Every once in a while comes along a film that has a story behind it – a story about its troubled production or problems the film may have post-production; a story that goes on to manifest itself into something bigger than the film itself. Ying Liang’s “When Night Falls” is one such film. The film screened at the Jeonju International Film Festival, amidst great attempts by the Chinese authorities to stop its showing, and at the Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Golden Leopard Awards for Best Director and Best Actress for An Nam. Before we talk about the film though, it is imperative that we understand, in brief, the real-life case that it is based around.
“When Night Falls” is streaming on CathayPlay
The film is based on the sensational real-life case of Yang Jia, who was arrested in Shanghai in October 2007 for riding an unlicensed bicycle. Beaten...
“When Night Falls” is streaming on CathayPlay
The film is based on the sensational real-life case of Yang Jia, who was arrested in Shanghai in October 2007 for riding an unlicensed bicycle. Beaten...
- 9/6/2021
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
Hong Kong Arts Centre: Moving Images announces their May programme, which includes their regular Golden Scene Selection, Independently Yours: Together We Stand and Independently Yours: Taking Back the Legislature + Inside the Red Brick Wall as well as the Hong Kong Arts Centre x Hong Kong Film Festival – Independently Yours: Memories to Choke On, Drinks to Wash Them Down, the delayed February programme which has finally been rescheduled for June.
Golden Scene Selection – June
Venue: Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre
Date: 2020.06.23 – 2020.06.29
Price: Standard ticket: $80. Tickets are now available at Putyourself.in.
“Golden Scene Selection”, proudly presented by the Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hkac) and Golden Scene Company Limited, will bring the audience a series of cherry-picked selections from around the world at the Hkac.
Screening Schedule
23/6 (Tue) 8pm Radioactive (Preview)
24/6 (Wed) 8pm Beyond The Dream (Preview)*
25/6 (Thu) 8pm A Family Tour*
26/6 (Fri) 8pm After the Wedding
27/6 (Sat) 3pm...
Golden Scene Selection – June
Venue: Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre
Date: 2020.06.23 – 2020.06.29
Price: Standard ticket: $80. Tickets are now available at Putyourself.in.
“Golden Scene Selection”, proudly presented by the Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hkac) and Golden Scene Company Limited, will bring the audience a series of cherry-picked selections from around the world at the Hkac.
Screening Schedule
23/6 (Tue) 8pm Radioactive (Preview)
24/6 (Wed) 8pm Beyond The Dream (Preview)*
25/6 (Thu) 8pm A Family Tour*
26/6 (Fri) 8pm After the Wedding
27/6 (Sat) 3pm...
- 6/16/2020
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
The "Women in Motion" talks, presented by The Hollywood Reporter and luxury group Kering, resumed Sunday with a conversation with French film writer-director Claire Denis, Chinese director Liu Shu and Chinese producer Ying Liang that addressed the challenges faced by female filmmakers in international cinema. THR’s chief film critic Todd McCarthy led the conversation, which touched on how growing up in Africa shaped Denis as a director and how channeling her inner Virginia Woolf helped her persevere in a male-dominated industry. “I was not afraid that it was a man’s world,” said Denis, one of
read more...
read more...
- 5/17/2015
- by Tatiana Siegel
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
It's the still in a process of refinement, but Indiewire has expanded their gateway to film criticism with Criticwire 2.0, which works as a catalog of critics and criticism that offers a much needed alternative to Rotten Tomatoes. It's less about looking for consensus than it is about offering a simple way of following the critics that interest you and discovering new ones along the way.
The Vienna Film Festival is underway, and while all of us who are not attending lament not being able to check out Mike Ott's DJ set, we have only the coverage of others to turn to for consolation. Turns out there isn't much of that available either, unless you can read German, so for now check out our coverage here in the Notebook, and hopefully there will be more to share next week. Ti West is prepping his next horror film, The Sacrament,...
