Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Museum of Modern Art, New York
April 10–17, 2012
he Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor

For what is now dubbed as "Kraftweek" in New York, the Museum of Modern Art has offered live performances by Kraftwerk in the program Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Spanning over eight consecutive evenings -- all of which sold out in advance -- an intimate audience of 450 are having a rare opportunity to experience the band perform live versions of eight studio recordings beginning with Autobahn (1974) and concluding with Tour de France (2003).

Autobahn, when it debuted on Novemeber 1, 1974 - coincidentally, the same day as another West German band The Scorpions' heavy metal release Fly to the Rainbow -- it was Kraftwerk's fourth studio recording. In a direction that was hinted at in their previous recording Ralf und Florian, Kraftwerk moved more towards electronics, synthesizers and the use of the vocoder, and a departure from conventional instruments. Autobahn also expressed more of a musical focus and discipline, in part, owed to producer Conny Plank who had helped shape a maturing style over their first three full-length recordings and away from the rougher experimental rock style the band had pioneered.

Their subsequent musical output focused on technology and communications and the dynamic offers of each in the modern world. Radio-Aktivität (released as Radio-Activity in the United States), produced after Autobahn, unveils the band's greater confidence in building their musical expression and identity around synthesized music with a concept album exploring the pun of nuclear exposure ("Radioactivity") with broadcast media "radio-activity". Ralf Hütter intones on the song "Radioaktivität" that "radioactivity is in the air for you and me" intended for the listener to reflect upon.

New York's live performances at the Museum of Modern Art have been esteemed for its exclusivity among its fortunate patronage, but it's also been a sore-point for those who couldn't get a ticket. The series sold out instantly in late February in advance of the April series, and scalpers were reportedly selling individual tickets for $1,000. As for the live series itself, Kraftwerk fans have been enjoying the rare spectacle on view at MoMA, but Rolling Stone notes that the performances are getting shorter with each passing night and noted that Sunday evening's Computerwelt ("Computer World") from 1981 was shaved from the recording's original 35 minutes down to 18 minutes ("Kraftwerk Diary Day Five: 1981's 'Computer World' Invents Electronic Funk" by Mike Rubin, Rolling Stone, April 16, 2012).

Unlike a nostalgic arrangement of works by one artist or from a collection, Kraftwerk's honed electronic focus and music output has a freshness that seems to defy kitsch. Their music and lyrics anticipated if not expressed the contemporary zeitgeist. Kraftwerk's 1981 release Computerwelt may have sounded like science-fiction for its listeners at the time, for example. Now, in a world where we have "smart" mobile devices and iPhones, the lyrical engineer fantasy from that album's song "Pocket Calculator" ebbs forward into the future: "I'm the operator with my pocket calculator / I am adding and subtracting I'm controlling and composing / By pressing down a special key, it plays a little melody." Rewind and press play.

Vancouver’s False Creek Flats, a 20 -acre under-developed industrial stretch of East Vancouver adjacent to Chinatown, is an area that city institutions are hoping to kindle into at least one idea: an urban epicenter for Vancouver’s digital economy. At the forefront of this mission is the Great Northern Way Campus Trust which is building the Centre for Digital Media and will complete construction by September 2012 to welcome students into its innovative Masters’ programs. The Centre offers the first-ever professional graduate degree program in digital media in Canada.

The school's design is like modernist chalet soaring with an 8-bit pixelated almost-flattened polygon frame as if windswept from Vancouver's English Bay gusts in winter. On the outside, the building's white skin is not only branded with the school name but also features a digital screen for projecting video for audiences on the adjacent plaza. The 15,000-square foot interior beckons students and faculty for teaching, meeting and studio space, and for breaks in the cafe. The Centre’s upper floors offer housing for students in 76 apartments described by GNWC president Matthew Carter as a “digital dormitory.”

Designed by Vancouver-based Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership Architects Designers Planners (MCM), the Centre for Digital Media is not only a specialized academic institution but an essential one for the development of False Creek Flats as a high tech, creative, innovative urban district. The Vancouver Economic Commission sees the city’s high tech sector as a valuable economic engine. Greater Vancouver accounts for 60-percent of more than 600 digital media companies in British Columbia that produce $2.3 billion CAD in revenue. Gaming software businesses are highly visible in Vancouver and include Disney, Electronic Arts, Nintendo and THQ. Paired with an advanced film, television and marketing sector, the Commission describes Vancouver as strategically and geographically competitive with similar economic centers on the West Coast, notably Los Angeles, Seattle and Redmond, and overseas Asian-Pacific markets.

