bbc, 1 May, 2005
Banned movie wins Tribeca honour

[image] Robert De Niro's festival is now a firm fixture for film-makers

Stolen Life, a movie banned in its native China, has been named best
film at the Tribeca film festival in New York.

Director Li Shaohong accepted the Founders Award from actor Robert De
Niro, who set up the festival after 11 September 2001 to revitalise
Manhattan.

Stolen Life is a story of love and loss in the life of a college student.

Li said she hoped her movie would get "green-lighted so that my people
in China can watch this film soon".

The award for best actor went to Cees Geel for the Dutch film Simon.
Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman won best actress for
Transamerica in which she plays a pre-operative transsexual woman.

The award for best documentary feature went to El Perro Negro: Stories
from the Spanish Civil War, a Netherlands/Hungary production.

The title of best new documentary film-maker went to Jeff Zimblast and
Matt Mochary for Favela Rising, set in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.

Alicia Scherson was named best new narrative (non-documentary)
film-maker for Play.

The best documentary about New York was Rikers High and the best feature
filmed in New York was Red Doors. The audience award went to the
documentary Street Fight.

The festival has now become a fixture on the film calendar and is
attended by many big stars. This year it included more than 250 films
from 45 countries on six continents.

Judges for the awards included actress Whoopi Goldberg, writer Tom
Wolfe, actress Teri Hatcher and pop star Sheryl Crow.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4503707.stm

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Lotus Steps 2005 -- UCLA's Chinese Cultural Dance Club

Highly-regarded student-led program brings dance to Los Angeles
audiences. Beyond its performances, the club also provides training for
pre-teen students.
[image] From Lotus Steps 2004. Photo by Eric Chen.

By Patty Ou
Production Manager/Public Relations, Chinese Cultural Dance Club

Many people are surprised to hear that there are fifty-six registered
nationalities in China, each with its distinct culture, customs, and
beliefs. The desire to educate others about this diversity of Chinese
culture and dance styles, combined with love for dance, is was the
instrumental force that sparked the creation of the UCLA Chinese
Cultural Dance Club.

The UCLA Chinese Cultural Dance Club (CCDC) is an official UCLA student
performing arts organization with the mission of sharing Chinese culture
through dance. Founded by three UCLA students and one alumna in 2000, it
strives to provide the UCLA campus and surrounding communities the
unique opportunity to explore the diversity of Chinese culture and the
experiences of Chinese-Americans through both traditional and
contemporary folk dance and music. CCDC offers free dance instruction to
anyone who is interested regardless of previous dance experience and
training, and provides them with ample opportunities to perform at local
cultural events. Students attend weekly lessons where they learn basic
dance techniques as well as different Chinese dance styles. CCDC also
puts on an annual dance production, Lotus Steps, open to the public free
of charge at UCLA’s world-renowned Royce Hall. Last year, approximately
1400 people attended Lotus Steps 2004, of which roughly 40 percent were
non-UCLA-affiliated members of the community. Moreover, CCDC offers
creative opportunities for aspiring choreographers, instructors, and
dancers to expand their artistic knowledge and create new dance
compositions. To this date, more than 100 students have benefited from
CCDC’s endeavors to develop artistic excellence and foster an
appreciation for the rich heritage of Chinese culture.

CCDC has performed many folk dances of different ethnicities in China,
such as those from Mongolia, Tibet, the Taiwanese aborigines, Han, Dai,
and Uyger. Various styles of dances include Classical, Royal Court,
Harvest Songs, and Kung Fu. Artistic Director, Josephine Louie, states,
“Cultural dances are not archaic and rigid. We are not performing the
same dances that our ancestors living hundreds of years ago did. A dance
consists of movements and styles that convey the traditions, beliefs,
and emotions of a group of people, or of a dancer at the time. Our
dances are imbued with the passion and inspiration that reflect our
current ideas and sentiment. We are interpreting cultural dances,
relating our modern experiences with those of the past. Specifically,
our dances reflect a Chinese-American experience.” This year, CCDC is
taking an innovative approach to create contemporary dances exploring
the Chinese-American experience. In Lotus Steps, 2005, CCDC will convey
the experiences of five Chinese-American stories through narration,
original orchestral music, and contemporary dance based on the various
cultural dance styles.