The Vienna Film Festival is underway, and while all of us who are not attending lament not being able to check out Mike Ott's DJ set, we have only the coverage of others to turn to for consolation. Turns out there isn't much of that available either, unless you can read German, so for now check out our coverage here in the Notebook, and hopefully there will be more to share next week. Ti West is prepping his next horror film, The Sacrament,...
- 10/31/2012
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
On July 1, 2008, just a mere month before the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, a 28-year-old man named Yang Jia charged into a police station in Shanghai with Molotov cocktails and a knife, killing six and wounding four before finally being subdued. The mass murder was a shock to the scrutinizing world, and an embarrassment to the government. With all eyes on China, the pressure was on to erase the incident and any connecting circumstances as quickly and quietly as possible. Yang Jia's trial was delayed due to the Olympics, but his eventual hearing and conviction was held behind closed doors, and his punishment final and swift. Four years later in May of 2012, Chinese director Ying Liang traveled to the Jeonju International...
- 9/30/2012
- Screen Anarchy
Below you will find our total coverage of the 2012 Toronto International Film festival, including previews, reviews, and the festival-spanning dialog between our two main critics at Tiff. A few more pieces may be added as they come in.
Wavelengths (P)Reviews
by Michael Sicinski
Part One - The Shorts
Part Two - The Features
Correspondences
between Fernando F. Croce and Daniel Kasman
#1
Fernando F. Croce on Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love, Michael Haneke's Amour, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers
#2
Daniel Kasman on Wang Bing's Three Sisters, Christian Petzold's Barbara, Ying Liang's When Night Falls, Ernie Gehr's Departure and Auto-Collider Xv
#3
Fernando F. Croce on Carlos Reygadas' Post Tenebras Lux, Olivier Assayas' Something in the Air, Bernardo Bertolucci's Me and You, Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha
#4
Daniel Kasman on Brian De Palma's Passion, Heinz Emigholz's Perret in France and Algeria, Nathaniel Dorsky...
Wavelengths (P)Reviews
by Michael Sicinski
Part One - The Shorts
Part Two - The Features
Correspondences
between Fernando F. Croce and Daniel Kasman
#1
Fernando F. Croce on Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love, Michael Haneke's Amour, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers
#2
Daniel Kasman on Wang Bing's Three Sisters, Christian Petzold's Barbara, Ying Liang's When Night Falls, Ernie Gehr's Departure and Auto-Collider Xv
#3
Fernando F. Croce on Carlos Reygadas' Post Tenebras Lux, Olivier Assayas' Something in the Air, Bernardo Bertolucci's Me and You, Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha
#4
Daniel Kasman on Brian De Palma's Passion, Heinz Emigholz's Perret in France and Algeria, Nathaniel Dorsky...
- 9/22/2012
- MUBI
As I mentioned in the preface to the first part of my Wavelengths preview (the one focusing on the short films), there are significant changes afoot in 2012. Until last year, the festival had a section known as Visions, which was the primary home for formally challenging cinema that nevertheless conformed to the basic tenets of arthouse and/or “festival” cinema (actors, scripting, 70+minute running time, and, once upon a time, 35mm presentation). This year, Wavelengths is both its former self, and it also contains the sort of work that Visions most likely would have housed. While in some respects this can seem to result in a kind of split personality for the section, it also means that Wavelengths, which has often been described as a sort of “festival within the festival,” has moved front and center. Films that would’ve occupied single slots in the older avant-Wavelengths model, like the...
- 9/12/2012
- MUBI
Dear Fern,
Here we are indeed—or at least, here we are somewhere, as I've only crossed paths with you once so far amongst the overwhelming number of films—press screened and public—in Tiff's 2012 lineup.
I, too, played “catch-up” the first day, as the greatest resource of Tiff's glut of films (you say “banquet,” I say “glut”!) is the ability for the cinephile who does not get to travel so often, or so far, to see what's been made a big deal of overseas at some festival or another. For you, it was Cannes; for me, lucky enough to have been there and therefore never having to see the Haneke again, it is Berlin, Venice and Locarno.
