Volume 9, Issue 10 / October 2005

Around the Globe

For this issue Offscreen brings you cinema from around the globe, featuring three film festival reports and two interviews. The globetrotting begins in lovely Telluride, Colorado, with first-time Offscreen writer Ryan Diduck reporting on his experience as an invitee to the student symposium (Diduck returns in a future issue with an analysis of that bizarre Canadian phenomenom known as the “Trailer Park Boys”). Up next is Peter Rist’s return account of the 29th edition of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Rist has attended this festival and reported on it many times, but his passion for it remains as strong as ever. The festival wrap concludes for this issue from Leeds, England, where Philip Gillett reports on the 19th Leeds International Film Festival, a festival growing in scope and ambition. (Upcoming in a future issue is Betty Kaklamanidou’s report on the recent Thessaloniki International Film Festival.) Appearing in Offscreen for the first time is writer Lise M. Stevens, who gives us an in-depth career interview with the New Zealand born actor Marton Csokas (born of an Hungarian father and a New Zealand mother). As the interview reveals, Csokas is a busy actor who has appeared in a vast range of films, including the soon-to-be-released, potentially mega-box-office hit, Aeon Flux. Rounding out the issue is an interview with Federico Sanchez, co-director and co-writer (with Wilhelm Liebenberg) of the Canadian noirish horror film Eternal. Offscreen takes this opportunity to probe the many aspects of this modern retelling of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory story.