A few days ago, Adrian and Dawna joined Tomas for the last few days of the FAR EAST FILM festival in Udine in Northern Italy. The dinner in a restaurant in Seoul where, thanks to the producer Hanna Lee, Tomas first met with Thomas Bertacche and Francesco Novello of the then relatively new and modest event pioneering the Asian cinema, marked the beginning of a great friendship, during the course of which the festival, organized by the CECUDINE foundation, and headed by Sabrina Baracetti, has grown to become Europe's largest festival of popular Asian cinema, and an event sought after Asian cinema enthusiasts from all over the world.
There is nothing quite like the FAR EAST FILM anywhere in the world, based at least on what I have seen in the past ten years of intense festival travel. It survived the initial disbelief of some of Udine's inhabitants, it survived the year plagued by the SARS, it survived the occasionally bad weather, it happily survives the several proclaimed and self-proclaimed crises of the cinema industry in various Asian countries. It is simple and clear - in these hands, the FAR EAST FILM will survive, prosper and grow as long as there are Udine, Far East, and film.
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