Lotus Steps, 2005 will be held on May 7th, 2005, 7 PM at Royce Hall.
Tickets are free of charge. Lotus Steps, 2005 will feature an entirely
innovative approach in the expression of Chinese culture by combining
various forms of performing arts into Chinese dance. Act I will present
ten traditional cultural dances from various regions of China. The
audience will experience the ethereal grace of the Lotus dance inspired
by the lotus flower as a Buddhist symbol of tranquility and harmony, the
earthy and lively temperament of the Tibetan women in the Enchantment of
the Tibetan Plateau, and the energy and passion of the high-mountain
Taiwanese aborigines of the Echoes fro Hualien. They will behold a
festival of the Uyger people, who reside in the western China bordering
the Middle East, and a rousing flag dance that conveys the jubilation of
a wartime victory. The Mongolian bowl dance will feature young dancers
aged six to nine from Families with Children from China (FCC-SoCal) will
perform a Mongolian bowl dance, and a tai chi piece will be formed along
with accompaniment by members of the L.A. Quintonix Chinese Instrument
Ensemble, including Yaoning Sun on the erhu (two-stringed fiddle),
Theresa Chen playing the guzheng (stringed zither), and Jason Wong on
the dizi (bamboo flute).

Act II, titled “America!” will present five contemporary Chinese
cultural dances accompanied by narration of the five stories that
convey diverse personal experiences of Chinese-Americans. With a
commission of an original orchestral composition written by
Chinese-American composer Alexander Lu, the act will feature the
outstanding Pasadena Young Musicians Orchestra under conductor Jo Raquel
Stoup and the award-wining South Bay Children’s Choir under director
Diane Simons. Over two hundred performers will participate in Lotus
Steps, 2005.

Act II, titled “America!” will feature five contemporary Chinese
cultural dances presenting personal experiences of Chinese-Americans.
The dances will be accompanied by the narration of the stories and by an
original five-movement orchestral composition based on the theme of
“America the Beautiful” written by Chinese-American composer Alexander
Lu, the act will feature the outstanding Pasadena Young Musicians
Orchestra (PYMO) under conductor Jo Raquel Stoup, and the award-wining
South Bay Children’s Choir under the direction of Diane Simons. PYMO is
a well-known seventy-six-member advanced-level orchestra comprised of
Southern California student musicians ages 16 to 18. The award-winning
South Bay Children’s Choir is a ninety-member group ages 7 to 17 Over
two hundred performers will participate in Lotus Steps, 2005, including
CCDC members and the guest performers.

CCDC is also devoted to outreach to youths in the Los Angeles Community
who have little opportunity to learn about Chinese cultural dance or to
attend a major dance performance. This year, CCDC has also launched a
pilot youth outreach program with the goal of increasing access to
cultural dance performances and creating opportunities to visit
institutions of higher education for disadvantaged and at-risk
adolescents. In hopes of promoting cultural diversity and providing such
youth the opportunity to come to a greater understanding and
appreciation for the message that Lotus Steps, 2005 will attempt to
convey. CCDC will hold workshops that introduce the vast number of
ethnicities in China and their various dance styles, as well as hold an
art contest for middle school youth at South Scattered Sites (SSS) and
Ujima Village Housing Developments two weeks prior to the performance
day. SSS and Ujima Village are low-income public housing units funded by
the Community Development Commission (CDC) of the Housing Authority of
the County of Los Angeles. The art works inspired by the question, “What
does being American mean to me?” will be showcased in the lobby of Royce
Hall on the performance day. A total of thirty youth who are a part of
this outreach program will attend Lotus Steps, 2005

Families with Children from China—Southern California (FCC-SoCal) have
also been faithful participants of CCDC since 2002. Adopted children
from China aged 6 to 9 come to UCLA every week to attend dance lessons.
CCDC organizes the “Big Sis – Lil Sis program” that matches one CCDC
member to a child from FCC-SoCal. The big sisters serve as mentors and
friends, providing them with academic and artistic encouragement. In
return, the Big Sisters enjoy the rewards of being a mentor such as the
warm relationship with their Little Sisters and the joy of sharing one’s
experiences. Big Sisters and Little Sisters have attended a UCLA
basketball game at Pauley Pavilion, held weekly tutoring sessions, and
held a movie night. Each year, more families from FCC-SoCal join the
CCDC family not only to learn about their heritage through dance, but
also to participate in the meaningful Big Sis – Lil Sis program.

For more information, please visit www.ccdcbruins.org or contact
ccdc@ucla.edu.

http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=23757

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channelnewsasia.com, 28 April 2005
Asian Film Archive aims to preserve regional films
By Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Thousands of people have attended the Singapore
International Film Festival which draws to a close on April 30.

But just what happens to Asian films screened at such festivals?

Film makers said more often than not, these works of art were lost due
to a lack of proper archives.

But some Singaporeans hope to change that.

Works of art like these may be appreciated by thousands at international
film festivals.

But that's sometimes the extent of their shelf life.

Filmmakers in Asia estimate that thousands of reels have rotted over the
last three decades, because of a lack of proper preservation techniques.

