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PALM SPRINGS Cheap Air Max 270 , U.S., Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- The 26th Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), one of the largest in North America, will show Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai's film "Red Amnesia" in the Modern Masters category on Thursday and Friday.


"I chose 'Red Amnesia' because of its production values, acting, and the story that tells about the old and new China," Theresa Hayes, Asian Film Programmer at PSIFF, told Xinhua.


"Red Amnesia" tells the story of an elderly widow who starts receiving anonymous phone calls, and her sons at first ignore her and assume these are the delusions of a lonely and disoriented old woman. But the harassment continues becoming a painful reminder of a long-forgotten past.


Hayes was impressed by the "universal adaptation of people caught in a difficult situation and how they manage to push those memories far back in their mind."


"This is a challenging work that guards its secret closely but builds cumulative power," said David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter in a review. "This well-acted drama's enigmatic spell creeps up on you."


The film was selected in competition for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival in 2014. Hayes said the Modern Masters is a category that focuses on known and deserving directors.


The ten-day PSIFF will continue till Jan. 12. About 140,000 people from across the United States are expected to attend the festival this year.

The 2015 Asian Cup's official mascot Nutmeg the wombat poses at Wild Life Sydney Zoo on November 11 in Sydney. Photo: CFP

Football was once sneered at in Australia as a game played mainly by immigrants but it cemented its rise from a minority sport to an established pastime when the Asian Cup started this week.


In times past, lovers of football could find themselves insulted and attacked in a country where the rugby codes, Australian rules and cricket dominate the sporting landscape.


But international successes and a vastly improved domestic scene have been behind football's steady ascent in Australia, capped with the 16-nation Asian Cup starting on Friday.


Soccer is now more readily -associated with standout moments like Tim Cahill's sublime strike at last year's World Cup, or Western Sydney Wanderers winning the 2014 Asian Champions League.


Sheilas, wogs and poofters


Traditional attitudes to football are summed up by the title of influential ex-player and broadcaster Johnny -Warren's 2002 book Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters.


"Wogs" is a racial insult applied to immigrants, mainly from southern European countries like Greece, who arrived in waves in the years following World War II.


"'Sheilas,' 'wogs' and 'poofters' were considered the second-class citizens of the day and if you played soccer, you were considered one of them," explained Warren, who died in 2004.


"That's how soccer was regarded back then and, to some extent, still is today."


Debate remains lively over whether the sport should retain its formerly preferred name of "soccer," to avoid clashing with rugby league and -Australian rules, both proudly known as "football."


Soccer in fact has deep roots in Australia, with reports of games as far back as the 1830s, and the first match played under the official Laws of the Game taking place in Sydney in 1880.


But rugby was then the game of choice in colonial power Britain, a preference which helped push football in Australia to the -margins, despite its early successes.


So while football flourished across the globe, there was little being played in Australia until the post-war migrants arrived from Europe and took root in the country.


"When I was at primary school in the 1970s, kids like myself - who decided to kick a soccer ball around their streets and in the schoolyard - were ridiculed, mocked and beaten up," wrote Nick -Giannopoulos, star of Australia's Wog Boy -comedies, in 2006.


"Not a week would go by when some kid would come up to us and tell us that if we were Aussies then we should be playing footy and not that 'wogball.'"


Improving Socceroos


Despite ambivalence toward the game, Australia reached their first World Cup in 1974, exiting at the group stage, but they would have to wait 32 years before making a triumphant return in 2006.


Goals from Cahill, John Aloisi, Craig Moore and Harry Kewell took the Socceroos into the quarterfinals in Germany, where they were undone by a controversial last-gasp penalty against eventual winners Italy.