Some new films from the Chinese World.

by fulltimestudent 6 Replies latest social current

• 

  fulltimestudent

  I include, in the term, Chinese world, not merely the People's Republic of China, but all Chinese speaking peoples. Note that Chinese speaking and Chinese accultured people often form significant population segments in other countries.

  And please note, that when a story is told visually, we are in the thrall of the story-teller, seeing the world through his/her eyes, seeing what that person has selected for us to see. A perfectly obvious fact, when the story-teller stood in front of us. But a much more difficult thing to remember when we see a story unfold on a screen, as actors convey the emotional impact of people's lives, whether real or imagined.

  --------------------------------------------------------------

  Black Coal, Thin Ice

  T he winner of the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale is a stylish film noir set in industrial northern China. A murder investigation involves a retired cop and a beautiful and mysterious woman.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baJK7EhCTEI
• 

  fulltimestudent

  Ilo Ilo

  Director: Anthony Chen
  Country: Singapore
  Runtime: 99 mins
  Language: Mandarin, Hokkien, English amd Tagalog Ilo Ilo

  This absolute charmer of a film from first-time filmmaker Anthony Chen won the Camera d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

  Newcomer Koh Jia Ler turns in a wonderful performance as 10 year-old Jiale, a rebellious kid who's desperate to gain his parents attention. His pregnant mum (Yeo Yann Yann) is too busy at work to pay him any mind. Dad (Chen Tian Wen) is wrapped up in his own worries.

  The story's backdrop is the 1997 Asian financial crisis, so there's a sense of great anxiety looming beyond the day-to-day family drama. The little troublemaker takes out his frustration on Teresa, the new Filipina maid (Angeli Bayani). He's a brat, but the put-upon Teresa is more than a match for his tricks and tales.

  Singapore director Chen has crafted a warm, wonderfully intimate and moving film, centred on a family under pressure, which treats all its characters with sympathy and dignity.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQzbls0PjRI

  PS: The off-handed, even rude attitude shown to the maid, is said to be quite common in modern Singapore.
• 

  fulltimestudent

  Dancing in the Room

  Newcomer Jiang Yuchen is a sort of Chinese Greta Gerwig in Peng Lei's oddball non-romantic comedy about a young woman newly arrived in Beijing and living on the margins of society.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fziLqeefJw0
• 

  fulltimestudent

  Lake August

  Director: Yang Heng
  Country: China
  Runtime: 113 mins
  Language: Mandarin
  Premiere Status: Australian Premiere
  Lake August Yang Heng (Betelnut, Sunspots) is China's finest indie protagonist of very slow, very beautiful cinema. In a series of precisely composed, startlingly expressive long shots, Yang paints a China largely absent from Western media. These small backwater towns, pastoral rivers and tacky motels contain an intensely vivid world of adultery, betrayal, suicide, pornography, abortion… but at a marvellously controlled, utterly objective distance. A young man's father commits suicide; his girlfriend dumps him. Set adrift, he winds up in a riverside hotel where his old schoolmate's mistress seems lonely and available. Consuming a vast amount of cigarettes and beer, he floats and drifts above undercurrents of boredom and despair, finding unexpected companions – perhaps even solace – in the least-expected places. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHLLMaJ27SQ
• 

  sarahsmile

  hey, thanks! Love foreign films! I like to watch Korea t.v series. Cinderella step sister very good!

  I would watch only one! ILo ILo.

  Watching someone dress up in a bunny outfit and killing people is not worth watching.

  The one about the young couple might be ok, but I not interested in the long conflected stares.

  Watching police and boys, not my style.

  I Will look forward to ILo ILo.
• 

  fulltimestudent

  Cool! Sarah. I hope you do enjoy Ilo Ilo.

  Violent films are not my favourites either, but the films I selected are all on the program of the Sydney Film Festival and have won awards, so perhaps they have some merit.

  The killer cat movie, may be a psychological thriller. Not sure if it is, otherwise it looks a bit over the top.

  For me, their main interest is in the background - contemporary Chinese life, even if distorted in order to add a dramatic affect.
• 

  fulltimestudent

  Some films bear more directly on problem areas of contemporary Chinese life: This is a Chinese film-makers film of life in a Chinese mental institution:

  ‘Til Madness Do Us Part

  Director: Wang Bing
  Country: Japan, France, Hong Kong
  Runtime: 228 mins
  Language: Yunnan Dialect Wang Bing (West of the Tracks, SFF 2004) is one of the greatest documentary filmmakers working today: his new film explores the patients/inmates of a run-down mental institution in southern China. Wang's astonishingly observant camera burrows deep into their lives, revealing their inner beings, their loves and their madness with absolute respect and limitless compassion.
  
  "In the fall of 2003, I happened upon a mental hospital near Beijing. It seemed empty. Suddenly behind a locked door, I faced a group of men. A nurse came and told me that they were the patients, many of whom had been living there for 10 to 20 years. I felt something very strong towards them, but the hospital refused to let me shoot a film. In 2012, I went to a different mental hospital; this time they let me get inside with my camera. So I started this film.
  
  There is no freedom in this hospital. But when men are locked behind bars inside a closed space, they are capable of creating a new world, without restrictions of morality or behaviour. Under the night-light, their bodies are like ghosts, craving love, physical or sentimental.
  
  This film approaches them at the moment they are abandoned by their families and society. The repetition of their daily life amplifies the existence of time. And when time stops, life appears." – Wang Bing

  I can only find a short fragment for this film- While what we see may be criticised, I keep some balance by remembering that in Australia, its only 50 years since institutional care for people with mental problems was not much different.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFfyu9b97Ww