Thus on my first day was a hard film to top: the new work by Chinese documentarian Wang Bing, whose last feature—and first fiction—The Ditch, I saw the last time I was in Tiff,...
Here we are indeed—or at least, here we are somewhere, as I've only crossed paths with you once so far amongst the overwhelming number of films—press screened and public—in Tiff's 2012 lineup.
I, too, played “catch-up” the first day, as the greatest resource of Tiff's glut of films (you say “banquet,” I say “glut”!) is the ability for the cinephile who does not get to travel so often, or so far, to see what's been made a big deal of overseas at some festival or another. For you, it was Cannes; for me, lucky enough to have been there and therefore never having to see the Haneke again, it is Berlin, Venice and Locarno.
Thus on my first day was a hard film to top: the new work by Chinese documentarian Wang Bing, whose last feature—and first fiction—The Ditch, I saw the last time I was in Tiff,...
- 9/9/2012
- MUBI
Above: Ernie Gehr's Auto-Collider Xv.
The vast bulk of Tiff's 2012 has been announced and listed here, below. We'll be updating the lineup with the previous films announced, as well as updating links to specific films for more information on them in the coming days. Of particular note is that the Wavelengths and Visions programs have been combined to create what is undoubtedly the most interesting section of the festival. Stay tuned, too, for our own on the ground coverage of Tiff.
Galas
A Royal Affair (Nikolai Arcel, Demark/Sweden/Czech Republic/Germany)
Argo (Ben Affleck, USA)
The Company You Keep (Robert Redford, USA)
Dangerous Liaisons (Hur Jin-ho, China)
Emperor (Peter Webber, Japan/USA)
English Vinglish (Gauri Shinde, India)
Free Angela & All Political Prisoners (Shola Lynch)
Great Expectations (Mike Newell, UK)
Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell, UK)
Inescapable (Ruba Nadda, Canada)
Jayne Mansfield's Car (Billy Bob Thorton, USA/Russia)
Looper (Rian Johnson,...
The vast bulk of Tiff's 2012 has been announced and listed here, below. We'll be updating the lineup with the previous films announced, as well as updating links to specific films for more information on them in the coming days. Of particular note is that the Wavelengths and Visions programs have been combined to create what is undoubtedly the most interesting section of the festival. Stay tuned, too, for our own on the ground coverage of Tiff.
Galas
A Royal Affair (Nikolai Arcel, Demark/Sweden/Czech Republic/Germany)
Argo (Ben Affleck, USA)
The Company You Keep (Robert Redford, USA)
Dangerous Liaisons (Hur Jin-ho, China)
Emperor (Peter Webber, Japan/USA)
English Vinglish (Gauri Shinde, India)
Free Angela & All Political Prisoners (Shola Lynch)
Great Expectations (Mike Newell, UK)
Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell, UK)
Inescapable (Ruba Nadda, Canada)
Jayne Mansfield's Car (Billy Bob Thorton, USA/Russia)
Looper (Rian Johnson,...
- 8/22/2012
- MUBI
The 37th Toronto International Film Festival® will roll out the red carpet for hundreds of guests from the four corners of the globe in September. Filmmakers expected to present their world premieres in Toronto include: Rian Johnson, Noah Baumbach, Deepa Mehta, Derek Cianfrance, Sion Sono, Joss Whedon, Neil Jordan, Lu Chuan, Shola Lynch, Barry Levinson, Yvan Attal, Ben Affleck, Marina Zenovich, Costa-Gavras, Laurent Cantet, Sally Potter, Dustin Hoffman, Francois Ozon, David O. Russell, David Ayer, Pelin Esmer, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Andrew Adamson, Michael McGowan, Bahman Ghobadi, Ziad Doueiri, Alex Gibney, Stephen Chbosky, Eran Riklis, Edward Burns, Bernard Émond, Zhang Yuan, Michael Winterbottom, Mike Newell, Miwa Nishikawa, Margarethe Von Trotta, David Siegel, Scott McGehee, Gauri Shinde, Goran Paskaljevic, Baltasar Kormákur, J.A. Bayona, Rob Zombie, Peaches and Paul Andrew Williams.
