Red carpet rolls at Asia's largest film festival

Parade of stars will usher in a new era for cinema:

S KOREA: Asia's largest film festival rolls out the red carpet at its stunning new $140 million home Thursday, hoping a parade of stars will usher in a new era for cinema in the region.

"Today is a day of great meaning and significance," said Korean director Song Il-gon, whose romance "Always" was chosen to open the 16th edition of the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF).

"Busan has long played an important role in Korean cinema and in Asian cinema and it now has a building of significance that reflects that role. This is a landmark for cinema."

Scaffolding was coming down at the new Busan Film Center, a complex covering 30,000 square meters and including a 4,000-seater outdoor theatre, just hours before the stars were due to arrive.

Around 150 faithful film fans had camped out overnight in an effort to ensure prime star-gazing positions for the big event and they were to be joined by more than 4,000 official guests for the evening festivities.

Among those expected to grace the red carpet were Korean idols Song Hye-kyo and Ahn Sung-ki, alongside Taiwanese heart-throb Takeshi Kaneshiro and China's Tang Wei, here to promote the Peter Chan-directed blockbuster "Wu Xia".

International A-listers include veteran French actress Isabelle Huppert, French director Luc Besson and Malaysia's Michelle Yeoh, star of Besson's latest film, "The Lady", on the life of Myanmar activist Aung San Suu Kyi. They will be joined by one of Hollywood's rising stars, Logan Lerman, promoting the 3D feature "The Three Musketeers".

Chinese director/producer Tsui Hark is also in town to collect the Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award for a career spanning three decades that has included credits on the likes of the gangster classic "A Better Tomorrow" and the ground-breaking fantasy "Zu Warriors".

Song, whose opening film "Always" is a romance between an out-of-luck boxer (So Ji-sub) and a young woman who is going blind (Han Hyo-joo), said he was "honoured and thrilled" to play his part at the new venue. AFP