Asia House Film Festival – Opening Gala Night
The Ham Yard Theatre, The Ham Yard Hotel, Soho
This event is now sold out.
A short film will precede the main film (and is included in the £20 ticket price)
YúYú (Marc Johnson, France/ China, 2015)
15 minutes, London premiere
Short Film
Language: no dialogue
Director: Marc Johnson
Producers: Marc Johnson, Anne-Marie Melster
Cinematographer: Guillaume Brault
An incredible true-life portrait of Shé Zuǒ Bīn, a Chinese beekeeper who travels to Chongqing in the Yangtze Valley to perform a special rite of spring to recover the environmental balance.
Stranger (Zhat, Yermek Tursunov, Kazakhstan, 2015)
105 minutes, European premiere and Kazakhstan’s official submission for the Best Foreign-Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards being held in 2016
Film
Language: Kazakh with English subtitles
Director: Yermek Tursunov
Screenwriter: Yermek Tursunov
Producer: Kanat Torebay
Cinematographer: Murat Aliye
Music: Kuat Shildebayev
Cast: Yerzhan Nurymbet, Elina Abay Kyzy, Kuandyk Kystykbayev, Alexander Karpov, Roza Khairullina
Tickets for this film (which includes the main film Stranger ) are £20 and are on sale from Eventbrite here or beneath:-
18.00 Doors Open
18.00-19.00 Pre-screening complimentary drinks and canapé reception at the Dive Bar (inside the Ham Yard Hotel)
19.00-21.15 Film Screening at The Ham Yard Theatre (inside the Ham Yard Hotel) and Q+A
21.15- 22.00 Post-screening complimentary drinks and canapé reception at the Dive Bar (inside the Ham Yard Hotel)
A majestic outdoors epic set in 1930s Kazakhstan, full of beautiful landscape cinematography redolent of Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975), the film centres upon the character of Ilyas after he escapes from his village on the steppes, ravaged by famine and the hardship created by Soviet-imposed collectivisation, during a series of systematic purges that sees his father disappear in the middle of the night.
Making his home in a cave in the mountains where he lives off the land according to ancestral traditions, Ilyas shuns human contact, preferring the company of wolves. Aside from periodic visits to trade fur for gunpowder, his sole connection with his former life is the girl he left behind, Kamshut. As the years march by, he finds himself unable to live in isolation from the changes wrought by communism and the onset of World War II.
Yermek Tursunov’s sixth film is a striking treatment of one man’s search for freedom set against the historical backdrop of the country’s darkest years. It follows his previous meditations on Kazakh identity and history, The Daughter-in-Law (Kelin, 2009) and Old Man (Shal, 2012), as his country’s official submission for the 86th Academy Awards. His next film, Little Brother (Kenzhe, 2015), is also included in this year’s selection for the Asia House Film Festival and is being screened on 25 February.
+ Line Producer Diana Ashimova in attendance for Q&A
For more information on the film go to the film’s website here.
For details on how to get to the Ham Yard Hotel click here.
To watch the trailer click below:-
These films are being screened as part of the Asia House Film Festival 2016. To read about all the films being screened at this year’s Festival click here.
Follow us @asiahouseuk and use the hashtag #AHFILM16.