Amir Muhammad, Malaysian Filmmaker, said: "In Malaysia we don't really
have a film archiving system which is quite a shame because even
commercial movies made in the early 80s, some are gone forever and this
is only two decades old. So imagine things that were longer than that. I
think the same is true for the Philippines as well."

The Asian Film Archive, set up by a group of Singaporeans in January
this year, hopes to change this.

The group has tied up with the National Archives of Singapore to collect
and store 500 films from around the region by the end of this year.

In Singapore, they are also launching a Reel Emergency project which
aims to rescue as many "orphan films" as possible - films that are
critically acclaimed but lack commercial potential to pay for their
continued preservation.

The Asian Film Archive estimates that there may be more than 100 of
these films dating back to the 1930s.

Selected footage from this project will be featured at the International
Conference on Asian Cinema in September.

Tan Bee Thiam, Executive Director of Asian Film Archive, said: "With the
Asian film archive, we hope to extend the life span of such films such
that there can actually be a place where film scholars, film critics and
fellow film makers can actually have access to them, watch them again
for inspiration."

But the art of film preservation isn't easy.

Wong Wee Hon, Head of Archives Reference at the National Archives of
Singapore, said: "For a bad film, we have problems like brittle films
and films that are shrunken, so for such films, for an hour of film, we
can take two to three days to restore."

Reels must first be inspected and cleaned using special alcohol.

Then the film is spliced to join pieces that have disintegrated.

The final touch - converting film to video so that a back up copy exists
in case the reel is lost.

The restored film is kept in this room which maintains a constant
temperature of 18 degrees celsius and a relative humidity of 35 to 40
percent.

This prevents mould from growing and keeps the film in tip top condition
for decades.

Members of the public will have access to restored films at the Asian
Film Archive next year. - CNA/de

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/145030/1/.html

**********************

ucla asia institute, 4/28/2005
He Said, Chi Said: Kekexili, Letters from an Unknown Woman
by Chi Tung and Brian Hu

[image] The men of Kekexili: they don't mess around. Courtesy of
www.filmsea.com.cn

UCLA's Mainland China film series is too huge a burden for one man (or
woman) to bear. So we assigned our He Said, Chi said team to scoop two
of its heavyweight features: Lu Chuan's Kekexili and Xu Jinglei's
Letters from an Unknown Woman.

What's It All About? (A Brief Synopsis of Kekexili: Mountain Patrol)

Set during the mid '90s, Kekexili: Mountain Patrol tells the tale of the
deadly battles waged between the poachers -- who have their sights set
on Kekexili's endangered antelopes -- and the group of mountain
patrolmen who'll stop at nothing to punish them. A hotshot journalist is
employed from Beijing to join the latter group and see what makes them
tick. Thus begins a tireless pursuit for justice; in the process, lives
are sacrificed, sandstorms are braved and the boundaries of
investigative reporting are blurred forever.

What's It All About? (A Brief Synopsis of Letters from an Unknown Woman)

A man receives a batch of letters revealing that a mystery woman has
loved him all her life, and that despite embarking on several love
affairs, the man does not have any recollection of them during
subsequent encounters. What ensues is a series of flashbacks documenting
the various points in their lives which intertwined, and the woman's
lifelong quest to be loved by a man who barely knows she exists.

Chi,

In trying to do a "summation" of observations and reflections on the
first week of mainland Chinese films at the UCLA Film/TV Archive, I've
realized that the series isn't lending itself easily to a common theme
or aesthetic, which is something new in western programs of "world
cinema." I take this as a healthy sign that we in America have come to
recognize that national cinemas need not be homogenous; in fact, they
rarely are -- it's just that we're normally limited to films of a very
specific (read: eurocentric) notion of what film art ought to be. That
means that as individual critics, we need to be ever open to points of
views other than our own. As a result, I think the best way to cover
this film series is as a series of short pieces and dialogues through a
team of critics, rather than a monolithic master essay trying to control
the often dissenting voices emerging in contemporary Chinese cinema.

I want to discuss with you one trend that I have observed in the series,
embodied by Lu Chuan's Kekexili: Mountain Patrol and Xu Jinglei's Letter
From an Unknown Woman, which is the use of genre conventions to depict
"serious" issues in contemporary China and to create opportunities for
the film to be consumed by paying consumers who may not care for an
"artier" aesthetic. Lu's film can be called a thriller, but I'd rather
say that Lu mobilizes elements of the thriller in trying to draw
attention to poaching in Tibet. Xu does a similar thing with melodrama
in her film. This trend is certainly, in my opinion, a healthy one; when
I mentioned the titles to some mainland friends, they immediately
recognized them, something I can't say about Taiwanese art-cinema and
Taiwanese audiences. Just take the idea of Kekexili: we follow the true
story of an armed militia which pursues a team of antelope poachers in
Tibet. It's a fabulous concept for a film, in terms of both politics and
aesthetics, since this tale of ecological and religious pursuits
explores topics that expose how one-sided our knowledge of such issues
in China tend to be, while the blistering Tibetan sands deliver
awe-inspiring panoramas and an existential stage of human conflict. Yet,
often the thrill of the chase diverts us from the point. Worse, the
form's tendency toward good and bad binaries (despite Lu's occasional
stabs at shattering them) seems to reinforce the Han race (symobolized
by the Beijing reporter who hopes his story will "solve" Tibet's
problems) as the dominant and active force.

