"The End of Fantasy: Framing State TV within Chinese Documentaries"

My essay "The End of Fantasy: Framing State TV within Chinese Documentaries" is now published online (at this link here) by, and thanks to, the China Policy Institute based at the University of Nottingham.

The essay was inspired by locating differences between documentary techniques and state television strategies while attending a conference in the summer of 2014 when Chinese documentarian Wu Wenguang joined a group of film scholars at the "The Tangled Dynamics of Independent Filmmaking in Contemporary China: Wu Wenguang 吴文光 as Artist in Residence at UC San Diego" conference from June 16-22.

I was grateful to attend and participate in the weeklong event alongside excellent scholars and organizers Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang. Each day we watched hours of documentary footage, including Li Ning’s Tape and Wu Wenguang’s films and more, and in the afternoon we discussed ideas, theories, and questions with Wu Wenguang who responded graciously and kept the ideas rolling. The essay is an excerpt of a longer piece written in response to the numerous films we watched and the conversations inspired by Wu Wenguang’s oeuvre.

An article on the pioneering documentary filmmaking work of Wu Wenguang can be located here. And below is a brief video clip available online:

"Taiwan Cinema" & "Taiwan Literature" Encyclopedia Entries

I am pleased to announce the publication of two encyclopedia entries on the topics of "Taiwan Cinema" and "Taiwan Literature" in a volume just released:

Pop Culture in Asia and Oceania, edited by Jeremy A. Murray and Kathleen M. Nadeau.
A link to the website is located here.

As stated on the publisher ABC-CLIO's website:

"This entertaining introduction to Asian pop culture covers the global superstars, music idols, blockbuster films, and current trends—from the eclectic to the underground—of East Asia and South Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Pakistan, as well as Oceania. The rich content features an exploration of the politics and personalities of Bollywood, a look at how baseball became a huge phenomenon in Taiwan and Japan, the ways in which censorship affects social media use in these regions, and the influence of the United States on the movies, music, and Internet in Asia."

“The Assassin: Hou Hsiao-hsien's Wuxia Aesthetic” Conference

I'm looking forward to the presenting at the upcoming “The Assassin: Hou Hsiao-hsien's Wuxia Aesthetic” Conference 《刺客聶隱娘》:侯孝賢的武俠藝術」國際學術研討會 at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan later this June, 29-30 2016. The abstract of my paper is below:

“The Antithesis of What We Might Expect”:

Viewing The Assassin in the New Punk Cinema Tradition

I heard that when The Assassin was screened at the 68th Cannes International Film Festival the reaction among critics was not whether or not Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film was the most beautiful film at the festival, but if it was the most beautiful film ever made. So how is it that countless audience members who are attracted to HHH’s films based on glowing film reviews claim that watching his films is pure torture (nothing happens, they say) before walking out feeling animosity towards his films? To answer this question, I study the film techniques and narrative form of The Assassin as part of the punk cinema tradition. After all, negative reactions to HHH films remind me of those elicited by audiences who enthusiastically attend punk shows--consider the responses to late 1970s England punk band Sex Pistols or early 1990s Taiwan punk band LTK Commune performances--yet depart perplexed because their expectations were perhaps based on traditional norms and reference points that the artists seemingly had no intention of acknowledging. To make this case, I follow a description by Stacy Thompson from Nicholas Rombes’ edited book New Punk Cinema: "But the punk cinema aesthetics is, in fact, the antithesis of what we might expect. Instead of fast-moving narratives, numerous cuts both within and between shots, innumerable scenes, and frequent jump cuts, punk film-makers do just the opposite. To resist the easy commodification of their films, they slow their narrative pace to a crawl, scarcely move the camera, make infrequent cuts and, in general, forego most of the techniques that would lend their films commercial viability” (25). Just as punk music avoids mainstream conventions but retains a loyal following, HHH’s The Assassin eschews techniques expected of popular filmmakers yet resonates with an arthouse scene accustomed to his strategies.

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Wei Te-Sheng, 2011): Mini-Film Review

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale 賽德克•巴萊 is a four and a half hour epic account of resistance in Taiwan during an era of Japanese colonization in the 1930s. Directed by Wei Te-Sheng, director of Cape No. 7 (2008), the story follows Mona Rudao as he leads a mission--that he knows will eventually fail--with 300 Seediq aboriginal warriors against Japanese civilians and ultimately the Japanese military who eventually crush the uprising.

 

Mona Rudao is instilled with certainty that he is on the right side of history and that upon his death he will see his ancestors, so the film's most tragic and genuinely heart-breaking depictions are those of women and children on both sides of the multi-faceted conflict who are caught in the crosshairs of colonization. Most of the depictions of the Seediq peoples resonate with authenticity on the screen; however, the small scale depiction (despite some 1500 extras) of the Japanese colonial machinery is not as impressive compared to other historical war films. Over all, a few narrative gaps and a handful melodramatic depictions of nature clearly created via CGI make the film difficult to concentrate on consistently--similar to what happens to viewers who disengage from Zach Snyder films--even though numerous scenes are as memorable, moving, and impressive as any recorded on film today.

Slow Dance (Dane Reynolds, 2013): Mini-Film Review

Surfing is pretty much impossible to describe to people. So it's fitting that surf films are similarly pretty much impossible to describe to people who don't know what a surf film is. Is it a documentary (sometimes), is it a music video with surf footage thrown in (sometimes), does it have a story (sometimes)? Fortunately, there is person named Dane Reynolds who is making the best "impossible to describe" videos over at Marine Layer Productions.

Dane Reynolds film "Slow Dance" is an awesome, avant-garde snapshot of surfer Craig Anderson and his influences. Running at around 30 minutes, it throws together all kinds of mediums and still works. Umberto Eco once wrote: "The artist who protests through form...shows his acceptance of the world as it is, in full crisis, by formulating a new grammar that rests not on a system of organization but on an assumption of disorder." (The Open Work, 141). This quotation applies to this film Slow Dance, I believe.

Come Hell or High Water (Malloy, 2011): Mini-Film Review

Come Hell or High Water (Keith Malloy, 2011) is a Woodshed Films release that depicts the unmarketable, and thus unpopular & generally disregarded, activity of bodysurfing. As the 41 minute film shows, its tough for transnational surfing corporations to make money off of something that only requires a body and swim fins--and only if desired, a contraption of any shape--to plane across a wave. Yet this is at the same time bodysurfing's richest quality. It takes skill, courage, and passion. And it's in the ocean (and sometimes, rivers). It's fun and freeing. The sensation of bodysurfing is communicated here so completely that "torpedo people" will get it, but so will anyone whose happiness ensures they won't get those frown lines that crease the faces of grumpy folks when they're old.

Uncharted Waters (Griffin, 2013): Mini-Film Review

Uncharted Waters: The Personal History of Wayne Lynch (Craig Griffin, 2013) is an 87 minute documentary of a pioneering Australian surfer whose influence is imprinted today on surf culture around the globe whether surfers are conscious or unconscious of this fact. Wayne Lynch, from Lorne, Australia, was an innovative surfer in terms of both board design (shorter) and style (vertical surfing) and politics (anti-Vietnam War) in the 1960s and 1970s. Just as importantly, today Lynch's anti-establishment ethos is embodied by anyone who thinks they are sticking it to the Man by catching a wave, including, without any irony, the surf companies who have capitalized on selling this idea for decades. The film resorts to platitudes and generalizations instead of fully uncovering Lynch's demons. Still, it's the most intimate and captivating account of Lynch available. It's well-crafted as well as essential, inspiring viewing.

Uncharted Waters Trailer