The third annual Pan-Asia Film Festival took place in London this month (March 2nd-13th). The event is organised by Asia House, a cultural centre that hosts a variety of events throughout the year, designed to promote understanding and exchange between Europe and Asia.

Although the Pan-Asia Film Festival presented just one film per day, with no repeat screenings, the programme reflected a good range of contemporary Asian cinema, both in terms of genre and country of origin. There were ambitious art films such as Tran Anh Hung’s Norwegian Wood (Noruwei no mori) which opened the festival, and political documentaries like Anne Gyrith Bonne’s biopic Aung San Suu Kyi, which was screened to coincide with International Women’s Day, and followed by a discussion with the director and BBC World Service broadcaster Nita Yin Yin May who was herself imprisoned in Burma for 3 years. More serious fare was balanced by lighter but nonetheless critically acclaimed films oriented more towards romance and comedy: Arin Chen’s Au Revoir Taipei (Yi ye Taibei), which won the NETPAC Award at Berlinale 2010, and Hong Sangsoo’s Hahaha, winner in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes the same year. The films chosen spanned Asia, from Iran and Iraq in the West, through Kyrgyzstan in central Asia, all the way east to India, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

I only had a chance to see a quarter of the festival’s 12 films, which turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. The most disappointing was Majid Barzegar’s debut feature, Rainy Seasons (Fasle Baranhaye Mousemi, 2010). The programme promised that this film would offer a rare glimpse into the lives of Iran’s middle class, from the perspective of a teenage boy named Sina. As his parents are divorcing and no longer want to live under the same roof, he finds himself alone in the family flat. This allows him to help out a young woman named Nahid, who has come to Tehran to study but can’t get a place in the student dorm. Contrary to what you might expect in Iran, the principal dilemma is not that unmarried friends of the opposite sex are sharing a flat unsupervised. It is that Sina is in trouble with local gangsters. The precise nature of the trouble is one of the film’s precious few sources of suspense: it means that Sina is constantly having to find cash to keep the local motorcycle thug at bay.

There are a few interesting conversations in Rainy Seasons, and even fewer moments of comic relief: these emerge from Sina’s interactions with his parents and Nahid. The film’s strongest feature is its young lead actor and actress (Navid Layeghi Moghadam and Marzieh Khoshtarash), whose faces combine childish vulnerability with the sober expression of a worried adult. And there is much for the teens to worry about: while Sina must deal with the gang-related problem mentioned above, he also lives a precociously independent life, unsuitable for someone so young. Nahid, meanwhile, is in a precarious position as a homeless young woman alone in a strange city. These factors are a source of tension in the film, but not quite enough, because the consequences are never fully realised. Overall, the film is dull, with too many shots of serious facial expressions and not enough talk to reveal the thoughts behind them. Exactly how Nahid helps Sina to placate the thug is never made clear. Most problematic of all, while Sina has a likeable face, he himself is difficult to like because he has no guts: he acts decisively when it is easy for him to do so, rather than when principles are at stake. The programmers justified the presence of this film at the festival with reference to its nomination for a prestigious Tiger Award at this year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival. Although this is no small achievement for a first feature, a nomination is still not a win.

I also had high hopes for Taiwanese director Hsiao Ya-Chuan’s Taipei Exchanges (Di 36 ge gu shi). Its promising premise involves a young woman opens a café full of books and various objects that patrons are allowed to take, but only in exchange for another item, never for money. I expected a quirky film, which it was, but the quirkiness was not as fully realised as it could have been: like Rainy Seasons, Taipei Exchanges contained a lot of good ideas that could have been taken further. It was nonetheless far more engaging than the Iranian film. Its aesthetic is calculated to appeal to those with a taste for cakes and pastries; light, fresh and airy spaces; and fashion that is understated and elegant yet modern. The film is marked by a characteristically youthful eagerness for realising one’s dreams through travel and individual creativity (whether that be baking, storytelling, drawing, painting or singing).

The film is often funny, but also sums up the pressures on young people to temper their dreams with practicality. In opening her café, Dora is realising a creative dream: she can determine every aspect of the café’s design, from the architecture to the furniture and crockery. The day-to-day running of the café gives her a chance to show off her culinary skills. At the same time, Doris knows how to take on the role of hard-headed business woman, and fretfully compares daily expenses against earnings. Her sister Josie comes up with the exchange idea, and although the concept sounds non-commercial and idealistic, Josie hopes that over time they will acquire a more valuable collection of objects which she can then sell, using the earnings to buy herself a car. With this goal in mind, Josie gradually becomes stricter with the exchange system, and more judgemental about the patrons’ offerings: she challenges a Japanese visitor who offers to sing in exchange for a book of poetry, pointedly asking him if he really thinks that it is a fair exchange. Ultimately, the film does not address any really pressing issues: taking as its subject two young women who have the privilege of enough capital to pursue their dreams, with no real challenge apart from their nagging mum, it is no surprise that this is ultimately a rather fluffy film.

The strongest film of the three was Aktan Arym Kubat’s The Light Thief (Svet Ake, 2010). The director casts himself in the title role of an electrician nicknamed Svet-Ake (‘Mr Light’). Svet-Ake feels it his duty to ensure that all of his fellow villagers have access to electric lighting. He helps those too poor to afford electricity by fiddling with their meters, and thus steals light for them. In his spare time, Svet-Ake experiments with wind power, and dreams of setting up giant turbines at the mouth of the local river in order to supply the whole village with affordable energy.

The only one who seems to take Svet-Ake’s wind turbine plan seriously is Bekzat, a former villager turned businessman who made his fortune in the city. If Svet-Ake agrees to work for him, Bekzat promises to make his plan a reality. Bekzat has returned to the village with a plan of his own: to buy up public land and make it profitable. The mayor of the village questions Bekzat’s motives, and urges the villagers not to trust him

Although the film has a clear direction to its narrative, it adopts a relaxed momentum which effectively translates the gentle pace of life in the village. There is time to observe Svet-Ake’s daughters playing together or tucked up in bed; to show moments of intimacy, banter and tension between Svet-Ake and his wife; to linger over the expressive faces of the old villagers. In spite of its leisured pace and focus on village life, the film never becomes dull, as each shot is perfectly timed. The Light Thief also encompasses far more material than a simple synopsis would suggest. It is punctuated by detours unrelated to the main narrative, which reflect the diversity of the villagers’ concerns or provide comic relief.

Although the sample of films that I saw at the Pan-Asia film festival were, on balance, quite average, it is important to take into account that the festival is only in its third year, and the organisers, while ambitious, are not complacent. This year’s festival included more guests than in previous years (directors Majid Barzegar and Tran Anh Hung and actress Rinko Kikuchi, for example), as well as more special events. Audiences were urged to fill in feedback forms to share their opinions about the festival and its selection of films: unfortunately, the form was too long, which surely put many off responding. My other, more serious concern about this festival is that it is poorly publicised. As a bare minimum, they need a higher profile on the web: currently, the official Pan-Asia Film Festival site comes alarmingly far down the list of internet search results. Once you get there, the web site is visually appealing, but never as functional or up-to-date as it could be. I’ll be noting next year’s festival in my diary now: based on this year’s experience, it’s a little too risky to rely on the festival’s advertising to remind you.