When only one person showed up at the first screening of a new film festival at the Richmond Culture Centre, organizers instantly considered closing the curtain and bowing out.
"I don't know what I was thinking, showing a movie on a Friday morning," said Cinevolution co-founder Lynn Chen, who now laughs about that moment in 2008. "That lady came to every screening afterwards. She bought a festival pass and was so happy to find a festival in Richmond to watch independent films."
"We had just started and our marketing level was not as good," said co-founder Rachel Fan, explaining the festival was organized within a month with 27 movies screened over three days. "But it got better."
Chen, a graphic designer, Fan, a journalist and Ying Wang, a filmmaker, started Cinevolution Media Arts Society in 2007 to showcase various art forms that encourage new thinking on multiculturalism and interconnectedness. The society produced the now defunct New Asian Film Festival for three years. They created the society and film festival because as immigrants to Canada, they were tired of seeing stereotypical and films that were negative about Asia.
"Films about Asia, except for maybe Japan and Korea, kept showing smaller Asian countries and China as being not so advanced. Underdeveloped with problems with human rights and people living on the edge," Wang said. "Even the Asian film festivals (in Vancouver), organized by those from here, were very similar to the mainstream."
Fan said they chose Richmond, because at the time, the city didn't have an annual film festival and because of its large Asian population. However, it was hard to get people to come.
"People in Richmond are more conservative than Vancouver," Chen said, explaining they screened a lot of non-mainstream and art films. "Less people watch independent movies in Richmond, but the numbers got better after the first one."
Wang said they wanted to screen films that showed Asian life differently, in the present and where it's going.
Cinevolution regularly holds workshops ranging from filmmaking to animation at the Richmond Media Lab, and frequently brings artists in to showcase their work. They also host Screen Bites, previously known as Dim Sum Movie, which brings cinema to local restaurants. But the biggest event is the annual Your Kontinent: Richmond International Film and Media Arts Festival, which replaced the New Asia Film Festival in 2011.
Urkontinent is a German word for supercontinent, which refers to a time when all of Earth's seven continents were joined together as one.
"We made the change to Your Kontinent to show different stories from different countries," Chen said, adding that focusing strictly on Asian films was too narrow. "We use the film festival to bridge together the different cultures."
With that change, the film festival has grown from three to 10 days, with an added media arts component. There will be the usual movie screenings at the Richmond Cultural Centre, but there will also be a screening at the Lansdowne Centre parking lot, which will be turned into a drive-in to screen the family-friendly animation film, Spirited Away by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki. There will be two Screen Bites: Mussels in Love will screen at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery and Red Obsession at the Shiang Garden Seafood Restaurant.
Your Kontinent: Richmond International Film and Media Arts Festival runs July 17-26. Visit ykfestival.ca.
