Arthouse

Quote:
Two lovers, a man and a woman, meet and separate in a timeless space.Read More »

Synopsis:
Army volunteers train for places in China’s 1984 National Day parade, where they are expected to be a perfect marching unit.

Review:
Walter Goodman, NYT wrote:
From the impressive overhead shots of troops assembling for a march-past in Beijing’s huge central square on the 35th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, in October 1984, to the final slow-motion close-ups of them parading, the camera of Zhang Yimou commands ”The Big Parade.” The Chinese movie, directed by Chen Kaige and on view tonight at 6 o’clock and tomorrow at 8:30 P.M. as part of the New Directors/New Films festival, holds you by its photography even as you may be getting a bit restless at the Chinese version of the good old American boot-camp movie.Read More »

““Somebody dies,” says John Berger. “It’s not just a question of tact that one then says, well, perhaps it is possible to tell that story,” but “it’s because, after that death, one can read that life. The life becomes readable.” His interlocutor, a certain Susan Sontag, interjects: “A person who dies at 37 is not the same as a person who dies at 77.” True, he replies, “but it can be somebody who dies at 90. The life becomes readable to the storyteller, to the writer. Then she or he can begin to write.” Berger, the consummate storyteller as well as thinker about stories, left behind these and millions of other memorable words, spoken and written, when he yesterday passed away at age 90 himself.Read More »

In the first half of this century, young Li Tienlu joines a travelling puppet theatre and subsequently makes a career as one of Taiwan’s leading puppeteers. During World War II the Japanese rulers of Taiwan use the traditional Chinese puppet theatre for their war propaganda. Only after the war street theatres start playing agaiN.
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Quote:
In a daze following his father’s sudden death, cargo ship captain Gao Chun falls under the spell of a mysterious book of poetry found hidden in his ship’s engine room, sending the beleaguered captain on an unexpected journey both up the Yangtze River, the very cradle of Chinese civilization, and into the center of his own troubled soul. Guided by the beautiful, enigmatic An Lu, and carrying a mysterious shipment for a ruthless crime lord, Chun’s pilgrimage to the powerful river’s source becomes a sublime, poetic quest to understand man’s relationship to nature, the impulses of love and desire, greed and corruption, and the very nature of faith itself. Filmed in gorgeous 35mm by Mark Lee Ping-Bing (IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE), director Yang Chao’s film melds elements of the classic road movie with a singular aesthetic rooted in ancient Buddhist practice. Featuring an unforgettable sequence in the Three Gorges Dam, CROSSCURRENT is a transcendent voyage into the possibilities of the metaphysical and the realities of flesh and blood.Read More »

Ali and Zuhal take their first step out of the orphanage into this big world committing a crime. It becomes impossible for them to live amongst people now, and the forest they take shelter in becomes a desert island for them. A boy and a girl that were thrown out of the civilized world would live the entire human story from scratch.

Special Orizzonti Jury Prize
Venice Film Festival 2016Read More »

Synopsis
While researching locations for their 2009 film Noticias, documentary filmmakers Bettina Perut and Ivan Osnovikoff stumbled upon Salar de Surire, a salt flat in the Chilean Andes at an altitude of 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). “It was like being on the moon,” they explained in an interview. The vast, barren landscape and the thin mountain air left them feeling intensely alienated, and in Surire they make that sensation palpable. The long observational shots capture a desolate landscape in which human life at first seems to play only a marginal role. But the camera challenges this first impression, focusing on the wealth of flora and fauna in the foreground, while off in the distance a colorful convoy of transporter trucks takes away the salt – which, despite Salar de Surire’s protected status, is mined with the approval of the authorities. Perut and Osnovikoff document this disappearing world using their characteristic and highly articulate visual idiom, particularly recognizable for its grand wide shots and the pin-sharp extreme close-ups. The last original inhabitants of the region look on in resignation from a distance at the exploitation of their habitat. Meanwhile, they tend to their llamas, subject the dog to a risky-looking trim and prepare for a trip into town.Read More »

Quote:
New Hefei was done in the winter of 2007/2008 during a stay in China for several months through a series of photographs and prepared in the spring of 2008 in the provincial capital Hefei in black and white on 16mm shot. Hefei has an extreme economy growth rate and is one of the fastest-growing mega cities of the new China.
The conglomerates from private and state-dominated industry dominated the economic growth and repeated this in the Chinese provincial city. Currently the process of urban transformation has been completed here, as in other urban centers in China. The presentation of new urban areas is an important issue in contemporary Taiwanese and Chinese films.

Basically the whole thing was inspired by Antonionis “La Notte” and “L’eclisse”. So if you know these films, you’ll find something here.Read More »

Quote:
The world of Claire Denis’s Bastards is one of nightmarish inversion, where compassion has no place and connection only breeds despair. Structured around the fracturing of two family units, one irreparably shattered, one holding firm despite intense pressure, it imagines life as a steady succession of denials, duty waging a futile struggle against desire. In this reckoning every image grows twisted, the seductive mirage of a naked woman in high heels soon tarnished by the blood trickling down her legs. Conditioning the audience to find dread in every seemingly innocent gesture, the film turns even the simplest touch between family members into something tinged with menace.Read More »