San Diego Asian Film Festival, 2015

At the San Diego Asian Film Festival this year it was excellent to interview Taiwan director Huang Chao-liang 黃朝亮 alongside UCSD Professor Ping-hui Liao after the screening of director Huang's popular film The Wonderful Wedding 大囍臨門 (2015). Afterwards, the generous director took questions from the audience during the Q&A.

... with director Huang Chao-liang 黃朝亮

This year the Taiwan Film Showcase http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/taiwan-film-showcase/ at the San Diego Asian Film Festival boasted seven impressive films. Standouts included:

-- THE KIDS 小孩 Directed by Wei-Shan Yu
http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/films/kids/
-- THANATOS, DRUNK 醉‧生夢死 Directed by Chang Tso-chi
http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/films/thanatos-drunk/
-- & of course THE ASSASSIN 刺客聂隐娘 Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien
http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/films/assassin/

Additional Festival info:

San Diego Asian Film Festival 2015 http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/

Cinema & Taiwan/PRC Cross-Strait Relations

Here is the abstract for my upcoming presentation at the Association for Asian Studies 2016 Conference:

"Psychological Impasse in Cross-Strait Relations: Sympathetic Views of Japan in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Café Lumiere and Zhang Yimou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles"

(update: 7/20/2017: the lecture can be viewed via YouTube at this here.)

Taiwan and PRC cinema continue to provide fascinating insights into the political and psychological dynamics of cross-strait relations by revealing the tensions, conflicts, fears, and fantasies maintained by residents on both sides. In this analysis, a primary source of tension revolves around recently released historical films that depict Japan prior to 1945: on the one hand, anti-Japanese sentiment in the PRC is present in films such as Back to 1942 (Feng, 2012) which remind one of the anti-Japanese war films in Taiwan released in the 1970s; on the other hand, a complex relationship with the Japanese Colonial era in Taiwan is evident in Cape No. 7 (Wei, 2008) and Kano (Umin Boya, 2014) which demonstrate positive human interactions despite the strictures of the authoritarian colonial regime, revealing “the ambivalent nature of Taiwanese postcoloniality” as Liao Ping-Hui has written. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film Café Lumiere (2003) arguably provides the example par excellence regarding Taiwan’s postcolonial relationship with Japan, as it presents a psychological impasse that must be bridged in order for stable cross-strait relations to be realized. Namely, the film suggests that the two island nations share remarkable similarities, while the mainland is out of the picture. In China, director Zhang Yimou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005) depicts both Japan and the mainland as it contemplates both the past and the present. So while the resolution to a number of questions that emerge within this study remain unsolved, significant data is available to us to assess in these cinematic records as the cross-strait drama continues to unfold.

Panel Title: "Divergences and Convergences: Comparative Studies of Contemporary Literature, Film and Theater in PRC and Taiwan"
Conference Dates: March 31-April 3, 2016

Teaching World Cinema with a Transnational Perspective

"World Cinema" is a fairly standard course in universities these days. Yet how does transnational theory and pedagogy inform how "World Cinema" courses can be taught?

This was the the topic of the "Teaching Transnational Cinemas" panel chaired by Iain Smith from the University of Roehampton at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in the spring of 2015. Smith began the session by noting how World Cinema courses are often based on a national model (Japanese film, German film, Nigerian film, etc.) which tends to ignore the interconnections between national traditions. In addition, while the term "transnational" has been theorized (thinking beyond the scope of the nation, considering cross-cultural encounters and racial tensions, etc.), it is important to consider transnational pedagogy--especially since students may struggle without the framework of the national when approaching cinema and cultural flow.

My strategy has been to steer away from focusing primarily on the national model by organizing a World Cinema course by theme--in the cultural studies model which analyzes ethnicity, gender, and class relations--rather than nation. Yet certainly, the nation remains a fixture when considering cultural flow. Each week, students come to class having already prepared contextual summaries of the films that will be screened so that an understanding of time, place, and the importance of the films is in position before we move to thematic concerns.

During weeks 1 and 2 I begin the course with a brief introduction to film narrative and film techniques/aesthetics, since my course is presented as a general education option, primarily to students who are not majors in film studies. Students read Film Art: An Introduction by Bordwell and Thompson which I believe provides an excellent framework from which to discuss and write about the function of film techniques within film compositions.

The rest of the semester is organized by these themes: Identity, Authority, and Poverty.

Weeks 1-3: Film Narrative and Film Aesthetics
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Motorcycle Diaries (Salles, 2004)
In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)

Weeks 4-8: Identity
Whale Rider (Caro, 2002)
The Lives of Others (von Donnersmarck, 2006) 
Persona (Bergman, 1957)
The Last Train Home (Fan, 2010)
High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)

Weeks 9-12: Authority
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966)
Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997)
Three Times (Hou, 2003)

Weeks 13-15: Poverty
Wasteland (Walker, Harley, Jardim, 2010)
Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)
Biutiful (Iñárritu, 2010)

During class sessions, we discuss the ways film narratives and techniques reveal the unique, particular conditions the characters experience, but as the course progresses we can also see the way globalization links the characters' experiences in interesting ways.

