Sundance Film Fest, Monday (1/26), Post 1

This year I have the pleasure of again teaching a 1-unit class here at Sundance. Three students and I could not have had a better film to kick-off to the week than seeing Last Days in the Desert (Garcia, 2015) which premiered last night and was then presented again Monday morning. The film depicts a holy man who is trying to communicate with an absent father. I highly recommend this film which is both beautifully shot (by Emmanuel Lubezki) and scored, and stars Ewan McGregor who plays both Christ and the demon who tests him.

Afterwards, we attended a special hour long Q and A, at the Windrider Forum, with writer and director of Last Days, Rodrigo Garcia.

In the afternoon we watched a series of animation shorts entitled "Animation Spotlight" at Yarrow Theater. Since 60 short films were selected this year out of 8000 submissions, its impossible to watch a shorts program and not be blown away. Beach Flags by Sarah Saidan, which depicts an Iranian lifeguard who learns about herself by helping another, and the kinetic Palm Rot by Ryan Gillis stood out to me.

Last Days in the Desert post-screening QandA with Rodrigo Garcia, Ewan McGregor & Tye Sheridan

The Edge of Heaven (Akin, 2007): Mini-Film Review

The Edge of Heaven, which is in German, Turkish, and English, is often cited as a transnational film for good reason--it presents multiple depictions of travel, border crossings, and images of planes loading and unloading (in this case, unforgettable) cargo. In addition to the imagery, the dialogue illustrates what it's like to have one foot in two different states:

Bookseller: What's your occupation?
Nejat: I'm a professor of German in Germany.
Bookseller: That would be funny if a Turkish professor of German from Germany ends up in a German bookshop in Turkey... That fits!

Yet on the whole, rather than revealing global connectivity, the film is memorable for it's representations of disconnect. By presenting miscommunications, mis-recognitions, and inequalities that result from international policies, the film shows that transnational interconnections that should bring people closer together--such as those celebrated in trade, media, and transportation advertisements--remain hindered by income inequality, psychological burdens, and that age-old nemesis: poor timing. Perhaps the most memorable critique occurs at the ending: the credits roll before all of the conflicts set into motion have been resolved, suspending the film's narratives indefinitely.

Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014): Mini-Film Review

Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014) wheels its way into one's unconscious by presenting a sprawling 1970 Los Angeles cityscape, a memorable conversation between Doc (Joaquin Phoenix) and Wolfmann mid-way through the film, and a long take in Doc's place once he is reunited with Shasta. Yet it does so slowly. Anderson seems to miss the opportunity to fully punctuate its episodic structure with music and b-films as Thomas Pynchon does in his book, and its voice-over narration is at times free from the humor, critique, and psychedelic bizarre-ity of the novel, but the movie is successful by steering clear of an array of gimmicks such as cliché first-person drug-trip point-of-view shots. In the book Doc gets to a point where it's not really who he is after, but what he is after. It's a straightforward distinction that the film pleasantly and consistently gets right.

Inherent Vice Official Trailer.

Transnational Representations: New Book Release

My monograph, Transnational Representations: The State of Taiwan Film in the 1960s and 1970s, has been released with Hong Kong University Press!

 

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Available for purchase at these links:

Amazon      Kindle     Google Play    Hong Kong University Press 

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Description 

There are few more fascinating methods for investigating the ways in which Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) Government defined itself as the representative government of all of China in the 1960s and 1970s than to consider its state-sanctioned film industry. Transnational Representations: The State of Taiwan Film in the 1960s and 1970s both excavates Taiwan’s socio-historical context and studies the cinematic form of the era employing an original transnational, comparative framework.