Students looking to pursue a serious academic career in digital media studies have little time left to enroll in the Centre for Digital Media programs on offer and a chance to be among the first graduates at the school's new center to open in September this year. On February 16, there will be an MDM Open House for students interested in the Masters programs offered. Application deadline is February 28, 2012.

In a press release published by the Centre, Richard Smith, Director of the Masters of Digital Media (MDM) program said “We are excited about our new home; it will greet the next generation of highly skilled leaders needed to maintain B.C’s edge in the booming new media market."

For admission details and information about the Centre on Digital Media, check out mdm.gnwc.ca.

A year ago, January 25, 2011 was for most people an ordinary date on the calendar. The previous year's holidays had finally ebbed into a new year, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was holding its annual conference.

In Cairo, pro-democracy demonstrators convened in the city's central Tahir Square calling for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down and an end to his repressive military regime. Their demonstration was organized through a network of connections that leveraged Facebook and Twitter. Social media, largely ignored or dismissed as a superficial past-time, had been an instrumental communication tool and platform for students, activists, "citizen journalists," and others participating and bearing witness to social change as it was happening in Egypt. It was a powerful one as the world watched a collective sharing of information and people organized to pursue an unprecedented pro-democracy movement. Egypt's January 25 revolution -- on the heels of Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution in December 2010 -- was broadly branded as the "Arab Spring" with subsequent social struggles unfolding in neighboring states across North Africa and the Gulf in Bahrain, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen in the weeks that followed.

Egyptian youth had successfully and collectively shared social and mobile platforms that had been sometimes derisively called the "Twitter Revolution" in that country, but that trivializes what happened behind the headlines. Clearly, social media and networks which have been largely adopted by a younger generation can mobilize action and quickly demonstrate effective communication. And social change and unrest did not go unnoticed; TIME Magazine acknowledged The Protester as the Person of the Year. The events culminating in the Arab Spring and late summer's emergent Occupy Wall Street movement reveals the abundance of social engagement and proving a significant importance across the world.

This year's World Economic Forum held each year in Davos in January recognizes the value of social media and social engagement and has broadened its reach of openness and communication through social media channels and mobile applications. Despite the exclusivity and elitist nature of the WEF conference -- participating attendees representing a cross-section of political, economic and business leaders are there by inivitation-only formality -- the five-day event can be followed and accessed via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, and several reports are available on Scribd. Online and via the free World Economic Forum iPhone app, live streaming and archived video broadcast feeds are available through its Livestream channel at livestream.com/worldeconomicforum. Interviews in the Social Media Corner archive are with Mashable Founder and CEO Pete Cashmore, Ariana Huffington, President of the Huffington Post Media Group, Robert Scoble from Rackspace, and others.

While this transperancy may be good and levels accessibility to the conference exist beyond the alpine slopes hovering near Davos-Klosters, one of the main themes at this year's summit addresses Global Risk for 2012. At the center of this issue is economic income disparity in the world, which also happens to be one of the focal points of the global Occupy movement. Some members from its ranks have set up an Occupy WEF igloo and yurt encampment near conference venues and hotels in Davos. It goes without saying that the 99% has a stake in the ongoing dialogue regarding globalization and economic challenges facing the world.

In meeting between Reuters Social Media Editor Anthony De Rosa and Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore at the Documented at Davos Studio (Reuters TV, 26 January 2012), Cashmore explains, "We're here at Davos where world leaders come to meet and decide the future of the world. Well, what happens when everyone is empowered to participate in that future? That turns things on its head."

Image credits: Twilight in Davos, Switzerland, photo: Scott Eells/Bloomberg; World Economic Forum logo; Reuters Social Media Editor Anthony De Rosa and Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore at the Documented at Davos Studio (Reuters TV, Jan 26, 2012); Occupy WEF protesters prepare a yurt in the town of Davos, Switzerland, on January 21, photo: Scott Eells/Bloomberg; Davos/Klosters, Switzerland, 3 Jan 2012, aerial view of the mountain resort, Copyright by World Economic Forum, swiss-image.ch / Photo by Andy Mettler.