Telling the story through an outsider's perspective isn't inherently
wrong; however, the film, especially in its prologue and epilogue,
centers on the journalist's role in bringing justice for the Tibetans,
who never seem that interested in accepting his help. In many ways, the
Han journalist is to Kekexili as Brad Pitt is to Seven Years in Tibet: a
friendly, comforting face through which we as outsiders can enter the
film. Furthermore, my feeling is that the "based on a true story" label
(which is a staple of genre films, whereas art films have a completely
different relationship with "reality") makes the film's progressive
intentions something of a moot point: as a result of the journalist's
news stories in the late '90s, the Tibetan area was turned into a
wildlife preserve. That hardly means that China's environmental woes can
be put to rest. Sure, international viewers are now conscious of the
past ecological and religious plights to save the then-endangered
Tibetan antelopes. Now what?

Your thoughts?

-Brian

Brian,

You're right to question the disingenous premise behind Kekexili -- it's
a true story much in the same way that the Blair Witch Project and
Amityville Horror are true stories; that is, they're much more
interested in their own cinematic representation of truth (which, in the
cases of those other films, is pretty spotty in and of themselves)
rather than any real life documentation. Furthermore, if we are to
believe that Lu Chuan is trying to bring attention to a worthwhile
cause, then he, like the hapless journalist in the film, does so
unsuccessfully -- yes, many of the poachers are brought to justice, but
the patrolmen who selflessly devote their lives to protecting the
antelopes end up penniless and bereft of any entitlement. (wildlife
preserve or no wildlife preserve: show me da money.) During the Q&A
following the film (and even throughout the interview he conducted with
us), Chuan insisted that in his film, there is no clear line drawn
between good and evil -- that his presentation of both sides is a purely
humanist one. Of course, we know this not to be true; there's far too
much evidence to the contrary: the countless atrocities committed by the
poachers; their various assortment of schemes and machinations even
while being held captive. Their behavior is juxtaposed against that of
the patrolmen, who're fiercely loyal and idealistic, and who aren't
afraid to play the role of sacrificial lamb in order to assist the
collective good. As for the journalist, I do see him as a rather flimsy
narrative device -- he may think of himself as belonging in the trenches
with the rest of the gang, but in the end, he's just a wannabe do-gooder
whose subsequent reports indict the bad guys but do little to challenge
the grander scheme of things.

Having said all this -- most of which, I think is in accordance with
your opinion of the film -- I'd like to offer a somewhat different take.
I think that Kekexili is, as you and Lu Chuan described it, in many
ways, a "thriller." Only, instead of a thriller focusing on the chase
and the payoff, it's a psychological thriller with no particular agenda
in mind, except to allow us to get into the head of the captain, Ritai.
In many ways, it's your classic existential struggle -- we know
fundamentally, his intentions are noble, but there's a nagging sense of
delusion of grandeur that hints at a tortured soul, one whose lofty
ideals don't exactly transfer gracefully when placed alongside the more
practical, earthly concerns of his followers. In fact, the film reminds
me quite a bit of another excellent slab of nihilism, the criminally
slept-on Insomnia (the Norwegian original, not the Pacino/Swank/Williams
troika), which tracks a cop's increasingly wayward moral compass -- also
accompanied by sweeping vistas and maybe-symbolic-maybe-not wildernesses.

Kekexili, like Insomnia before it, is a bit of a red herring; to me,
it's not really about saving the antelopes or Tibetan virtue or even
thinly veiled social protest -- it's human imperfection and the vagaries
of our "chosen ones" teetering precariously in some alternate version of
reality. I'm aware that in suggesting this, I risk making the film sound
a little too meta and self-reflexive, but really -- its dopey afterword
notwithstanding -- any film that chooses Kekexili (literal meaning:
"beautiful mountains, beautiful maidens") as its centerpiece must be
aware of its rich symbolic connotations.

Any closing thoughts? Or are we ready to delve into our bleeding hearts
for Letters from an Unknown Woman?

