By Dave Montalbano
AdventuresOfCinemaDave.com
Aung San Suu Kyi with Jim McNalis
It was announced this week that Marvel’s The Avengers has become the 3rd highest grossing motion picture of all time, behind Avatar and Titanic. With The Amazing Spider-Man opening this holiday weekend at the Museum of Discovery IMAX Theater, costumed superheroes have consumed the international box office.
Speaking of heroism, The Lady will make its South Florida premier this weekend at the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival’s Cinema Paradiso. This long-awaited biography acknowledges the heroism of Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Noble Peace Prize winner who had been under house arrest for two decades in Myanmar, formerly known as the country of Burma.
Best known for portraying karate sidekicks to Jackie Chan, Jet Li and James Bond, Michelle Yeoh will portray The Lady. With Rebecca Frayn’s screenplay in hand, Yeoh presented the project to Luc Besson, a French director best known for action flicks like The Fifth Element, The Professional and La Femme Nikita.
Besson said, “One day Michelle came to see me for help. She told me she had a compelling screenplay about Aung San Suu Kyi and was looking for a producer, and that it would be great if I were free to direct it. At first, I told her I wasn’t available. But then I read the script and I was blown away!”
Despite the gulf between eastern and western cultures, Besson revealed his need to tell the story about The Lady.
He said, “I was very moved by the story of this woman about whom I realized I knew almost nothing, except for the tip of the iceberg I’d read in the papers.” While The Lady was in production, government relaxed restrictions upon Suu Kyi. She is currently on an international tour in Europe and was honored by former President George Bush last May in Washington D.C.
The first screening of The Lady will be Friday evening at 6 p.m. It will be followed by a Q&A by artist and activist Jim McNalis, who created a sculpture of the Nobel Prize winner and was able to meet her. He will be discussing that meeting last December. (Next, McNalis will be leaving on a lecture tour in North Carolina). For more information, call 954-525-FILM or visit www.fliff.com.
Michelle Yeoh plays “The Lady”
Jim McNalis created a sculpture of Aung San Suu Kyi
