REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Hong Kong Film Awards Announced

HONG KONG -- A big-budget action-suspense saga and a small-scale sentimental family drama swept the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards on Sunday night.

"Bodyguards and Assassins" -- which combines historical drama and martial-arts spectacle -- won eight awards, including best film and best director for Teddy Chen. The all-star blockbuster focuses on a group of men from all walks of life who are recruited to protect Sun Yat-sen -- modern China's founding father -- from imperial assassins during a secret visit to Hong Kong in the early 20th century.

Actor Nicholas Tse was named best supporting actor -- the same category he won for at last month's Asian Film Awards. Producer Peter Chan's US$23 million budget movie also picked up five other awards, including best action choreography and cinematography.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Italy boards 'Night Bus' to China

Industryites send filmmakes to China after pic's success

Italy's film industry is embarking on a mission to forge closer ties with China, following the success of Italo romantic crimer "Night Bus," now set to unspool on a massive 2,000 Chinese screens.

Debut helmer Davide Marengo's "Night Bus" clicked with Chinese auds at the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival and the Shanghai Film Festival in 2008. It will soon go out in mainland China via Focus Cultural Media, following a unique deal inked by Italo sales company Intramovies.

"Bus" is the first Italian release in China since Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful" in 1999.

Read more at Variety

'The Sun Behind the Clouds' shines a light on Tibetan conflict

"The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom," co-directed by married Tibetans-in-exile, is a revealing documentary that offers a balanced assessment of the impasse between younger Tibetans who seek total independence from China and the Dalai Lama's "Middle Way" promotion of peaceful coexistence.

Of the many documentaries that have chronicled Tibet's ongoing struggle for independence, "The Sun Behind the Clouds" offers the most thorough, balanced and up-to-date assessment of the dilemma facing Tibetans under oppressive Chinese rule.

Co-directed by married Tibetans-in-exile Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam (the latter also narrates), the film makes it clear that the dilemma is not simply the obstacle of Chinese rule, but also the growing divide between the Dalai Lama (whose "Middle Way" favors Tibetan autonomy under Chinese rule) and masses of younger, outraged Tibetans, in and out of exile, who seek unconditional Tibetan independence.

REad more at The Seattle Times

TIME's Favorite Chinese Movies

TIME's Movie Critic Richard Corliss

Porn film copyright hinges on court ruling: official

Taipei, April 14 (CNA) The question of whether porn films should be subject to copyright protection hinges on the opinions of local courts rather than on the country's Copyright Act per se, an intellectual property rights (IPR) official said Wednesday. Wang Mei-hua, director-general of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, made the remarks after lawyers representing Japan's top eight porn companies urged Taiwan earlier that same day to protect their clients' copyrighted productions against pirating. Lawyers retained by the Japanese producers of adult videos (AVs) said at a news conference that an increasing number of their productions are being sold on the local black market, aired on cable television channels in Taiwan and distributed by telecommunications service providers, causing huge revenue losses for the film makers and distributors. Read more at Taiwan News

Starbucks Plans Major China Expansion

TOKYO—Starbucks Corp. Chief Executive Howard Schultz said China is set to usurp Japan as its second-biggest market, as the American coffee titan plans to open "thousands of stores" in China over time.

Mr. Schultz also said the Seattle-based chain was eager to crack into the potentially lucrative Indian and Vietnamese markets, where it doesn't yet have a presence.

"Asia clearly represents the most significant growth opportunity on a go-forward basis," said Mr. Schultz, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "India and Vietnam are two markets we'd like to get to at some point. We are still at the embryonic stages of what Asia will be for the company."

Despite its long presence in the Chinese market—Starbucks opened its first shop in Beijing in 1999—the Seattle coffee giant only has 376 stores on the China mainland, compared with 878 in Japan.

"Over time there will be thousands of stores in China," said Mr. Schultz. "The foundation we have built over the past 10 years will serve us well. But it's a complicated market that requires significant discipline and thoughtfulness."

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Five College Student Short Films

As of April 1, 2009, over 800 original short movies had been uploaded to Youku for competition in the upcoming Beijing College Student Film Festival’s Short Films Awards. These short films are as diverse as contemporary China in terms of themes and styles.

College students are at their best interpreting their own generation and life; many have made admirable endeavors in exploring social problems, such as demolition of property and the tragic, inhumane conditions in which Chinese miners toil. In addition, there are various experimental short films that can entertain quite a few intelligently curious viewers.