-Chi

Chi,

I agree with you in a lot of ways, and I actually liked Kekexili best
when it begins to drift into existential abstraction and the
sociological and psychological ambiguities come to the surface, although
the trite ending undermines some of this complexity. That Lu could
insert such ambiguity, no matter how temporary, in the thriller form is
testament to the fact that China's "mainstream" cinema doesn't (yet)
have an institutionalized factory structure where there is no room for
experimentation. And even though Kekexili is a Columbia co-production,
evidently Lu was able to exercise some independence to make the film he
wanted to. I feel that this is a healthy balance between Hollywood and
local production for the Chinese mainstream film industry; the money
(and hence, audience) is there, but so is the possibility of some
artistic integrity. Now we only need some filmmakers who will exercise
this opportunity without resorting to petty Othering...

Letters from an Unknown Woman strikes that balance more interestingly.
While it's not a Hollywood co-production, it certainly adopts high
production values, at least for a low-budget war romance. This is a
genre with many precedents in 20th century western literature and film
(A Farewell to Arms, The End of the Affair, The English Patient,
Casablanca), and of course, Xu Jinglei's film is an adaptation of a
novella by Stefan Zweig which has famously been adapted for the screen
by Max Ophuls in the '30s. Here's a rare case of a mainstream film
(starring Jiang Wen, one of China's biggest stars) that feels completely
uncompromised. The sets and constumes don't lend easily to nostalgia,
for the camera never dwells longingly on period trinkets and qipaos. Nor
does the plot force itself into the political events (the film takes
place between 1930 and 1948) as films often do to claim cultural or
historical "authenticity." Most of all, the film proudly depicts a
female subjectivity rare in the war romance genre, which in both China
and the West tends to be written by male veterans disillusioned by
combat and women. Letters from an Unknown Woman (which the
then-29-year-old Xu directed, wrote, co-produced, and starred in) really
forces us to empathize with her romantic perspective, even though a
suspicious viewer could probably pick the romance to death for being too
packaged and insular, and too melodramatic. Sure the film is neatly tied
together in a flashback structure which ends (as we're told in the
opening) with the woman's death, but this self-contained mausoleum of
longing perfectly captures the romantic fervor within a specific time
and place.

Regarding accusations of melodrama, there's little I care to say since
it's become a dirty word and point of contestation in film and gender
studies, and there's little I could contribute that hasn't already been
said. Linda Williams argued in the '80s that melodrama isn't something
to sneer at; in fact, every mainstream Western film is melodrama.
Tackling Williams' western approach to melodrama, Chris Berry recently
wrote that current Chinese film melodrama both diverts from and draws
from western melodramatic traditions, infusing psychologically motivated
stories with a sense of Confucian ethics. It would take a closer reading
of Letters from an Unknown Woman to see in what ways it fits within
these models, although I can quickly hypothesize that Xu adopts both
western and Chinese melodramatic modes to express her very distinctly
local subjectivity. In this way, it is very similar to Fei Mu's classic
Spring in a Small Town and to a lesser extent, Tian Zhuangzhuang's
recent remake, which shares the same brilliant cinematographer, Mark Lee
Ping-bing, with Xu's film, but drops the haunting female narration
present in Fei's and Xu's films. I need to say briefly that Xu's
adaptation left me with the same sense of wonder and exhilaration I
received from Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven. I haven't yet been able to
put words to it, but there's something about these two films that is
very comfortable within earlier melodramatic traditions, yet is doing
something very hip with it; it can be both ironic and sincere in its
visual beauty, period detail, and traditional storytelling strategy. I
realize that sounds completely ludicrous without qualification, but let
me then say this: both films can be labelled as "woman's genre" films
that are built on older, disappearing genres; yet both films
unmistakably feel like the works of young directors. Is this the new,
post-modern generation of melodrama? I can't quite explain what gives me
that sensation. Maybe you can describe it better.

-Brian

Brian,

At last, the gauntlet has been thrown, and it couldn't have come at a
better time. While I agree with your assertion that melodrama -- which
Letters from an Unknown Woman undoubtedly is -- remains an expletive
among most hoity-toity film experts, I don't think it's unnecessarily
gotten a bad rap as a genre film. True melodramas -- like Douglas Sirk's
masterpieces and Max Ophuls' original version of Letters, even the
aforementioned Far From Heaven -- have been widely hailed as great art.
The problem arises when films which masquerade as something else
entirely -- any of Clint Eastwood's so-called "great American
tragedies," Marc Forster's insipid morality tale Monster's Ball -- trade
in honest, no-frills storytelling for obscene melodramatic gestures. As
for the "authentic" melodrama, I, for one, have never been lured into
its world of fussy longueurs and overdone romanticism, maybe because I
have yet to appreciate its merits from an artistic (not to mention
emotional) standpoint. However, I will say this about Max Ophuls'
original; it captures the suffering of a woman's infatuation without
making the audience suffer along with it, and also features a galvanic
performance from the doe-eyed Joan Fontaine. Xu Jinglei's remake,
although it densely reconstructs the film as a war-romance/feminist
manifesto, is too showy and self-contained to transcend its tired female
subjectivity -- we get that her kind of love is not a groovy kind of
love; it's illogical and twisted and unhealthy -- but isn't all love?
What makes hers worth 90 minutes of my time?

