The adventures of The Other End of The Gun continue. Sorry about the delay on feeding you back about the latest development of the film; the Cannes preparation and participation ate most of my time and as most of you know, I’m not the best blogger in the world!

Apart from being featured in The South China Morning Post in an article from Clarence Tsui (coincidentally released on the day of the opening of the Cannes festival), ‘The Other End of the Gun’ was before all screened at the Hong Kong Arts Centre on 30^th April 2009.

Close to 150 guests attended the event. There was a great representation from the cast and crew including Kate Sullivan, Michael Pizzuto, Simon Yin, Roger De Leon, Juju Chan, Kim Haslam, Herbert Chik, Natalie Lipin, Pierre Duong, Spencer Douglass, Derrick Fong, Hiromi Nakashima, Victor Peña, and Benjamin Robinson.

We had the pleasure to welcome such guests as Johnny Lee (Celestial Pictures), Ken Lo (Sony Pictures), Freddie Ho and Tony Ngai (Salon Films), Robert Ellis-Geiger and Ed Rainbow (Visionsonics), Andrew Wylegala (US Embassy), Alexandra Dreyfus (French Embassy), Digger Mesch, Gilbert Po, Tony Shyu and Jen Thym (great friends directors and producers).

We also had the honour to have Craig Leeson from ‘I Shot Hong Kong’ as well as scholars such as Jack Qiu (CUHK), Jean Michel Sourd (HKU) and even Karim Nozarit (i-amtv) who came all the way from Malaysia for the show and Heidi Haines and her associate who crossed over with a handful of supporters from Macau. Other illustrious guests also included independent Beijing based director Li Tiecheng, Derek Ting and Joel Laykin and Andrew Ng (Laykin Communications).

The format was quite standard: After a quick presentation from the co-producers (James Kenny and Patrice Poujol) the film started. The audience was quite receptive and this was reflected in the Q&A that followed the projection of the film. Topics of these questions covered the technicality of the shoot as well as budgeting, the acting experience, and future plans for the film (still to be developed as a feature).

Victor Peña (PegLeg Production) gave an interesting speech in which he emphasized the talent that exists in Hong Kong both from native artists and foreign contributors and the necessity to harness energies from both worlds to create original ideas and projects.

After the crowd vanished into the night, some met up at Philia lounge: the home were ‘The Other End of the Gun’ was originally created and incubated.

(With Hiromi Nakashima)

Here are some pictures of the event (pictures were taken by Elden Chung).

(James Kenny and Tony Shyu)

(James Kenny, Victor Pena and Patrice Poujol)

(Patrice, Kate and Roger)

(Victor, Patrice and Craig Leeson)

(Patrice, Karim Nozarit and Spencer Douglass)

(Li Tiecheng and James Kenny)

(James Kenny, Juju Chan, Jen Thym, and Patrice Poujol)

The second screening came as part of the Cannes film festival: ‘The Other End of the Gun’ was screened in Palais D on Sunday 17^th May, 1pm. Although the film was presented too late to enter the competition, it was included as part of the Short Film Corner package and offered a screening in the ‘Palais des festivals’.

Attendance in the 35 seater theatre was clearly lower in numbers than it had been in its home town at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, but it did not undermine the quality of the viewing. Some of the guests included LA based producer Maysam Mortazavi who had a film in competition, Swedish Director Tobias Rydin and Media Desk Paris (European Commission) Christine Mazereau.

The screening took place just before the feature ‘Who Killed Nancy?’ (A. G. Parker) and we did not have too much time for Q&A and picture taking.

The film certainly had an impact as producers from Austria, India and LA expressed an interest in co-producing a feature version of the project.

Three other projects were pitched during the festival including a documentary and were met with the same kind of enthusiasm. Festivals such as Santa Monica’s and Marbella’s showed an interest for the film and this reminds us that we’ll have to spend a couple of days on ‘without a box’ and at the post office over the next few weeks to deal with upcoming events that we want the film to be part of. At this moment, my thoughts go straight to all those who were involved in ‘The Other End of The Gun’ and I can tell that all these efforts are starting to pay.

The Hong Kong Trade Development Council and Keith Cheng must also be mentioned at this stage as they greatly facilitated the promotion of the film on the festival by allowing flyers to be placed in their pavilion. They also organized one of the most fantastic parties on the Croisette (Carlton Beach) to celebrate in conjunction with SARFT the Chinese night and the 100 years of cinema in Hong Kong. The event that took place on 16^th May was sumptuous and gathered guests such as Simon Yam, Tony Leung, Michelle Yeoh, Anthony Wong, Cheung Siu-Fai, Qi Qi, Zhao Wei, Chen Kun, Johnny To (who was there to promote his latest film ‘Vengeance’ starring Johnny Halliday), Nansun Shi (Film Workshop), Bill Kong (Edko), Wellington Fung (HK FDC), Soo Wei Shaw, Audrey Lee (Edko), Belinda Tang (Golden Harvest), Gordon Cheung (Celestial Pictures), Hoi Wong or Christine Pernin (Unifrance) who gave a presentation speech in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. The celebration successfully mixed Hong Kong, Mainland and global talents with film industry authorities for a few delightful hours.

With Maysam Mortazavi, Producer for LA based Freakshow Entertainment

Jo Guzman, Director of 'Run! Bitch Run!'.

All in all Cannes has been a blessing and many opportunities and meaningful connections have occurred in the best way Cannes provide such things: by pure chance… with a bit of hard work before, during, and after of course…

We will keep you posted shortly on our projects’ latest developments.

And if you have any special interest, comments or questions feel free to contact us.