In addition to Tina’s Life in Shanghai we introduced a few weeks ago, we picked five short films to share with you this week. Out of pure coincidence, three short films I chose have no dialogue at all, and one is finely subtitled.

Read more at Youku Buzz

The Making of Kung Fu Bunny - Chinese Animation

Chinese Animation - Kung Fu Bunny 1

Wang follows in father's footsteps

A pioneering Chinese filmmaker, Wang Xiaoshuai likes to explore the subtle relationships between ordinary people in his films. (Photo source: China Daily) BEIJING, April 10 -- Award-winning sixth-generation filmmaker says while his films may lack an audience, or even a venue, they make him happy. Of all the stories that have been told through movies, the exploration of the subtle relationships between ordinary people is Wang Xiaoshuai's favorite. As a pioneering sixth-generation Chinese filmmaker, Wang first came under the limelight in the early 1990s with a low-budget psychological drama that follows the struggles of a painter, Liu Xiaodong, in Beijing. The Days was selected by BBC as the only Chinese-language film in its list of the top 100 best films. Like many first films, it is a little awkward. But viewed today this debut sums up the themes of Wang's career: It offers a searing look at those who live on the margins of society. Read more at XINHUA

Bollywood films to hit China, Macau shores!

Bollywood films are fast becoming popular the world over. The global demand of bollywood flicks has made Studio 18; launch a very innovative way to promote Hindi films in the eastern side of the globe to begin with. There has been A VOD Rights of TIFC, with China, Macau to allow the guests staying at big hotels, to pay and watch the films of their choice, from the available collection.

This concept has been used the world over, with films from the US, China, Japan, Europe, Korea etc. These sources have Adult and the Non Adult range of films offered to customers at the hotels, for a nominal fee. 

This pay and watch scheme is very popular abroad and thus the Studio 18 step in this direction has brought in new opportunities for the bollywood films to be available to International Audiences, right now, the films to be in the available collection are-

‘Welcome’,’ Jab We Met’,’Golmaal Returns’, ‘Singh Is King’, and ‘Kidnap’.
The pay and watch scheme, is expected to be successful due to the huge tourist inflow that China is having of late. Thus, the bollywood demand is about to break all records, once this scheme catches on. So, better times are surely ahead for the Hindi film industry, which has a lot of money at stakes for each film!

entertainment and show biz

(Re)Inventing China’s “Seventeen Years” on Film at the 2009 New York Film Festival

During the 2009 New York Film Festival, the Film Society of the Lincoln Center screened an unprecedented series called “(Re)Inventing China: A New Cinema for a New Society, 1949-1966.” Mainland Chinese works of art from this “Seventeen Years” period have been routinely dismissed as propaganda by the same Western scholars and critics who periodically “discover” and celebrate masterpieces of Chinese cinema from the preceding Republican era or the later post-Mao era. Given such widespread neglect, the very existence of such a film series—hosted by so prominent a venue as the Lincoln Center under the label “NYFF Masterworks,” no less—potentially represents a major step forward to those of us who feel that this period demands a great deal more serious work by scholars and appreciation by film buffs alike. With twenty well-chosen works, the program included a wide range of genres and styles and featured many films that have long been considered classics in China.

The event had its share of disappointments. Several of the films proved to be unavailable in 35-millimeter prints (due partly to the baffling reluctance of the China Film Archives to share its holdings even with world-class cultural institutions such as the Lincoln Center), so that many of them had to be projected on video rather than screened in their original format. Also disappointing was the relatively low attendance for most of the films. The audience seemed to consist of more sinophiles than cinephiles, the latter of which were busy attending the NYFF’s other offerings in much higher numbers.

The relative lack of interest in the series no doubt results at least in part from the ongoing domination of Western discourse on modern China by Cold War ideology. Under the suffocating and simplistic moral (pre)judgments of this viewpoint, any artwork from the Mao era is not only suspect but is confidently assumed to be either a throwaway bit of laughable revolutionary kitsch or a dangerous work of insidious propaganda that inculcated the brainwashed Maoist hordes of Western ideological fantasy. By way of discussing the film series, then, below are listed a few of the erroneous assumptions underlying the indifference with which these films are regarded by the general public and the hostility that has long been directed at them by sinologists in the Western academy.