So that may be unduly harsh -- and it's not that I find what you termed
"hip" and radical to be stale and uninspired. (At least, not usually.)
It's interesting that you labeled the film a postmodern melodrama,
because Xu Jinglei does seem to be at least attempting such a bold
enterprise; what's up for debate is whether she achieves it or not. My
gripe is that she does in name only; her lyrical narratives reek of a
kind of bourgeois profundity -- not out-of-place given the historical
context -- but trying too hard for gravitas when mere atmospheric
longing would've sufficed.

You also waxed lovingly about the film bearing the unmistakable stamp
and swagger of a young director. Yet to me, the film's themes and the
identity of its female lead felt creaky and hamfisted; her object of
affection is not some dashing young revolutionary or mercurial dignitary
-- it's China's favorite everyman, actor Jiang Wen: a sort of poor man's
Humphrey Bogart, only without the acid wit. I realize this is precisely
the point; that a woman's sexual obsessions knows no bounds, that he
doesn't have to be Rock Hudson to provoke such adulation. But it
certainly doesn't help that the normally electric Jiang Wen is a blank
slate -- forgetful, full of cliches and virtually non-expressive --
while Xu Jinglei's unknown woman is trashy, self-loathing and
theatrical. All of which makes it sound like Letters is some hilarious
sendup of melodramatic conventions -- which it most certainly is not.
For despite trying to subvert tradition, Letters ends up very much
wearing its heart on its sleeve. The Notebook, anyone?

Until next time,
Chi

http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=23488

**********************

taipei times, Apr 29, 2005
Public art projets sensitively embrace our communities
By Susan Kendzulak, CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

When a community public art project sensitively takes on the concerns of
the local residents, the project becomes more than just decorative
baubles as in the case of the Tainan's Hai-an Road public art, which are
mainly facades of buildings painted and decorated by Taiwanese artists.

In contrast, organizers and artists of the 2nd Taipei Public Art
Festival (???????) of the Dihua Sewage Treatment Plant worked
within the local community, so the project takes on the functions of
urban renewal, historical renovation and community revitalization.

Artist Huang Tzi-chin (???) cleaned up an abandoned building at 386
Dihua St, Sec 2,Taipei, to the delight of the neighbors and shows work
that tells the history of the people who inhabit the neighborhood. On a
tiny winding street, Li Jiun-yang (?? ?) painted a mural opposite a
house where an elderly woman sat -- and still sits -- in her chair
chatting with passersby. Lin would chat with her and found out her
favorite tale was of the Monkey King, so he painted the legend on the
wall partly out of respect.

[image] A bridge can be art ... PHOTO: SUSAN KENDZULAK, TAIPEI TIMES
The famed Confucious Temple on Dalong Street now houses a controversial
installation by Chung Wen-yin (???) titled My Classroom of Grannies
Return to Frozen Moments Among Tables, Chairs. It includes hot-pink
gauzy curtains and displays photos of famous female authors such as
Eileen Chang, Simone de Beauvoir and Susan Sontag, as well as images of
local women and family members.

[image] ... As can the side of a house, with a mural by Li Jiun-yang.
PHOTO: SUSAN KENDZULAK, TAIPEI TIMES
Confucian temples are known for revering the work and achievements of
male scholars, not female ones. The director of the temple strongly
urged the artist and curator to not install the piece because she
thought it may be offensive to the regular temple-goers, since the
installation contained a heavy feminist slant with the look of a
bordello. However, the artist and curator didn't back down, and the
informative installation remains a popular and well-visited site.

Originally from Taiwan, artist and community activist Lily Yeh (???)
has been based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for decades. Her
foundation, the Village of Arts and Humanities, transformed a dangerous
inner-city park into a positive urban-renewal project of beautiful
mosaics. The Village gave hope to many people and works in Latin
America, Africa and Asia providing job training and arts education,
rebuilding and revitalizing local communities through the arts.