From the air a visitor flying over Nuuk could not miss the long residential structures composed in orderly rows looking much like over-sized army barracks. Blok P is the largest one stretching east-to-west in a 209-meter span and rising just 5 stories high. Containing 135 apartments and 50 residential dwellings, this is how residents have lived for 40 years. According to Wikipedia, Blok P houses 1% of Greenland's total population.

Blok P's factory-like profile leaves an impression that the Danish designers and developers who organized Nuuk's urban planning and housing had nothing little more than contempt for Greenlanders in favor of expediency and economic efficiency. The building and similar smaller building structures were initially part of a social housing program designed to provide apartments for residents working in the local commercial fishing industry in a centralized setting while as many as 100 smaller coastal Greenlander villages were shut down to populate Nuuk. (Greenlandic Architecture, rudyfoto.com)

The building looms across the skyline like a vast horizontal wall to protect its inhabitants from the brisk Arctic wind and snow. And while it is home to many residents, Blok P and the other alphabetic blocks have become something of eyesore. These buildings have collectively branded Nuuk's urban identity for many years. It's been part of Nuuk's inherited Danish effort for urban planning to develop the town as a strategic sea port and military outpost. Fortunately for local dwellers that is about to change as contemporary Greenlander, Norwegian and international architects in collaboration with Nuuk's city planners and residents envision a new urban transformation. One larger revitalization effort for the city center calls for the removal of Blok P and offering as the newer alternative a series of residential dwellings inspired by Greenland's landscape and earlier Danish colonial designs.

An example includes architect firm Fantastic Norway's Houses for Families residential design. The architectural concept smartly avoids any institutional style in favor of a small village cluster model that is redolent of Greenland's Danish colonial phase of residential construction. Fantastic Norway updates that approach with wood finishes and new sustainable and technological standards including solar panels and water heating. The House for Families project is designed for disadvantaged women and children and provides them with both independence and community.

This project is part of a large-scale phase of urban development and renewal for Nuuk's city center and planned demolition of Blok P and Blok A - L in Tuujuk. "Their days are numbered, their time is over," writes the architects in the comprehensive master plan proposal Nunarsuup qeqqani - Nuup qeqqani // In the middle of the world - in the middle of Nuuk awarded Best Nordic urban plan at last year's Norwegian architecture festival – Arkitekturmässan, in Gothenburg. The project cohesively looks forward towards Nuuk's future urban planning and sustainable development as the city’s population increases.

Architects Dahl & Uhre who submitted this project proposal in April 2011 focuses on Nuuk's urban center where Blok P and adjacent residential housing blocks currently stand. The project envisions new contemporary housing more fitting with a human-scaled approach to architecture and urban development in place of the existing model. The project also involves associate architect teams including the London-based 42 / architects, Fantastic Norway / Håkon & Haffner, and TNT Nuuk to model new housing and residential buildings addressing needs for the community such as social and park spaces, landscaping, retail and a sustainable design.

Dahl & Uhre's documentation outlines the structure towards project development and how restructuring Nuuk's urban core with the removal of Blok P and other existing housing stock will not only impact residents who have lived there and have fostered a strong community but to imagine what's next. In practice their plan seeks to elicit comment from those living in Blok P and the Tuujuk residential community to determine the needs to forge a newer Arctic urban model. Its scope raises some interesting questions regarding who is the city for and what functions does a city serve. Nuuk's post-war contemporary development is now at a new stage to evolve its urban plan with a strategic, cohesive approach that also involves its inhabitants. It also doesn’t hurt to retire a dated building design – one that burdens Nuuk’s civic image and social space – in favor of an aesthetic design tailored towards the values of the people living there.

Their urban plan does not merely address the problem of Blok P and Tuujuk’s Blok A-L which contains 156 apartments. These structures will be demolished over a period of years. Resettlement is needed for the residents who live here in existing housing in suburban areas and parts of downtown while construction begins for the new building projects as part of the greater urban plan. In the process, an emerging surge in economic activity and job creation is expected from the new construction. 

