VietNamNet Bridge – Foreign filmmakers are attending the fourth independent filmmaker festival that began today in the central city of Da Nang.

Filmmaker Phan Dang Di – File photo

The festival, entitled Autumn Meeting, was launched in 2013 by three established independent filmmakers, Phan Dang Di, Tran Thi Bich Ngoc and Nguyen My Dung.

"We organise the Autumn Meeting to seek talented filmmakers in Viet Nam," Ngoc said.

"People of my generation such as director Di and screen writer Dung have had opportunities to exchange and co-operate with international filmmakers. We want to share our experiences with youngsters and support them in getting close to international cinema," Ngoc said.

The festival this year has included more training courses for the first time, such as in film production and film pitching.

Besides Vietnamese participants, young filmmakers from Taiwan and Singapore are also participating in the festival for the first time. They had to register for the festival six months ago.

The courses will be conducted by well-known artists such as overseas Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung, South Korean cameraman Kim Hyung-koo, director Kim Tae-young and producer Won Dong-yeon.

Filmmaker Hung, who sat on the Cannes jury in 1996, is considered to be at the forefront of the wave of overseas Vietnamese cinema in the past two decades.

His films, which show profound focus on life in Viet Nam, have been both critically and commercially successful.

His debut movie, entitled The Scent of Green Papaya, won the Camera d'Or Prize at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.

Last October, he was one of the jurors of the Tokyo International Film Festival.

Producer Won Dong-yeon's 200 Pounds Beauty attracted more than 10 million viewers in Korea.

Other international artists coming to the festival are Southeast Asia and Pacific selector for the Venice Film Festival Paolo Bertolin; Benjamin Illos, a member of the selection committee for Directors' Fortnight in Cannes; and British filmmaker Joe Lawler.

The eight-day festival will run till December 7. The best projects will be awarded at the festival.

Last year, two awarded scripts Cha Cha Cha and The Lottery Boy by Do Quoc Trung and Tran Dung Thanh Huy, respectively, were selected for the 2015 Asian Project Market at Busan International Film Festival in Korea.

"We want to develop Autumn Meeting as an international film festival, just like a medium-scale Stockholm International Film Festival," filmmaker Di said.

Source: VNS