Yeh came to Taipei and did art workshops with students at the Taipei
School for the Hearing Impaired (???????? ?), and these workshops
will culminate in a 17m-by-17m mosaic, a huge mosaic that will require a
lot of volunteers to look at a paper grid and place the corresponding
color tiles onto one-foot squares. The remaining squares must be
finished before mid-May. The volunteer work takes place at the school at
320 Chungching N Rd, Sec 3 (?????????320?) from 6pm to

9:30pm on weekdays and from 9am to 9:30pm on weekends. If you would like
to participate in this vital community project please contact Sandy Lo
(??? ?) at sean.chang@seed.net.tw.

Lo represented Taiwan as one of the curators of Shanghai Cool, which
recently ended at the Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art. The
exhibition included curators with their selected artists from Japan,
China and South Korea. For Lo's section titled Pop Pill, she included
pop manga artist Hung Tung-lu (???), who recently moved to Shanghai,
and Taipei-based Channel A, a group that includes Lin Hongjohn.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/04/29/2003252460

**********************

richmond news, April 28, 2005
Generations of raw talent
By Michelle Hopkins

[image] Acting director of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts,
Hsiao Ming-Hsiang (left), and art critic Charles Liu ready for tonight's
opening of Place/Displace: Three Generations of Taiwanese Art. Julie
Iverson/Richmond News

The black and white images of naked men, headless or limbless, some
carrying disjointed limbs, are raw and disturbing.

"The artist, Chen Chieh-Jen, is making a bloody and violent political
statement about the Ching Dynasty era," says international artist,
curator and art critic Charles Liu, who has brought the travelling art
exhibit Place/Displace: Three Generations of Taiwanese Art to the
Richmond Art Gallery.

Both of Chen's pieces, "A Way Going to an Insane City" and "Image of an
Absent Mind" - which are images created by computer graphics using
historical pictures - are reflective of his personal review and
criticism of the political upheavals of the times.

"Many of the artists' works, such as Chen's, let the past and the
present converse and contrast by themselves," says Liu.

The works of the 24 artists chosen for the exhibit honour Taiwan's rich
history as it carries thousands of years of Chinese heritage, as well as
a legacy of Japanese, European and American influences, explains Liu.

"In 100 years, Taiwan transformed from a closed society with a lot of
government control to a more democratic one, rich and more open,"
explains Liu, noting the importance of bringing this exhibit to North
America. "This transformation is revealed in these works of art."

The 47 pieces include calligraphy, ink painting, colour-glue painting,
oil painting, avant-garde installation art and video art, and the
artists, representing three generations, range in age from 20 to 98
years old.

Liu points to the early works of 98-year-old Chen Houei-Kuen, saying
they depict a Taiwan full of energy and vitality. The two landscape
paintings, both done in the late '60s, are infused with colour and
natural beauty, showing a picturesque side of the country.

"He is from the first generation of Taiwanese artists to study Western
art," says Liu. "He studied in Japan, and it was there that he began his
lifelong love of landscape painting."

Chen is more willing to get rid of those heavy burdens of history and
focus on the interpretation of paint language.

Meanwhile, the acting director of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine
Arts, Hsiao Ming-Hsiang, who is also responsible for bringing the works
to Canada, says the exhibit is a chance to show the world the pedigree
and development of three generations of Taiwanese artists.

"With a more distant perspective, people can witness the contrast and
conversation going on between history and present," says Hsiao, through
interpreter Susan Chang. "To examine the duality of Taiwanese art ... is
the purpose of this exhibition."

And that explains the title of the exhibit - Place/Displace - which
pertains to the twin insights of Taiwanese art, namely, to the
perseverance and changeability, deep-rootedness and the hard-earned
respect that artists have achieved.

"Following the opening of society and the deepening of democracy,
Taiwanese art is a process of deconstruction and rebirth," says Hsiao.

In celebration of Asian Heritage Month, the Richmond Art Gallery
presents Place/Displace: Three Generations of Taiwanese Art.

Richmond is the only Canadian stop in this year-long travelling exhibit.

http://www.richmond-news.com/issues05/044205/entertain.html

**********************

gaycitynews, Volume IV, Issue 17 | April 28 - May 04, 2005
Waifs Adrift in a Romance
Kim Ki-duk’s latest film breaks new ground for director awash in controversy
By STEVE ERICKSON

[image] Jae Hee, as Tae-suk, and Lee Seung-yeon, as Sun-hwa, play a
nomadic couple exiled by the violence directed at her by her husband.
(Woo Jong-il)
Last year, Kim Ki-duk’s Buddhist allegory “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…
and Spring” became the most popular South Korean film ever released in
the U.S. Its 2.4 million-dollar gross wouldn’t make James Cameron
jealous, but it did far better than more populist Korean genre fare.