Dahl & Uhre's grand urban vision for Nuuk's future and, by extension, its pivotal position in a globalized Arctic context is buoyed by significant existing and newly planned civic projects. Katuaq, the Nuuk Cutlural Center has emerged as one of the more enduring recent architectural icons for the city. Inspired by the northern lights, icebergs and the play of light and snow, this gentle wave-sided building in Nuuk's business and retail core clearly departs from the warehouse rigidity of the Blok P's profile with a distinctive organic contour. Designed by architects Schmidt Hammer & Lassen of Århus, Denmark, Katuaq opened in February 1997 as Greenland's central cultural venue. Katuaq's web site describes the meaning of Katuaq as "a musical instrument that can begin to play at any moment. During the day it’s full of dreams – at night it acts like a magnetic field, drawing people into the light." 

Schmidt Hammer & Lassen Architects have also designed a proposal for a school in Qinngorput in Nuuk for the Greenland Home Rule Government. Although the design is less fluid in profile, the architects draw inspiration from the location's angular mountain ridge setting overlooking the sea. The school's concept also contains an open plaza, and in the evening the building functions as an arts and community center.

Art and culture is also the primary focus for a new venue planned for contemporary art and Greenland's vibrant art history. The Greenland National Gallery for Art takes the shape of a concrete circle straddling Nuuk's rocky coastline integrating land and sea. It's a bold design as a spherical white oval appearing beached like an iceberg on the shore against a backdrop of one of the older apartment block structures facing the sea. The award-winning design, recognized in a competition last year, is by the Danish firm BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group, in partnership with TNT Nuuk, Ramboll Nuuk and Arkitekti. As part of the social poltical dialogue about Greenlandic identity, BIG sees the Greenland National Gallery for Art as "a symbolic tool in the continuous contribution for political independency" and to "become a symbol of the current independent Greenlandic artistic and architectural expresssion."

With a plan and several projects under way, Nuuk's recent past looks to be a springboard for brighter things ahead. Stay tuned.

 

Image credits: 01: Katuaq, the Nuuk Cultural Center, Photo: Adam Mørk, courtesy The Arctic Council, ac.npolar.no; 02: House of Families, Fantastic Norway / Håkon & Haffner, image courtesy Fantastic Norway / Håkon & Haffner, hakonoghaffner.no; 03: Mixed Use Development - street view sky darker, Apartments, retail and community spaces as part of sustainable masterplan, Collaboration with regional Associates. 42 / Architects, image courtesy 42architects.com; 04: Greenland National Gallery of Art, image courtesy BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group, big.dk; 05:  Karen Thastum, Tura Ya Moya, Julia Pars and USK students, Nipi & Qaamasoq saga, Block 6, as part of the NIPI & QAAMASOQ Saga/MY SAGA light installation at Katuaq Nuuk Cultural Center and Blocks 6 and 7, Photo Kim Christensen, November 2011. Image courtesy sermitsiaq.ag; 06: Architectural concept for a school in Qinngorput, Schmidt Hammer & Lassen Architects, image courtesy shl.dk; 07: Cover art from Nunarsuup qeqqani - Nuup qeqqani // In the middle of the world - in the middle of Nuuk, a comprehensive Master Plan proposal for parts of the City Centre of the Capital Nuuk, Dahl & Uhre Architects, image courtesy Dahl & Uhre Architects, Dialogue Architecture Landscape Urbanism, dahluhre.blogspot.com.

 

After a weekend filled with skiing or just an afternoon's stroll through the snow, catch up with Monocle Alpino by fireside, Monocle's latest holiday newspaper offering reportage on mountain culture, food, beverage, and travel. The editors and writers look east towards Sochi's ramp up to the 2014 Winter Olympics, Slovenia's post-Soviet "stag party era" as the nation finds its way towards modernization, and a family-run cinema offers Gstaad residents and holidayers a place to catch films in alpine Switzerland. Also, check out the crisp photo essay of Iceland's search-and-rescue team at work.

Secure your copy at Monocle.com.

Images courtesy Monocle Alpino, monocle.com.

Cableway, Krasnaya Polyana Mountains. Photo: Sergey Dolya, courtesy sergeydolya.livejournal.com.

Krasnaya Polyana Mountains. Image courtesy sochi2014.ru.

"RusSki Gorki" Jumping Center. Image courtesy sochi2014.ru.

Cableway, Krasnaya Polyana Mountains. Photo: Sergey Dolya, courtesy sergeydolya.livejournal.com.

"Laura" Cross-country Ski and Biathlon center. Image courtesy sochi2014.ru.