Actors expected to attend include: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jackie Chan, Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Bill Murray, Robert Redford,...
Actors expected to attend include: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jackie Chan, Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Bill Murray, Robert Redford,...
- 8/21/2012
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
By merging the former Visions into the Wavelengths section, Cameron Bailey has essentially made a new incontournable programme. Headed by Andréa Picard, the section which at a time was populated by medium to short run times now includes some of the bigger names in innovative feature film filmmaking who have no qualms about bending the medium. This year the sections includes long, medium and short length works from the likes of Ben Rivers, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Carlos Reygadas (pic of his controversial Post Tenebras Lux above), Wang Bing, Mati Diop (actress from Claire Denis and Antonio Campos films) and our very own writer Blake Williams who makes it two for two at Tiff with Many a Swan – he previously had Coorow-Latham Road programmed last year. Here’s the complete A to Z listing and well-worth reading descriptions.
Pairings
The Capsule Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece, 37’ A bevy of gorgeous Gothic...
Pairings
The Capsule Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece, 37’ A bevy of gorgeous Gothic...
- 8/14/2012
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Leviathan. You may have heard the title by now. By the time it screened to press, the film had already gained some momentous hype, and I’m pleased to report it does not disappoint. Often exhilarating, Véréna Peraval and Lucien Castaing-Taylor‘s creation is a unique viewing experience—loud, disorienting, frightening, exciting and visually awesome. The best film from the main competition, at the very least, Leviathan (above) offers the sort of sensory adventure that cinema can but rarely does offer. Using cheap GoPro digital cameras, the filmmakers show us images and perspectives we’ve never seen before. Apparently, Apichatpong Weerasethakul did not like the film for having been unable to sense the presence of the directors within the film, which is valid, but for me an interesting part of this often alien encounter. For many critics, this was the movie to root for on the night of the awards ceremony,...
- 8/13/2012
- by Adam Cook
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Jean-Claude Brisseau’s La fille de nulle part (The Girl from Nowhere) won the Pardo d’oro or the Golden Leopard at the 65th Locarno Film Festival, which concluded on 11th August, 2012.
La fille de nulle part is a story of a lonely widower Michel, a retired math teacher who occupies his time writing an essay about the beliefs that shape daily life. One day he meets Dora, a young homeless woman, who shows up injured at his doorstep, and puts her up until she recovers. Her presence brings something new to Michel’s life, but gradually the apartment becomes the site of mysterious happenings.
The other awards presented are:
Premio speciale della giuria / Prize from the Cities of Ascona and Losone: Somebody Up There Likes Me by Bob Byington, United States.
Pardo per la migliore regia / Prize from the City and Region of Locarno (Best Director): Wo Hai...
La fille de nulle part is a story of a lonely widower Michel, a retired math teacher who occupies his time writing an essay about the beliefs that shape daily life. One day he meets Dora, a young homeless woman, who shows up injured at his doorstep, and puts her up until she recovers. Her presence brings something new to Michel’s life, but gradually the apartment becomes the site of mysterious happenings.
The other awards presented are:
Premio speciale della giuria / Prize from the Cities of Ascona and Losone: Somebody Up There Likes Me by Bob Byington, United States.
Pardo per la migliore regia / Prize from the City and Region of Locarno (Best Director): Wo Hai...
- 8/13/2012
- by NewsDesk
- DearCinema.com
While Cannes’ Quinzaine struggles to reframe its identity, its former artistic director Olivier Père continues to impress in his new job at the Locarno Film Festival. On Wednesday, he and his programming team unveiled a lineup that is absolutely salivatory, a who’s who for high-minded cinephiles. Perhaps most impressive of all, he has managed to once again nudge the festival’s selection aesthetic even deeper into esoteric ‘experimental’ territory without seeming all that radical. More than any other festival, Locarno is the home for the edgy projects that are too sophisticated for Cannes, whose cold shoulder to avant-garde narrative filmmaking becomes more glaring with each passing year. Check out the complete line-up at the bottom of this page.