The title “transnational representations” refers to the text’s cross-border comparisons such as those between Taiwan films and films produced in Mainland China in the early 1960s, between Taiwan films and concurrent films from Germany and Senegal that represented the politics of migration, and between Taiwan New Cinema and global new cinema movements. The “state of Taiwan film in the 1960s and 1970s” refers to both the historical-material conditions in Taiwan during these two pivotal decades and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s presentation of itself as the representative government of all of China in terms of: its relationship to the People’s Republic of China (Chapter 2), film form and content (Chapter 3), depictions of gender identity (Chapter 4), and filmic adaptations of nativist literature (Conclusion).

San Diego Asian Film Festival, Nov. 8, 2014

The "Taiwan Film Showcase," part of this year's San Diego Asian Film Festival, continued on Saturday November 8th with a string of films that represent the current state of Taiwan youth culture.

The short film segment was particularly impressive. Starting with THE BUSY YOUNG PSYCHIC 神算 (Chen Ho-Yu, 2013), a 29 minute film about a young woman who splits her time between two competing concerns, only one of them atypical: channeling spirits in a local temple and hanging out with her friends at high school. The film uses parallel editing so deftly that I intend to use it in my future film classes. Without a trace of irony or a heavy hand, the film juxtaposes our heroine on a night when she performs her duties as a priestess instead of going to a birthday party she desperately wants to attend. In the end, her intention to be a regular teenager is sacrificed by duty to her community.

THE POOL MAN 泳漾 (Kaidi Zhan, 2013), which runs a bit over 30 minutes, brings together an unlikely friendship between a swimming instructor who lives in the past and an overweight teenager who wants to learn how to swim.

PARTNERS IN CRIME 共犯 (Chang Jung-chi, 2014),a high school crime thriller that reminded me of Chan-wook Park's Stoker (2013) at times, was the film of the day. Boasting an impressive soundscape and slick soundtrack which I may also use as an example in future film courses, this film--like the brilliant, dark, and under-appreciated River's Edge (Hunter, 1986 -- with Crispin Glover)--tells the story of high school students dealing with the death of a classmate with little logic, supervision, or guidance to prevent their imaginations from spiraling out of control.

CAMPUS CONFIDENTIAL 愛情無全順 (Lai Chun-yu, 2013) was an excellent way to conclude the day of films--a legitimate crowd-pleasing romantic comedy that effortlessly earns its laughs as well as its surprises. Variety magazine claims that the film could likely be remade into other languages, so we'll stay tuned to that potential development.

With Director of KANO Umin Boya at the San Diego Asian Film Festival (11/7/2014)

San Diego Asian Film Festival, KANO on Nov. 7, 2014

This year the "Taiwan Film Showcase" kicked off at the San Diego Asian Film Festival with KANO (2014), written by Wei Te-Sheng, and directed by Umin Boya who was in attendance.

A baseball film that represents real-life events that occurred in 1931, KANO depicts a local Taiwanese team from Jiayi (嘉義) that nearly wins the Japanese High School Baseball Championship in Japan during a time when Taiwan was a colony under Japanese imperialism. Almost entirely in Japanese, the film remains distinctly Taiwanese. And it is wonderfully paced--all of its 185 minutes zip right by.

We've seen films where a team earns the adoration of 50,000 fans. But have you seen a film in which a team stuns 50,000 into reverent silence?

 

Kano (dir. Umin Boya, 2014)

A Brief History of Cinema in China

Cinema in China is visually, sociopolitically, and historically significant. Here is a link to my encyclopedia entry on cinema in China, an historical overview that provides a conceptual framework to understand the changes and rhythms of the medium and its appeal to audiences worldwide: "Cinema in China: A Brief History" (2009).

The entry is arranged as follows:

First-Generation Cinema, 1896– 1929 // Second-Generation Cinema, 1930– 1949 // Silent to Sound // Cinema Nationalized // Third-Generation Cinema, 1949– 1965 // Fourth-Generation Cinema, 1966– 1983 // Mandarin Films // Hong Kong Cinema // Cantonese Films // Taiwan Cinema // Fifth-Generation Cinema, 1984– 1993 // Sixth-Generation Cinema, 1994 to Present // Cinema Inside and Outside China // Further Reading