The Circuit

by Alexei Dmitriev
What does it take to put back on the world map a provincial town that has been home to the Soviet Pacific Fleet and thus closed to foreigners for the last 50 years?  The governor of the Russian Far Eastern Province had a solution: in 2003 he staged the Pacific Meridian International Film Festival in the Russian port of Vladivostok.  Last week the festival celebrated its fifth anniversary.
 
 The enormous landmass that is Russia spans two continents and being 9288 km (5800 miles) east of Moscow, Vladivostok makes an ideal meeting ground for European and Asian filmmakers.  The busy Golden Horn bay, hilly streets and balmy September weather make this scenic seaside town worthy of being called the "Russian San Francisco."  It was no surprise then that this year the selection committee received 400 entries hailing from thirty-eight countries.   Having seen nearly all of the twenty two films in the competition program, I can say that Pacific Meridian draws enough cinema talent to become one of the most dynamic festivals waiting to be discovered by the world film crowd.
 
Today it is relatively unknown even in Russia where it is referred to as the least commercial cine-forum in the post-Soviet expanse.  Perhaps for this reason the Russian films in competition had a hard time taking on such strong entries as the Japanese film "Faces of a Fig Tree" by Momoi Kaori that swept the Best Director and Best Actress awards and the Hong Kong - China co-production "Getting Home" by Zhang Yang that took the Festival Grand Prix.  Filmmakers from the other side of the Pacific also fared well: Michael James Rowland went home to Australia with the Best Original Script prize for his film "Lucky Miles."  New Zealander Taika Waititi's "Eagle vs. Shark" that screened earlier this year in Park City, Utah received the Special Jury Award.  Bruno Dumont, the "auteur" maker of "Flandres," presided over the international jury that included Kohei Oguri (Japan), Hyun Seung Lee (Korea), Bruce Myles (Australia) and Kirill Serebrennikov (Russia).
 
Besides the competition program the audiences delighted in midnight screenings of horror and erotic flicks like "Shortbus" by US director John Cameron Mitchell and a program of shorts shot with mobile phones.  Another notable feature of Pacific Meridian has been the special Yul Brynner Award.  The star of "King and I" was born in Vladivostok in 1920 and is the only actor of Russian origin to get an Oscar.  With Vladivostok's place in the history of world cinema thus firmly established, the solid film selection, the organizers' deep pockets, plenty of youthful energy and everything-goes parties, a promising future for this quirky, yet easily overlooked festival is in the making.