China
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Place of Passage: J.P. Sniadecki on The Iron Ministry
The Iron Ministry takes place on a moving train, whose compartments expand over the course of the film to reveal a host of rocking sights: hanging raw meat, cigarettes floating in water, boxed goods in transit, and myriad people engaged in conversations about politics and its impact on their daily lives. The people and their destinations are often both left unnamed, with a ceaseless sense of forward motion remaining as the greatest takeaway. “This is a civilized train, so please feel free to piss, shit, and throw trash all over the aisle,” says a young boy early on in parody of […]
by Aaron Cutler on Aug 20, 2015 -
Stray Links, 8/18-8/21: Orson Welles’ First Film is Online and Chinese Film History
This week’s round-up of suggested reading is all film-related for a change: • The China Digital Times conducts a long, fascinating interview with Paul Pickowicz, an authority on Chinese cinema who talks about studying film in China from 1982-83 as an “unwelcome guest,” shifting trends in national anxieties as expressed on-screen through the decades, how long-dead political affiliations shape the government’s choice of which films from pre-1949 to promote as canonical, and much more. It may be the most interesting film-related thing I’ve read all week. • Kurmanzhan Datka: Queen of the Mountains, a Kyrgyzstani epic about a 19th-century hero, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 21, 2014 -
Stray Links, 8/11-8/14: Film Preservation in China, Ferguson, and the Weight Watchers Recipes of 1974
Here’s this week’s round-up of reading, film-related and otherwise: • “Trying to make a film in Sub-Saharan Africa can be a financial and logistical feat, but getting it to audiences can be an even bigger task. A networking event at the Locarno Film Festival is a chance for African film-makers to make their project come to life.” Jo Fahy reports from Locarno on the Open Doors Lab, which brings 12 filmmakers from continental Africa to the festival to receive script mentoring, apply for Swiss funding and more. • Peter Greenaway has completed shooting one film about Sergei Eisenstein, which he’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 14, 2014 -
Rip Torn and the Indignities of Product Placement
Forty-ish years on, Rip Torn’s thoughts on the demeaning nature of product placement (as told to Studs Turkel in his classic oral history Working) remain relevant, with no contemporary amendation necessary: I remember doin’ a television show, oh, about ten years ago — I haven’t worked on network television for about eight years. I was smokin’ a cigar. I was playing a Quantrell-type character, so I had a long Cuban cigar. I got up on a horse and we had to charge down a hill. It was a long shot. The director and the producer both hollered, “Cut! Cut! What’re […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 4, 2014 -
THE NEW HOLLYWOOD
In April, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent letters of inquiry to four Hollywood’s studios — Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures — informing them that it was investigating their business practices in China. According to Reuters, while neither the SEC, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) nor the individual movie companies would formally discuss the matter, it is assumed that at issue is possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that makes it illegal to make improper payments to foreign officials for business purposes. Such payments are not uncommon in China. Stay […]
by David Rosen on May 10, 2012 -
Director Bram Van Paesschen on Empire of Dust
The vast wilderness of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a world away from the urban centers of China. Yet it is there that greater numbers of Chinese engineers are doing business. In the documentary Empire of Dust, featured in the “Panorama” section of this year’s International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), director Bram Van Paesschen explores the fraught relationship between the Congolese and the Chinese, as shown through their efforts to build a road between two major cities in the DRC. In 2007, China and Congo signed a massive resources-for-infrastructure deal with projected revenues of $40-$120 billion. China endeavors […]
by Daniel James Scott on Dec 4, 2011 -
City of Life and Death — A Hammer to Nail Review
(City of Life and Death opened on May 11, 2011 at Film Forum in New York City. Learn more at the film’s official website.) In December 1937, China’s capital city Nanking fell to the invading Japanese Imperial Army. During the weeks that followed, the Japanese raped, tortured, and butchered the city’s remaining inhabitants; the death toll varies widely, but some estimates put it at over 300,000. Lu Chuan’s epic film, which screens at Film Forum through May 24 and in select U.S. cities after that, dramatizes the Nanking Massacre (also known as the Nanjing Massacre) from multiple perspectives. The major […]
by Nelson Kim on May 12, 2011 -
Wayne Wang, A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers
FAYE YU AND HENRY O IN DIRECTOR WAYNE WANG’S A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS. COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES. Wayne Wang’s work has always been about a balance of contrasts, whether it be Chinese and American, classical and experimental, or independent and Hollywood. Wang was born in Hong Kong in 1949 and moved to the U.S. in his late teens to study film and television at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. He made his directorial debut in 1975 with A Man, a Woman, and a Killer (on which he is co-credited alongside Rick Schmidt) but it was […]
by Nick Dawson on Sep 19, 2008 -
Johnnie To, Mad Detective
LAU CHING WAN IN DIRECTOR JOHNNIE TO’S MAD DETECTIVE. COURTESY IFC FILMS. Somewhere between John Woo and the auteurs of the French New Wave lies Hong Kong native Johnnie To, currently one of the most engaging and vibrant directors in world cinema. The 53-year-old started making action movies in 1980, and over the course of the next decade and a half established himself as a skilled genre director, not only of thrillers but also of light comedies and melodramas. He rose to prominence with a number of highly successful collaborations with star Chow Yun Fat and in 1996, along with […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 18, 2008 -
Yung Chang, Up The Yangtze
A SCENE FROM DIRECTOR YUNG CHANG’S UP THE YANGTZE. COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS. At a time when the popularity of documentaries is at an all-time high, Canadian director Yung Chang is not only telling stories as compelling as his peers’, but doing so with a truly cinematic sensibility that is often lacking in his field. Born in Whitby, Ontario, to first generation Chinese immigrant parents, Chang studied film production at Concordia University, graduating in 1999. He was also a student at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where he learned the Meisner Technique. He directed the short film The […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 25, 2008
