtitles,
unfiltered pictures but still very sharp. To sum up, they try their best to carry the
theatre-experience qualities to your living room. On top of that they tend to have two
approaches in their editorial policy: a purely film-lover one and a more mercantile one.
They provide 'home-made' and exclusive bonuses for the
masterpieces they release. They also made the most complete 2-DVDs set of Fist Of
Legend by Gordon Chan with an uncut version and an American version (English dubbed),
a director interview, and entertaining and comprehensive 100-min report by Gans and
Chinese Cinema experts and journalists Armenet and Tesson comparing the original Bruce
Lee's Fist Of Fury with director Chan's remake.
In the commercial side of things, they took advantage of
the 
popularity of Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh to sell the goods
(another 2-DVD set of Tai Chi Master, or a release of Li's minor films such as Claws
of Steel or Kung Fu Cult Master). They propose also DVDs only featuring the
film in the best quality possible for a more affordable price. Johnnie To's fire-fighter
adventure movie Lifeline for instance is the best version you could ever find for
only US$ 10. They have released very few DVDs so far (13) but each one is a piece of art
to collect!
The end of the year event will undoubtedly be the release
of the ultimate 2-DVd set of John Woo's Hard Boiled: high definition transfer,
original mono audio track or DD 5.1 Cantonese or DD 5.1 French audio tracks, alternative
editing of the first reel, an exclusive interview of Tony Leung, a 75-min making of with
cast and crew interviews… It will probably be the best X-mas present I had for years!
HK Video even plans to have a collector DVD of Tsui Hark's cult movie The Blade
to die for, and a 2-DVD set of Stephen Chow international hit Shaolin Soccer. As
a conclusion to this part, I'd say that the HK Video DVDs definitively worth a look for
who can read French or speak Cantonese.
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MK2 is a small independent editor who has already
released international and French art-house movies. In their Asian section, they chose a
film from each main East Asian country and released them in original version and with
respected picture format and sound tracks. They are Cure by Kyoshi Kurosawa from
Japan, Goodbye South Goodbye by Hou Hsiao Hsien from Taiwan, and Made in
Hong-Kong by Fruit Chan from HK.
The latest has a wonderful picture (the best they could do with the original material
since Chan used different kind of films to shot his movie). No bonus is really added but
the overall quality and the fact that the films proposed are quite rare make the purchase
compulsory!
The Studio
Canal video collection Asian Classics is supervised by journalist and Asian 
movie
aficionado Jean Pierre Dionnet. He dared to released several 2-film-in-2-DVD sets of
acclaimed Japanese directors such as Takeshi Kitano (Sonatine, Violent Cop) or
Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo, Gemini). They are obviously full of bonuses such as
director interviews, the original OST... In the same collection, he released the first two
instalments of Tsui Hark's series Once Upon A Time in China in a Deluxe 2-DVD
set. Very much interested by Japanese cinema, Dionnet plan to deliver in the following
months movies from Takeshi Miike (the Dead or Alive trilogy for instance), and
maybe some episodes of the 70's series Female Convict Scorpion by Shunya Ito
(1972). So the Asian Classics collection is definitively worth all our attention for who
cares about Asian cinema.
Apart from these DVD editors, a few other distributors
release from time to time interesting DVDs (The 7 Samurais, Bruce Lee film
collection), but the quality varies from a film to another. Sometimes there is no original
version, or the original format isn't respected… In this case, the Asian movie
aficionado has then to consider the quality of each DVD, and cannot rely on the editor
prestige.
Thomas,
November 2002.
Further details at:
http://www.metrofilms.com/
http://www.ocean-films.com/index.asp
http://www.mk2.com/new/index.html
http://www.dvdrama.com
P.S. Some English subtitles are
available in the Internet, and can be used in a PC DVD player to replace French subtitles.
All DVDs presented here are European Region 2.
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Asian film released
in the best DVD version possible (all original versions with French subtitles):
- by HK Video:
The Killer (2 DVDs, + English subtitled Taiwanese version)
Hard Boiled (2 DVDs, + original editing of first reel)
The Black Mask
Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountains
Snake In The Eagle Shadow
Claws Of Steel
Kung Fu Cult Master
Stormriders
Box Saga du Kung Fu: Blade Of Fury & Burning Paradise (2 DVDs)
Fist OF Legend (2 DVDs, + English dubbed version)
Tai Chi Master (2 DVDs, + English dubbed version)
Lifeline (Seven Sept)
Nikki Larson/ City Hunter
-by MK2:
Made In Hong-Kong by Fruit Chan
Goodbye South Goodbye by Hou Hsiao Hsien
Cure by Kyoshi Kurosawa
-by Ocean
Films:
In The Mood For Love (2 DVDs, + English Subtitles )
The Mission
Millennium Mambo (2 DVDs)
-by
Studio Canal + video / Asian Classics/ DesFilms:
Once Upon A Time In China 1 & 2 (2 DVDs)
Tetsuo 1 & 2 (2 DVDs)
Tokyo Fist & Bullet Ballet (2 DVDs)
Gemini & Hiruko The Goblin (2 DVDs)
Sonatine & Jugatsu (2 DVDs)
Violent Cop and Kids Return (2 DVDs)
Audition
Avalon
Kikujiro
Aniki, Brother
Isle (Kim Ki-Duk with Swift Production)
Asian Films to be released in DVD in
France in the near future:
Fulltime Killer, HK
Chinese Strike Force, HK
The Blade, HK
The Master, HK
Shaolin Soccer, HK
Lagaan, India
Operation Kashmir, India
Ring Trilogy, Jp
Perfect Blue, Jp
Musa, Kr
Moonrak Transistor, Thai
Springtime In A Small Town, China
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