«Fisht» Olympic Stadium. Image courtesy sochi2014.ru.

"Shayba" arena and "Bolshoi Ice" Dome. Image courtesy sochi2014.ru.

"Iceberg" Skating Palace. Image courtesy sochi2014.4u.

In almost two years time from now, Sochi known fondly as the Russian Rivieria is getting a massive urban makeover complete with new infrastructure for the 2014 Winter Olympic games. This Black Sea resort town that lures Muscovites to its flashy hotels and discotheques as a holiday destination is now a city undergoing rapid change with emergent sports facilities, new building construction, and more to come. The transformation estimated at a cost of 1 trillion rubles or the equivalent financial investment to prepare and build out Beijing's facilities and infrastructure for the 2008 Summer Olympics. It's a tall order, and one that comes with hidden burden on local residents who have been forcibly evicted from their homes and businesses to make way for this clean-slate construction boom for brand Sochi, according to reports from GamesMonitor ("Sochi's Mega Event: Eviction").

Russia has called the Sochi Project an important investment for the nation's image and much is at stake for success here on the world stage and for both the domestic and international market, particularly for sporting events and travel. Set against the backdrop of the snow-capped Krasnaya Polyana Mountains, Sochi's newly minted and bejeweled arenas and urban construction seem to shimmer on the Black Sea coast. Here's a glimpse of some of the new stadia, sports venues and facilities getting built in time for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Images: Burning oil sludge, north of Denver, Colorado, 1973-74; New tracts, west edge of Denver, Colorado, 1973-74; Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1969; North of Keota, Colorado, 1973; Quarried mesa top, Pueblo County, Colorado, 1978. All images by Robert Adams, courtesy Yale University Art Gallery, artgallery.yale.edu.

Photographer Robert Adams is featured in the Denver Art Museum exhibition Robert Adams: The Place We Live, A Retrospective Selection of Photographs (September 25, 2011 - January 1, 2012) which is in its final run before closing at the first of the new year.

Adams, a Colorado native, explores the depth of the natural landscape and how humans interact with it leaving their mark. His lens draws up a formality in his compositions yet allowing the subject breathe, particularly in his field of vision captured in expansive Rocky Mountain landscapes in communities and rural stretches of Colorado's Front Range. His images allow viewers to consider the development of remote communities and locality in context for where people live, work, commute and pursue leisure.

Many of his black and white photographs date from the 1960s-80s when population size and sprawl was to a modest degree eclipsed by the rugged landscape. Organized by the Yale University Art Gallery's Joshua Chuang, Assitant Curator of Photographs, and Jock Reynolds, the Henry J. Heinz II Director, Robert Adams: The Place We Live is a touring exhibition that is scheduled for its next open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (March 11 - June 3, 2012).

Visit the Denver Art Museum for additional information:
denverartmuseum.org

Programmers for the Sundance Film Festival have announced in late November the films selected for competition to be held January 19-29, 2012. Among the 16 world premieres for the U.S. documentary category, the new film DETROPIA directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady will offer viewers a glimpse at Detroit in decline. The city has in the past decade lost 25% of its population and 50% of its manufacturing jobs. Once humming with domestic automobile production fueling the city's regional economy, continued car manufacturing plant closures, layoffs, and the city's eroding core have exacted an ongoing burden for its remaining residents.

Ewing and Grady, whose previous Oscar-nominated documentary Jesus Camp (2006), explores how Detroit's population work and live trying to cultivate a new urban identity. The filmmakers meet up with a blues bar owner, artists, illegal scrappers, a blogger among others and offer a current pulse on whether renewal can happen in the Motor City.

DETROPIA is one of 16 films in competition with the following other U.S. documentaries making their world premiere:

1. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry directed by Alison Klayman
2. The Atomic States of America directed by Don Argott and Sheen M. Joyce
3. Chasing Ice directed by Jeff Orlowski
4. DETROPIA directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
5. ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare directed by Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke
6. Finding North directed by Kristi Jacobsen and Lori Silverbush
7. The House I Live In directed by Eugene Jarecki
8. How to Survive a Plague directed by David France
9. The Invisible War directed by Kirby Dick
10. Love Free or Die directed by Macky Alston
11. Marina Abramović The Artist Is Present directed by Matthew Akers
12. ME at the ZOO directed by Chris Moukarbel and Valerie Veatch
13. The Other Dream Team directed by Marius Markevicius
14. The Queen of Versailles directed by Lauren Greenfield
15. Slavery by Another Name directed by Sam Pollard
16. We're Not Broke directed by Karin Hayes and Victoria Bruce

For more information about the film DETROPIA, visit the production site for Loki Films: lokifilms.com.