Read more at China Study Group

Famed Dancer and Agent Jadin Wong Dies at 96

Jadin Wong in 1951

When Jadin Wong was asked how old she was, the celebrated dancer, comedienne and talent agent quipped, "Age is a number, and I have an unlisted one." In reality, the Chinese-American pioneer, whose career spanned nightclubs, theatre, comedy and film, was 96 when she died March 30 of natural causes in New York City.

David Henry Hwang, the Tony Award-winning playwright of M. Butterfly, said, "The character of Madame Liang in my 2002 rewrite of Flower Drum Song was my tribute to Jadin: a brassy, brilliant ex-actress-turned-agent for 'Oriental' talent. An innovator and a pioneer, Jadin was the quintessential Broadway dame: bursting with chutzpah, never less than glamorous, a showgirl - with a showgirl's body - to the end."

Jodi Long, who played Liang in that Broadway revival, added, "Jadin was quick as a whip, had a great sense of humor, a generous spirit and as a performer, always knew where the camera was. It's the end of an era." Wong's life also was the basis for Forbidden City West, a musical that ran shortly in 2008 at the Yangtze Repertory Theater of America in New York.

Born on May 24, 1913, in Marysville, CA, Ms. Wong grew up in Stockton and started dancing at age five. She moved to San Francisco and headlined as a dancer in 1938 at Charlie Low's Forbidden City, the country's best-known Chinese-American nightclub (such as the one featured in Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical of C.Y. Lee's "Flower Drum Song"). Wearing an exotic headdress and costume, she was featured in Life magazine and written up in Walter Winchell's column in New York. Critics praised her "Dance of the Moon Goddess," in which she performed to Debussy's "Clair de Lune."

Read more at PLAYBILL

My Thoughts After Seeing The Karate Kid

Still at ShoWest and I just finished watching The Karate Kid remake starring Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan and a bunch of Chinese people I've never seen before.

I'm not allowed to officially review the movie but I thought I'd share my thoughts on it. First off, this really is a remake. They follow the original almost step for step, including using the same dialogue in certain scenes. Which was total overkill because I knew exactly how the film was going to end and the course it would take. Jaden Smith's character was annoying before AND after he learns Kung-Fu. Jackie Chan is great however and steals the film. He even has a wonderful emotional scene that got the audience in tears. (Jackie actually did some great dramatic work in New Police Story.)

The movie does look great. I don't think you can really shoot an ugly movie in China. There's some humor, but Jaden's character is so unlikable I was rooting for the Chinese kids to kick his butt the entire time. Also, his relationship with the Chinese girl gets creepy when she does some weird stripper dance. I felt like I was going to be arrested for watching it. Jaden can act but I'm not sure if the Smiths made this as an homage to the original or to just throw their kid on screen so we can see that he can dance. (He dances and pop locks twice in the movie for some reason.) Also, I don't need to him take his shirt off. Like father like son, I guess.

Read more at Latino Review

Nanking, l937

Germany’s John Rabe honors a forgotten hero

John Rabe / The Nanking Massacre, in 1937, was one of the most horrific (and under-reported) incidents of the 20th century. More than 300,000 Chinese were executed, one way or another, as a relentless Japanese invasion–there was no declared war–swept through the city, designed to show “Japanese superiority.” The scale and kind of brutality exhibited were equal to that of the Nazis in World War II, according to some authorities and late-blooming historians. (The death statistics are still emerging after all this time. The Nanking massacre was subject to severe censorship and fudging of statistics for many years, for many reasons.)

Emerging from that bloody incursion is the name of one German, honored by the Chinese as a great hero, a businessman stationed as the head of the Siemens company, part of whose business compound (and garden) was used to shelter Chinese. John Rabe was a hands-on executive, happily married for 27 years, and, by all objective accounts, a beneficient employer of hundreds of Chinese. Rabe, a loyal member of the National Socialist Party and a supporter of Hitler, had scant knowledge of advancing social policies in Germany, and was totally involved, with his wife, in the lives of his employees and the (considerable) fortunes of his company.

Read more at Honolulu Weekly

'Warlords': Gritty epic re-creates Chinese war

There have been quite a few Chinese historical epics the past decade - many with martial arts, like Zhang Yimou's "Hero," and many with computer effects that can create epic sweep, like John Woo's recent "Red Cliff."

But "Warlords," a film directed by Peter Chan that opens in the United States on Friday, is something different. There is no kung fu, despite the presence of Jet Li. There are no impossible shots that only could have been created with ones and zeros. Instead, this is a gritty film that knows that death is not pleasant and that armies and peasants alike need food and water.