In their International Competition, in which films compete for the increasingly prestigious Golden Leopard, we have a collaboration between João Pedro Rodrigues and his partner João Rui Guerra da Mata called...
In their International Competition, in which films compete for the increasingly prestigious Golden Leopard, we have a collaboration between João Pedro Rodrigues and his partner João Rui Guerra da Mata called...
- 7/13/2012
- by Blake Williams
- IONCINEMA.com
Raya Martin's The Great Cinema Party, the final third of the 2012 edition of the Jeonju Digital Project which includes new works by China's Ying Liang and Sri Lanka's Vimukthi Jayasundara, is uncharacteristically joyous. Despite starting with several minutes of footage of war, the film is surprisingly held together by an atmosphere that seems new in a Raya Martin film. While Martin's preoccupation with Philippine history is still there, it isn't met with the same sorrow or regret that features pronouncedly in his previous works. There's something more than the erstwhile levity here, an emotion that overpowers Martin's expected angst about the painful inadequacies of what we presently perceive as a country's recorded past. There's actual joy.The monochrome snippets from various unearthed footage of...
- 5/22/2012
- Screen Anarchy
Every year since 2000, the Jeonju International Film Festival has commissioned three short works for its Jeonju Digital Project and, about a month ago now, the festival announced it'd selected Raya Martin, Vimukthi Jayasundara and Ying Liang for this year's edition (you may remember the three directors' video messages). The 2011 films are still making the rounds, and in fact, when they screen tomorrow at Exit Art, two of them — Claire Denis's To the Devil and José Luis Guerín's Memories of a Morning, both 45 minutes — will be seeing their NYC premieres. The third is Jean-Marie Straub's An Heir (22 mins, image above). If you're planning on being there, you'll want to read Robert Koehler's dispatch from Locarno last summer, touching briefly on the Denis and Guerín films but really digging into the Straub.
Reading. "With the main focus on African and Asian cinema and documentary film, Camera Lucida no 7 also...
Reading. "With the main focus on African and Asian cinema and documentary film, Camera Lucida no 7 also...
- 2/28/2012
- MUBI
Pusan International Film Festival
BUSAN, South Korea -- Zhang Miaoyan may belong to the same brood of independent filmmakers such as Ying Liang (Taking Father Home), Wei Tie (Distance) or Zhao Ye (Ma Wujia), who put postreform China's social injustices and grass-roots misery on exhibition for a festival audience. But his Xiaolin Xiaoli also shares camaraderie with Bunuel's Los Olvidados in the way unflinching neo-realism and excoriating social criticism are transcended by aching poetry and surrealism.
Sexual frustration, depicted without moralistic window dressing, is the film's single, unswerving theme. This is directly linked to the protagonists' social disenfranchisement in a corrupt and uncaring state. The audacious assertion is a hurdle for public screening in China, though the blatantly sexual subject matter may attract a diverse audience overseas.
The film's sexual politics are established early on, when a low-angled camera pursues a pair of female legs in high heels strutting along a dusty road. It catches the eye of junkyard worker Xiaolin, the 26-year-old virgin protagonist. Unavailability breeds contempt. "Bitch asshole!" he seethes and runs home to masturbate before a faded calendar. The film provides an inventive masturbator's manual for the really desperate, like boring a hole in a lardy strip of pig's skin.
Xiaolin's sexual deprivation is represented as equally inhumane as not being able to afford education or health care. He is so Low Down the poverty line that he has to starve for a week for one night's paid sex. Zhang conveys a palpable sense of how it's an all-consuming obsession. In fact, Xiaolin's testosterone overdrive is exacerbated by his fellow-laborer Lao Qan, a 40-year-old bachelor addicted to prostitution. There is not much else gratifying in their wretched lives. Pigs are a recurrent motif that evokes their animalistic existence.
