4 posts tagged “international cinema”

    Oh god, do I hate winter quarters. Usually they consist of difficult and/or crappy classes, procrastination, and overall boredom with everything I'm going in general. Aside from skipping unimportant lectures (they're not film-related anyway) I've spent many hours on my PlayStation3, not only with games like Warhawk and Wild ARMs, but watching some DVDs with my girlfriend and roommate. And while I've been good on keeping most of my resolutions, I've yet to really do anything of value this quarter in terms of personal projects.
    There's the research for my Senior thesis, but I'll hold off on discussing that until after I do a substantial amount of research.

    Perhaps later this week I'll do another post with something a little more ... I don't know, "meaningful"? In the meantime, I found a neat little Asian torrent site that actually links to a lot of good films, including obscure films by directors like Edward Yang, Jiang Wen, and Jia Jiangke. Check it out.

   2008 is coming up fast, and I've been coming up with a rough draft of resolutions for the new year. One of my main resolutions is to watch 120 new films throughout the year, broken down into about 10 films a month. Now that may not sound like a big number to someone who constantly watches films, but with graduation and a thesis to write in the next few months I won't exactly have a lot of freetime to kick back with a good flick. Not to mention going to the movies these days is getting extremely pricey, and new DVDs aren't cheap either. Still, I'm going to try and make time to watch that many movies.
   Looking back on 2007 is still fun though. Despite my year being fairly ordinary (yet incredibly fast), I did manage to see a lot of good movies. To me it felt like this year was big for comedies, as most of my big picks for the year seem to consist of such. Good to see that something so "simple" can get the appreciation it deserves; comedy is harder to pull off than you'd think though.
   Anyway, here are my top ten favorite films of this year, including some that - before 2007 - I had never seen before:

    This past week I was finally able to watch Hou Hsiao-Hsien's A City of Sadness. Ever since coming to college I've been trying to explore the Chinese side of my identity, mainly because up until college I was never considered as such. In high school everyone always saw me as white because of the way I looked; I guess it was expected, seeing as the majority of my high school was made up of Chinese kids, many of them actually from China. Since coming to college it's been the opposite. For once, I'm actually being considered Chinese (due in part to my open regard for my own "hapa"-ness), and it's a great feeling to be accepted ... for once.
   As I mentioned briefly in my last post, I'm interested in researching the Taiwanese New Cinema movement which took place in the 1980s-1990s (and, as it can be argued, is still continuing to this day). I've already seen a small number of films that have made their way to the United States, as well as spent some of my own money on books to use in my own personal research (see my book list for a few). It's been a slow process, but I'm really starting to learn a lot about the movement, as well as about the history of Taiwan itself, which is something I haven't thought too much of until recently.
   The reason why I'm so interested in Taiwanese cinema as opposed to mainland China or Hong Kong is that I'm technically half Taiwanese. My dad was born in Taipei, and the majority of my family on his side still resides in Taiwan. My dad's never even been to the mainland, and despite considering himself Chinese, his real home was in Taiwan. Now, from what I've learned about Taiwanese identity and history, that's kind of a paradox, because the Chinese population living in Taiwan technically aren't real Taiwanese, at least not in the sense that everyone except Native Americans aren't real Americans. From what I've heard, my family actually came over from the mainland sometime around the Chinese Civil War, around the same time as the Kuomintang (KMT). If you're familiar with Taiwan history at all then you'll know that the KMT was highly oppressive with the Taiwanese people that had been living on the island for decades under the Japanese occupation, and they essentially treated the Taiwanese people like colonists and slaves rather than compatriots.
   And here's where my post connects with A City of Sadness. Hou's film is set during the transitional period between the end of the Japanese occupation and the KMT's takeover of Taiwan in 1949. The focus is on a local family, who experiences death, political oppression, and incredible loss during this time. It's pretty depressing despite the film beginning with a birth and ending with a wedding. There's an ambiguous feeling by the time the credits begin to roll - does the film end with a suggestion of hopefulness or hopelessness? It's hard to tell.

   The film really kind of tore me up inside, knowing what I know about both Taiwanese history as well as my family's own personal history. Can I say that I'm really part Taiwanese despite my family's Chinese heritage? Is there even a difference in contemporary times? Taiwan's current president seems to think so, which is why he's vying for independence from mainland China (something I won't go into). My identity is already divided in half, and now those halves are threatened to be divided into quarters because of these issues. I'm not even sure where to stand on certain points.
   Funny that as soon as I begin to feel comfortable with my identity everything goes to pieces because of a single film. I guess that's the power of film itself as a socio-political medium. It definitely has the power to make you think if you're willing to look at the larger social issues and history. Of course, I'm sure half the people in my class were just wanting the film to end because of its length (over three hours) and the obsessive use of long shots and long takes, but I'm still glad I managed to see it, and subtitled in English. It's not readily available over here like Hou Hsiao-Hsien's other films (Millenium Mambo, The Puppetmaster). I'm going to try and seek out a copy for myself.
   I've also been reinvigorated to go back and watch Edward Yang's Yi Yi, which has been on my shelf for awhile now, calling me to watch it again. In fact, perhaps I'll do that this weekend since I have off on Monday.

   One of the biggest worries I've been having this past year is what exactly I'm going to do with my film degree once I get out of college. Believe it or not, college hasn't exactly been what I expected it to be, and if anything I didn't get to accomplish what I originally set out to do - which was to earn degrees in Creative Writing and Critical Studies in Film & Digital Media, a more intensive program which would've allowed me to get teaching experience this upcoming spring. Well, I won't get to do that naturally. It just feels like these past four years haven't amounted to much other than about $10,000 worth of debt that I'm going to start freaking out about since the interest is going to start up after graduation.
   I mean, really... if you're not going into production, what does once do with a film degree? The reason why I wanted to go into Critical Studies was because I could have gone further into the academic side of film and maybe been better suited to move on to a graduate program somewhere like USC or NYU. I could've had more of a focus instead of taking classes that gloss over a variety of topics but never really goes in-depth; being half Chinese with my family based in Taiwan, I wanted to explore the Taiwanese New Cinema and how Taiwan's ever-changing identity has helped to shape their identity in contemporary cinema. My professors all seemed to think it was a good area for research since there hasn't been that much written about it in English, but ultimately I was turned down for the concentration because of my narrative evaluations (I haven't received a lot of good evals because up until now I barely talked in lectures and discussions). Bah.
   One of the jobs I've really wanted since venturing into the academics of film is working for The Criterion Collection. Granted, a lot of my classmates and friends feel like Criterion DVDs are overpriced and their choice in films is slightly elitist and prone to European and American art films, but I think what they're doing is a great step towards the mainstream acceptance of international cinema. Naturally, I do think they should start focusing more on films from East Asia, but I'm hoping in time they'll realize that as well. But yeah, I'd love to actually work with Criterion and help produce their collection.
   Kino International would be a similar choice.
   Uh, but how does one apply to places like those? It's not like they have an online application on their websites.

   I suppose I'll start at least learning something new this winter. One of my professors approached me this quarter asking if I wanted to help subtitle a pair of older Chinese films from before World War II, films that aren't available on DVD, nor available with English subtitles (obviously). So I'll get to mess around with some subtitling software as well as DVD authoring software since my professor would prefer a DVD with divided chapters as opposed to having a pair of VCDs, which we'll be transferring from. It sounds like a good project, and I'll get paid for it too, so that's always nice.
   When I get back to San Francisco next summer I really should also try to pick up Mandarin again. I realized only way too late that it'd be a great advantage that would've opened a ton of doors for me. Ah, well.