Set during the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64, it stars Li as a general who survives a brutal massacre and joins a group of bandits led by Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro.

"I was aiming for a photographic re-creation of what the past was like," said Chan, calling from the back of his ride as he was on his way to the Hong Kong airport to travel to a film set in China. "I wanted to film a war that killed 60 million Chinese over 12 years - about as many as were killed worldwide in World War II.

Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle

Xinjiang Documentary to be Banned in China

The 34th Hong Kong International Film Festival is underway right now and one of its ‘10-not-to-be-missed’ films is “Karamay” by director 徐辛 (Xu Xin).  It is a film that the director readily admits won’t be screened in mainland China and had to be filmed under a shroud of secrecy.

It’s the story of the 323 people who lost their lives in a tragic fire on December 8, 1994, and unfortunately it is best remembered by the line that caused all the ensuing controversy:

“Everybody keep quiet.  Don’t move.  Let the leaders go first.“

This documentary is of great interest to me because Karamay has been my home for the past few years.  I listened to the stories of the people who were present when smoke was pouring out of the theater and was horrified as they recounted all the bodies they saw.  Almost every day I rode my motorcycle past the front of this theater that sits as an unofficial memorial to what happened 16 years ago.

**If you don’t know what happened on December 8, 1994, read this**

The film is 6 hours long and runs without any narration or musical score which, as boring as that sounds, must be captivating because the reviews are all positive so far.  Included are never-before seen videos of the actual fire and its aftermath as well as an interview with the only surviving student whose body is still disfigured by the burns.

Read more at Far West China

Move over Hollywood: Chollywood leaving Bollywood in the dust

There is a huge transformation going on on the internet. Within a few years 90% of the websites will be in Chinese. Astonishingly–the impact of Chinese film is like a tsunami that is hitting the cultural morays of America’s media moguls.

With exponential increase the Chinese cinema will impact American movies more so than the spaghetti Westerns ever did. The Chinese movie industry (Chollywood) is almost worth $1 Billion. At a double digit growth rate (30%-44% etc) it will rival Hollywood.

• In the next five to 10 years, the Chinese film market could well become the largest in the world.
• On one hand, growing domestic Chinese production is destined to make inroads in the world.
• On the other, more Hollywood productions consider the Chinese market.
• In the 1970s, Bruce Lee and kung fu movies changed the way we present fighting
• Indian cinema, with all its Bollywood films, did not make the same inroads in the Western imagination.
• Its dances and songs, the backbone of its stories, have remained mostly confined to India.
• While we have been waiting for years for the economic overtaking, which will still take a generation to come, the transformation of Hollywood into Chollywood could take only five years

Sisci’s brilliant analysis describes why Chollywood impacted Hollywood more so than any other influence and how Hollywood used Chinese techniques to improve their fight scenes–which are today Bruce Lee choreographed dances.

BEIJING – In the next five to 10 years, the Chinese film market could well become the largest in the world.

Read more at RUPEE News

Last Train Home

sxsw — February 22, 2010 — Every year in China the same dramatic ritual takes place: in the factory towns of the south, millions of migrant factory workers fight for space on overcrowded trains, trying to return home for the Spring Festival. Last Train Home follows a couple who have lived this way for twenty years. They barely know their own children, who were raised by relatives back home. This year, they travel with additional purpose: they're trying to bring home their runaway teenage daughter, so that she can return to school and not have to spend the rest of her life in a factory.

lust caution

FocusFeatures — July 23, 2007 — Ang Lee's new film, an espionage thriller set in WWII-era Shanghai. Tony Leung stars as Mr. Yee, a powerful political figure in 1940s Shanghai. Tang Wei, makes her feature film debut as Wang Jiazhi, a young woman who gets swept up in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue with Mr. Yee.

Lust, Caution

The title gets it the wrong way around. What we have here is first a lot of caution, then an explosion of lust. Ang Lee has followed his magnificent version of E Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain with another love story - more explicit in many ways, though more complex and oblique - and it's a movie that showcases Lee's flair for period detail and genre stylisation.

For his sheer muscular verve and ambition, Lee deserves a standing ovation. Orson Welles was described once as picking up a play with the confidence of a marksman picking up a rifle, and that is exactly how I felt Lee handles this source material: a short story by Eileen Chang. He has given Tony Leung a chance to shine with one of the most charismatic and memorable performances of his career, and in the twentysomething newcomer Tang Wei, he has made a tremendous discovery. Fiercely intelligent and hauntingly beautiful, she gives a passionate, courageous performance that deserves a shelf-full of awards; it's already made her an Asian movie-star to rival Zhang Ziyi.