A complementary narrative introduces Xiaoli, a woman who moonlights in a barbershop-cum-brothel while her husband works in Shanghai to pay off debts. Her frustration is expressed poetically in letters of longing to her husband but its nature is the same as Xiaolin's unsoothed libido.
Xiaoli's plight tells the prostitute's side of the story, a running list of male abuse. The weak prey on the weaker so the prostitutes just take it out on more destitute clients like Xiaolin and Lao Qan by humiliating and cheating them. With exploitation and hostility at both ends of the business transaction, it is just a matter of time before angst erupts into violence.
The film ends with a dedication to 20 million prostitutes and 150 million farm workers in China. It is punctuated with comments on government campaigns that went to pot and state broadcasts warning the public against all kinds of petty crimes (while graver abuses go unchecked).
Shot digitally on the cheap, using open locations of a shantytown and interiors of pitch-dark squalor where unsavory sex takes place, the cinematography is surprisingly above average, with many beautifully composed shots.
Xiaolin Xiaoli
Rice Production
Credits:
Director/producer/director of photography/editor: Zhang Miaoyan
Screenwriters: Zhang Miaoyan, Wang Lianggui, Mao Danhui
Music: Jiang Hongwei
Cast:
Xiaolin: Mao Danhui
Xiaoli: Liu Yun
Laoqiang: Deng Xiaolong
Agang: Li Chengliang
Running time -- 108 minutes
No MPAA rating...
BUSAN, South Korea -- Zhang Miaoyan may belong to the same brood of independent filmmakers such as Ying Liang (Taking Father Home), Wei Tie (Distance) or Zhao Ye (Ma Wujia), who put postreform China's social injustices and grass-roots misery on exhibition for a festival audience. But his Xiaolin Xiaoli also shares camaraderie with Bunuel's Los Olvidados in the way unflinching neo-realism and excoriating social criticism are transcended by aching poetry and surrealism.
Sexual frustration, depicted without moralistic window dressing, is the film's single, unswerving theme. This is directly linked to the protagonists' social disenfranchisement in a corrupt and uncaring state. The audacious assertion is a hurdle for public screening in China, though the blatantly sexual subject matter may attract a diverse audience overseas.
The film's sexual politics are established early on, when a low-angled camera pursues a pair of female legs in high heels strutting along a dusty road. It catches the eye of junkyard worker Xiaolin, the 26-year-old virgin protagonist. Unavailability breeds contempt. "Bitch asshole!" he seethes and runs home to masturbate before a faded calendar. The film provides an inventive masturbator's manual for the really desperate, like boring a hole in a lardy strip of pig's skin.
Xiaolin's sexual deprivation is represented as equally inhumane as not being able to afford education or health care. He is so Low Down the poverty line that he has to starve for a week for one night's paid sex. Zhang conveys a palpable sense of how it's an all-consuming obsession. In fact, Xiaolin's testosterone overdrive is exacerbated by his fellow-laborer Lao Qan, a 40-year-old bachelor addicted to prostitution. There is not much else gratifying in their wretched lives. Pigs are a recurrent motif that evokes their animalistic existence.
A complementary narrative introduces Xiaoli, a woman who moonlights in a barbershop-cum-brothel while her husband works in Shanghai to pay off debts. Her frustration is expressed poetically in letters of longing to her husband but its nature is the same as Xiaolin's unsoothed libido.
Xiaoli's plight tells the prostitute's side of the story, a running list of male abuse. The weak prey on the weaker so the prostitutes just take it out on more destitute clients like Xiaolin and Lao Qan by humiliating and cheating them. With exploitation and hostility at both ends of the business transaction, it is just a matter of time before angst erupts into violence.
The film ends with a dedication to 20 million prostitutes and 150 million farm workers in China. It is punctuated with comments on government campaigns that went to pot and state broadcasts warning the public against all kinds of petty crimes (while graver abuses go unchecked).