Visit the Sundance Film Festival 2012 for more festival information: sundance.org/festival/.

Chicago advertising agency Coudal Partners has cultivated a small but evidently coveted brand with their pocket Field Notes memo notebooks made in the U.S.A. Launched a few years back with hand-pressed editions with ruled, graph, and plain pages and bundled in sets of three containing one of each style notebook, Coudal Partners has grown their brand to launch a Colors subscription featuring a limited run of their quarterly colors Field Notes editions.

Some of the previous limited color editions include Fall 2009: Mackinaw Autumn, Summer 2010: County Fair in the colors of yellow, red and blue ribbons, and Summer 2011: American Tradesman edition in "Indigo Blue." Many of these limited Field Notes color editions have sold out, except for the County Fair series which also is minted distinctly celebrating each of the 50 United States and features state facts on the back of each edition cover.

The latest color edition is the "Fire Spotter" Edition and the 12th color FIeld Notes print run. The "Fire Spotter" edition in a blazing autumnal red is dedicated to men and women who have been the "eyes of the forest" for the past 100 years working at fire lookouts. Launched in late October 2011, the limited 1500 "Fire Spotter" Field Notes 3-packs sold out immediately. Each bundle also included an "Always Watching" temporary tattoo designed by Tattly from Brooklyn, New York. The edition was hand-printed on a vintage Miehle vertical press at Flywheel Letterpress from Freeport, Illinois. The "Electric Red" cover stock was sourced from French Paper Co. in Niles, Michigan.

Coinciding with the launch of the "Fire Spotter" edition, Coudal Partners produced a short film shot at the Mountain Fire Lookout Tower in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin. The film captures an early fall day from the soaring 93-foot high lookout tower over a forest alight in autumn orange, red and gold.

Some limited inventory for the "Fire Spotter" edition is available to purchase as part of a Field Notes Colors subscription. For details, check out fieldnotesbrand.com/colors/.

A week ago the Busan International Film Festival in Busan, South Korea, had a successful finish at its remarkably stunning new Busan Cinema Center. In the shadow of Mount Jangsan near the landscaped waterfront APEC Park on the Suyoung River, the Busan Cinema Center unveils a striking profile with its soaring cantilevered roofline brilliantly lit with LED lights. Designed by Austria’s Coop Himmelblau, this 9-story building noted for its floating roof hovering above an outdoor theater and the cinematheque's central  structure Cine Mountain.

This remarkable film complex clearly elevates the 16-year-old festival to a premier level for exhibiting global cinema and contemporary Asian-Pacific film. This iconic new structure will likely lend a world-class landmark status for cinema and architecture in Busan just as the sweeping glass-walled wave design does for Tehran's Mellat Park Cinemaplex designed by Fluid Motion and Santiago Calatrava's Hemisfèric IMAX Theater resembling a human eye in Valencia, Spain.

The Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) also inaugurated the new space with a name change while retaining its brand. Previously, the festival had used the Korean pronunciation for Busan which is "Pusan" and was used interchangeably for the name of South Korea's largest port city until 2000 when the government officially granted the name Busan. The festival announced earlier this year that their name would also reflect the official change.

BIFF's festival campaign this year dovetailed perfectly with the opening of the soaring Busan Cinema Center as the festival emerges to become the premier Asian-Pacific destination for Asian cinema. The festival, which is international in scope and contains many feature-length and shorter works in different genres and formats, it's truly an important film festival for exhibiting contemporary Asian film.

This year's festival the New Currents Award was shared between Morteza Farshbaf's film Mourning from Iran and Roy Arcenas' film Niño from the Philippines.

For further details about the Busan International Film Festival and Busan Cinema Center, visit: biff.kr.

Images: Busan Cinema Center at sunset, architectural concept for the Busan Cinema Center, 2011 Busan International Film Festival and Asian Film Market poster design, Busan Cinema Center at dusk, Busan Cinema Center's soaring LED roofline at night.