Its success has pissed off quite a few people, particularly among Asian
cinema’s gatekeepers. British critic and film festival programmer Tony
Rayns laid the gauntlet down in the November/December 2004 issue of Film
Comment, calling Kim “the overrated poster boy.” While making many valid
criticisms of Kim’s work, especially its sexism, Rayns coyly alluded to
Kim’s sex life and pointed out that his films haven’t been commercially
successful in Korea––as though that were a genuine strike against
them––all in a nastily snide tone.

The entire article is permeated with the attitude that Rayns is the only
man who can save Western audiences from being duped by this fraudulent
impostor. Despite being a Caucasian Englishman, he’s apparently the
arbiter of Asian authenticity. His piece triggered much discussion on
blogs and on-line message boards, most of it more gentlemanly and
nuanced than the article itself, and responses in other magazines as well.

Critics of “3-Iron” have accused it of ripping off Taiwanese director
Tsai Ming-liang’s 1995 “Vive L’Amour.” The two films share a propensity
for silence, a character who breaks into apartments and a few moments of
physical comedy. However, the influence of Wong Kar-wai’s “Chung King
Express” is felt at least as strongly, particularly in the notion of a
“burglar” cleaning an apartment rather than stealing from it. The
central couple in “3-Iron”is a pair of mute outcast lovers who would
have fit snugly into Takeshi Kitano’s “Dolls.”

Ultimately, Tsai’s sensibility is far from Kim’s. The characters of
“Vive L’Amour” live under a severe emotional repression lifted only in
its final scene, while those of “3-Iron,” even if they rarely speak, are
much more capable of expressing their feelings, often through violence.
I can’t imagine Tsai including any scenes of two lovers tenderly kissing
to piano music.

Homeless, Tae-suk (Jae Hee) spends his days looking for empty houses to
live in for a day or two. He puts up flyers in the doors, venturing into
places where they haven’t been removed. He never steals anything. In one
house, he watches and finally meets Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon), a victim
of violence at her husband’s hands. After a period of initial wariness,
the two fall in love. When Sun-hwa’s husband tries to rape her, Tae-suk
grabs a 3-iron golf club and pelts him with balls. He runs away with
Sun-hwa, continuing his nomadic lifestyle but trying to provide for her.

Kim Ki-duk is clearly fascinated by violence against women. In “Bad
Guy,” made in 2001 but released in the U.S. a few months ago, the
implausibility of the plot, in which a college student who falls in love
with her pimp after being forced into prostitution, was exceeded only by
its brazen misogyny. “3-Iron” is more palatable and complex.

In Kim’s world, men are brutish predators and women the victimized prey,
sometimes willingly. Golf is a symbol of male aggression. Even Tae-suk
injures a woman, albeit inadvertently. He and Sun-hwa are both abused
waifs. At one point, they even sport matching bruises. Their
relationship has a real give-and-take, with Tae-suk taking on most of
the chores. He suffers a great many blows, while Sun-hwa knocks the
glasses off her husband’s face. The startling ending, which preserves
Kim’s politically incorrect reputation, is unlikely to please feminists,
but as sexual politics go, “3-Iron” is a vast improvement over his
previous films, even the comparatively gentle “Spring, Summer, Fall,
Winter… and Spring.”

Kim is working with characters whose precursors can be found as far back
as silent cinema. The young Lillian Gish could have played Sun-hwa. Much
like Kitano’s “Dolls” and “Hana-bi,” his film’s apparent austerity
offsets its underlying sentimentality. Beneath the surface, “3-Iron” is
a melodrama, but it’s also filed with an uncanny sense of domesticity’s
weirdness. That’s its most strikingly original quality. The
cinematography is tinted a slightly unnatural green.

Of course, Kim’s too perverse to imagines bliss without some major
caveats or to come up with easy solutions for his characters’
predicaments. Still, “3-Iron” suggests that he might be a romantic at
heart, even if “Bad Guy” made his notion of love seem ridiculous and
oppressive. If Kim is guilty of bad faith, it’s not because he borrows
all his ideas from “Vive L’Amour.”

“3-Iron” is a well-crafted but somewhat generic Asian art film, full of
commonly used tropes like framing characters in a doorway. Kim is
talented enough to pull it off. In fact, its look is quite striking.
However, it feels custom-designed for film festivals. In fact, there’s a
cozy familiarity to it, more akin to a Hollywood romantic comedy than
the genuinely groundbreaking work of directors like Tsai, Wong and Kitano.

Does the nastiness of “Bad Guy” and “The Isle” or the exoticism and
Buddhist chic of “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring” represent
the real Kim Ki-duk? His filmography is too large to draw easy
conclusions, and most of it has never been shown in the U.S. For the
space of one film, at least, he’s made a touching love story that brings
a new vitality to its well-worn tropes. The poster boy has finally
earned his praise.

http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_417/waifsadriftinaromance.html

__________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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