Shot digitally on the cheap, using open locations of a shantytown and interiors of pitch-dark squalor where unsavory sex takes place, the cinematography is surprisingly above average, with many beautifully composed shots.
Xiaolin Xiaoli
Rice Production
Credits:
Director/producer/director of photography/editor: Zhang Miaoyan
Screenwriters: Zhang Miaoyan, Wang Lianggui, Mao Danhui
Music: Jiang Hongwei
Cast:
Xiaolin: Mao Danhui
Xiaoli: Liu Yun
Laoqiang: Deng Xiaolong
Agang: Li Chengliang
Running time -- 108 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 10/3/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
HONG KONG -- Indonesian director Garin Nugroho's musical feature, "Opera Jawa", won the Silver Screen award for best film Friday night as the 20th annual Singapore International Film Festival came to a close.
Inspired by the abduction scene in the classic Sanskrit epic, "Jawa" is a story of love, betrayal and seduction with strong comment on political oppression and religious extremism.
"Film is a statement of what happens in our lives," Nugroho said shortly after accepting the award.
Best director went to Iraqi filmmaker Shawkat Amin Korki for "Crossing the Dust", set amid the violent conflict of post-Saddam Iraq. Korki's feature debut, "Dust" was shot in Iraq shortly after American troops arrived in Baghdad. The film tells the story of two Kurdish solders and a lost five-year-old Iraqi boy called Saddam whom they come across on the side of the road.
The special jury prize was awarded to Ying Liang's "The Other Half", a docudrama portrait of social change in a rapidly industrializing society.
Inspired by the abduction scene in the classic Sanskrit epic, "Jawa" is a story of love, betrayal and seduction with strong comment on political oppression and religious extremism.
"Film is a statement of what happens in our lives," Nugroho said shortly after accepting the award.
Best director went to Iraqi filmmaker Shawkat Amin Korki for "Crossing the Dust", set amid the violent conflict of post-Saddam Iraq. Korki's feature debut, "Dust" was shot in Iraq shortly after American troops arrived in Baghdad. The film tells the story of two Kurdish solders and a lost five-year-old Iraqi boy called Saddam whom they come across on the side of the road.
The special jury prize was awarded to Ying Liang's "The Other Half", a docudrama portrait of social change in a rapidly industrializing society.
- 4/28/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
90 Minutes Film Production
NEW YORK -- Filmmaking duo Ying Liang and Peng Shan's follow-up to "Taking Father Home" is a clear-eyed look at the brutal underbelly of developing China. Like its predecessor, "The Other Half" doesn't shirk from depicting the thuggery, crime and corruption that have taken root since Deng Xiaoping opened the doors to a limited form of capitalism. This time their focus expands to take in environmental concerns and China's nascent legal system.
Its DV look and adventurous narrative structure probably won't lead to much distribution, but it's an intelligent and well-thought-out piece, which should be a custom fit for international film festivals.
The story is set in the industrial city of Zhongqing and is loosely focused on Xiaofei (Zeng Xiaofei), a woman who works in a lawyer's office. Ying, who directed and co-wrote with producer Peng, uses the law firm as a device for young women to air their disagreements straight to the camera, which gives the film a documentary edge. The plot loosely hinges on a doomed love affair, but the real concern is how a local factory is polluting the atmosphere with dangerous levels of benzene.
Ying's too young to remember what life was like before Deng's reforms, so the film doesn't make historical comparisons. It observes rather than judges. This view of China -- one which rarely makes it into the international media -- isn't pretty. One of the lawyers points out that life is just "poverty, unemployment and pollution." The chemical factory explodes, forcing the city to be evacuated, and a supporting character suffocates while trying to smuggle herself into Taiwan.
The subject matter is serious, but the film is not downbeat. Instead, it bowls along with the energy of modern Chinese life. Although it mainly consists of master shots, careful composition keeps things cinematic. The harsh DV look works in its favor, effectively conveying the raw edge of modern Chinese life. "Other Half", which screened at the New Directors, New Films festival, is an ultralow-budget work, and it would be interesting to see what the filmmakers could do with a decent budget.