More at The Guardian.

Tuya's Marriage

April 01, 2008 — directed by WANG Quan An

starring YU Nan, Bater, Baolier, Senge, Zhaya * April 4, 2008 (NYC) * April 25, 2008 (Chicago)

Tuya, hardworking and hardheaded, is a Mongolian desert herder who refuses to be settled in a town in accordance with the new industrialization policy. She is kept busy with two kids, a disabled husband and 100 sheep to care for, but one day she hurts her back. The only way for the family to survive is for her to divorce her husband on paper and look for a new spouse who can take care of the whole family. A series of suitors lines up, but it's not easy to find a man who fits the bill. This warm, endearing tale, featuring stunning cinematography, won the top prize at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival. * 2007 Berlin International Film Festival - Golden Bear * Chicago International Film Festival - Best Actress (YU Nan)

erikmartin

Festival of contemporary Chinese films in New Delhi

"Chinese Whispers", a festival of contemporary films from China featuring works by sixth generation film makers, begins in New Delhi from Tuesday.

The April 6-27 festival will be held at the India International Centre (IIC).

The sixth generation directors (1935-95), whose demanding dramas have won praise at festivals around the world and censure in their homeland, are successors to the famous fifth generation of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.

However, their films are worlds removed from the "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Farewell, My Concubine" - those gorgeous parables of love, steeped in Oriental exoticism.

In general, the fifth generation made pretty films, set in the rural past; the sixth generation made gritty films set in the urban present.

Emperors and concubines have been replaced by the grungy malcontents of Zhang Yuan's "Beijing Bastards (1993)", the sixth generation' first major film. With their flat generic titles, their movies are about ordinary people - the men and women on the streets. The sixth generation also renounces glamour.

The movies to be screened in the festival include "Pickpocket" by Xial Wiu, "Devils on the Doorstep", "Cell Phone", "The Go Master", "The World" and the "Blind Mountain".

Dear Cinema

Showcasing life abroad

A recent documentary that touches on issues faced by teens from China studying in Kiwi schools is gaining some attention.

WHEN Chinese student Jane arrived in Wellington, New Zealand (NZ), she did not reset her watch to the local time.

Tao’s documentary presents the issues faced by young students living overseas.

It may have seemed like the most obvious thing one would do upon arriving in another country, but the teen refused to do it because she was homesick, and wanted to be reminded of her family and friends back home.

“I miss home very much,” said the high school student of Szechuan, mingling with only fellow Chinese students — who, like her, were pining for home.

Many of them also use the computer to chat with their friends in China.

Jane is one of the four main characters in a documentary produced by Chinese filmmaker Li Tao, which has created a buzz in schools in the country and the film industry after it was first screened in New Zealand.

Simple yet captivating, Waves: The Diaries of Chinese International Students in New Zealand followed the lives of Jane and three other Chinese students — Ken, Lin and Rose — who had to learn to cope with culture shock, the language barrier and being homesick, while living away from home.

Read more at The Star.

In 19th-Century China, Brotherhood And Betrayal

With its thousands of years of bloody history — and tens of thousands of low-cost extras — China has long been a reliable source of battlefield epics. But The Warlords, a China/Hong Kong co-production, is more than just reliable. It's a surprisingly nuanced and sober tale of brotherhood and betrayal.

Fictionalized from historical events, the movie is set in the 1860s, during the Taiping Rebellion, an uprising led by a renegade who declared himself Jesus' younger brother. The Warlords doesn't glamorize this exceptionally destructive conflict, which eventually claimed an estimated 20 million lives; to the contrary, the film uses desaturated color to depict people gripped by hunger and weariness, their faces cracked by wind and caked with mud.

In the opening sequence, Taiping forces quickly rout a Qing Dynasty army. A single survivor remains on a field thick with corpses: General Pang (Jet Li). He loyally served the decadent Qings, only to see his troops abandoned by the army of General Ho, a Qing ally.

After the slaughter of his men, Pang meets a woman, Lian (Xu Jinglei), who nurses him back to health. (Most of the nursing happens off-camera and seems to involve sex.) Pang is soon cured of his injuries but is left with another wound: an enduring ache for Lian.

Read more at NPR.