For example, the documentary The Last Train Home (Fan, 2010) shows the global effects of the 2008 stock market crash, while Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948) shows the impoverished conditions that followed World War II in Italy. Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997) and Wasteland (Walker, Harley, Jardim, 2010) both represent and critique responses to global ecological dilemmas. The course culminates with a film that projects transnational connectivity and themes. This year students will be watching Biutiful (Iñárritu, 2010) as the course's final film.

This method of organizing the course is under constant revision. If you teach World Cinema or a Transnational Cinema course, I'd be interested in hearing any feedback and/or comments you may have.

Fight Club's Representation of Consumer Culture

Fight Club's (Fincher, 1999) depiction of consumer culture remains all too relevant--so in a way, I'm not entirely surprised that the film has moved up on the www.imdb.com Top 250 chart from #37, when I wrote my MA thesis on the film ten years ago, to #10, where it is today in 2015. And my college students continue to watch the film and discuss it.

Anyways, here's my dated take on it: "It was on the tip of everyone's tongue, Tyler and I just gave it a name": Fight Club's Representation of Consumer Culture." If you get a chance, let me know what you think of the movie. My goodness, its opening act/exposition is perfect. And it's a great novel too.

Ang Lee on 'The Virgin Spring' & A Comment on Bergman's Trilogy

I have been watching and re-watching Ingmar Bergman over the last week or so, including The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), The Silence (1963), and Autumn Sonata (1978). Here is Director Ang Lee's response to watching Bergman's The Virgin Spring while he was a student in Taipei in 1974:

This interview is included on the Criterion Collection DVD, uploaded here from YouTube.

In response to the perspectives on g/God or who g/God is within Bergman's so-called trilogy, here's my very brief take:

In Through a Glass Darkly god is an illusion encountered by the emotionally unstable (consider for example that only Karin "sees" god). In Winter Light, god is a projection of one's neurotic (Märta's attraction to Pastor Ericsson) or pathological (Pastor Ericsson's understanding of god after his spouse passes away) desire for someone else. In The Silence: god is a projection of one's own desire, whether sensual/emotional (Anna) or logical/intellectual (Ester). In sum, God is silent/does not exist because either the film's characters are sane, they project the idea of God onto others and others are silent, or because their idea of God is tantamount to their own behaviors and they find silence when they are alone. I think there is a two-hour lecture embedded in this summary :), but that's the gist of it.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell (Reticker, 2008): Mini-Film Review

Pray the Devil Back to Hell is a powerful documentary that won the 2008 Tribeca Film Fest Best Documentary award, and the reasons it achieved such a positive response have not lost their relevance since that time. The film depicts and recounts harrowing experiences during civil war in the West African Republic of Liberia, and consistently evokes passionate responses from audiences (including students who write about the film in either my World Cinema or World Drama and Poetry courses alongside readings by poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley).

The film focuses on women who describe the nonviolent strategies they used to demand change from the men in charge and why the existing political paradigm was long overdue for replacement. Solidarity among women of Liberia who oppose civil war, and the objectives for peace that they achieve across seemingly insurmountable gender, generational, ethnic, and party lines are inspirational due to both the sacrifices they endure and the ends they achieve. The story helps one understand the background to the election of Africa's first female president, and it is also a story that will hopefully continue to inspire grassroots efforts wherever the film is screened.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell trailer uploaded to YouTube by "Peace is Loud"

Kurosawa/ J.J. Abrams/ Average Shot Length/ Star Wars

A most likely unoriginal thought that I have had for some time regarding J.J. Abrams Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is that a) Abrams has the most pressure in U.S. pop culture history as far as pleasing fans who love a preexisting franchise goes, and b) his success will possibly be measured by the extent to which he breathes new life into the Star Wars universe while retaining a favorable amount of continuity with the previous films--like popular television shows that are 90% predictable (same characters, stories, settings, etc. which brings back return customers) and 10% original (which leads people to watch the new episode).

One strategy to accomplish this predictable/original balance in Star Wars VII would be to use the same editing strategies (pacing, rhythm, and duration) used in the previous Star Wars films. This would allow the new film to feel the same, even when visually original.

To do so, Abrams could use the same average shot length Lucas used in his films (Star Wars IV: A New Hope: ASL 4.2; Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: ASL 3.8--according to Cinemetrics Lab)...

 ... and/or, he could rewatch the Lucas's inspirational source material to mirror their editing strategies: Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), and others (recognizing films like John Ford's The Searchers [1956] were also important to Lucas). Doing so would arguably ensure that Abrams' film is one step removed from the source material of the original films, rather than two steps removed if he follows Lucas alone.

Today I watched Ran (Kurosawa, 1985) again and couldn't help but notice that the editing rhythm Kurosawa uses in battle scenes seems especially similar to the Star Wars films (keeping in mind that, as a whole, the ASL of Ran is 10.5 according to Cinemetrics Lab). 

And maybe Abrams has already used this strategy of rewatching Kurosawa, the great master's, films. The image below, which concludes Ran, seems strikingly similar to me when compared with the new Star Wars trailer's image of a crashed Star Destroyer, albeit mirrored images of each other visually in terms of positive and negative space.

Concluding image in Ran: an army marches towards screen right

 Screenshot from the new Star Wars VII trailer: a landspeeder moves towards screen right