NEW YORK -- Filmmaking duo Ying Liang and Peng Shan's follow-up to "Taking Father Home" is a clear-eyed look at the brutal underbelly of developing China. Like its predecessor, "The Other Half" doesn't shirk from depicting the thuggery, crime and corruption that have taken root since Deng Xiaoping opened the doors to a limited form of capitalism. This time their focus expands to take in environmental concerns and China's nascent legal system.
Its DV look and adventurous narrative structure probably won't lead to much distribution, but it's an intelligent and well-thought-out piece, which should be a custom fit for international film festivals.
The story is set in the industrial city of Zhongqing and is loosely focused on Xiaofei (Zeng Xiaofei), a woman who works in a lawyer's office. Ying, who directed and co-wrote with producer Peng, uses the law firm as a device for young women to air their disagreements straight to the camera, which gives the film a documentary edge. The plot loosely hinges on a doomed love affair, but the real concern is how a local factory is polluting the atmosphere with dangerous levels of benzene.
Ying's too young to remember what life was like before Deng's reforms, so the film doesn't make historical comparisons. It observes rather than judges. This view of China -- one which rarely makes it into the international media -- isn't pretty. One of the lawyers points out that life is just "poverty, unemployment and pollution." The chemical factory explodes, forcing the city to be evacuated, and a supporting character suffocates while trying to smuggle herself into Taiwan.
The subject matter is serious, but the film is not downbeat. Instead, it bowls along with the energy of modern Chinese life. Although it mainly consists of master shots, careful composition keeps things cinematic. The harsh DV look works in its favor, effectively conveying the raw edge of modern Chinese life. "Other Half", which screened at the New Directors, New Films festival, is an ultralow-budget work, and it would be interesting to see what the filmmakers could do with a decent budget.
NEW YORK -- In China, some young filmmakers have started to use digital filmmaking tools to make personal features reminiscent of Italian neo-realism. Films like Ying Liang's Taking Father Home, which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, focus on individual lives to illuminate the bigger picture of contemporary China. This one is a powerful, provocative work that should be assured of more festival appearances.
The film tells of a young man who leaves his village to find his father, who has absconded to the city. Through his travels, the viewer learns about the horrifying reality of the new China: violent gangsters, listless youths and a breakdown of official and family structures. The final showdown between father and son is brutal and symbolizes how China's modernization has ripped the social fabric of the country asunder.
Father illustrates how such social safeguards of a communist society as free health care and guaranteed employment have been dismantled, replaced with nothing. Ying implies that Brute Force and violence have become the only ways to safeguard personal security.
Ying and producer Peng Shan shot the film by themselves in Peng's home village on next to no money. The biggest prop -- a giant Buddha's head -- cost only $90. Nearly all the cast are members of Peng's extended family. Ying's style is brutally realistic, but he isn't averse to poetic touches. The young searcher always carries two geese on his back to remind him of his rural home, and the giant Buddha's head he encounters, floating in a pond, symbolizes a hope of more peaceful times.
The film tells of a young man who leaves his village to find his father, who has absconded to the city. Through his travels, the viewer learns about the horrifying reality of the new China: violent gangsters, listless youths and a breakdown of official and family structures. The final showdown between father and son is brutal and symbolizes how China's modernization has ripped the social fabric of the country asunder.
Father illustrates how such social safeguards of a communist society as free health care and guaranteed employment have been dismantled, replaced with nothing. Ying implies that Brute Force and violence have become the only ways to safeguard personal security.
Ying and producer Peng Shan shot the film by themselves in Peng's home village on next to no money. The biggest prop -- a giant Buddha's head -- cost only $90. Nearly all the cast are members of Peng's extended family. Ying's style is brutally realistic, but he isn't averse to poetic touches. The young searcher always carries two geese on his back to remind him of his rural home, and the giant Buddha's head he encounters, floating in a pond, symbolizes a hope of more peaceful times.
- 5/19/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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