This time between the “Western holidays” (Christmas, New Year etc.) and the Mother of all Chinese Holidays, 春节, has been fraught with changes, stalled projects, snow, worrying about calamities both in China and abroad, new friends, and 太多的咖啡，香煙，和啤酒。In the midst of all this strange limbo between festivals, I’ve been rather absent on the interwebz. Fear not, here are some interesting links to tide you all over while I’m busy figuring out my life and buying fireworks for the impending New Year.
Some menacing work from NeoCha
–> NeoChaEDGE is an amazing, bilingual Chinese design and art website that I’d heard about from several sources, but never really checked it out until Mike sent me the link. It’s a website devoted largely to Chinese designers and graphic artists, but also reports on music, performance, and other aspects of the offbeat or underground art world. It’s definitely a unique interactive site to see artists who didn’t necessarily come straight outta 798 or 莫干山路 and represent a more independent slice of the Chinese art world.
More work from NeoCha
–> This band, La Loupe, consists of some new American friends who rock out folky tunes (often featuring my second favorite* instrument, the melodica!) with Chinese lyrics. They have a small, but awesome following in Beijing and are a little Dean & Britta-esque in their compositions and overall vibe. Really catchy songs, the music is simple and witty.
–> This is just absurd. Welcome to our scary world.
–> Last but not least, check out my girl Tao Yang being a total expert on Chinese independent film all over the news–holla! Tao Yang was interviewed for a Chicago news station about film festivals and the direction of Chinese film and aced it fabulously.
*after the glockenspiel, of course
This entry was written by , posted on January 22, 2010 at 12:04 am, filed under adventures, art, beijing, chinese, film, music, news and tagged beijing, chun jie, dean & britta, la loupe, neocha. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
How high? ShangHAI!
Having never been to Shanghai before and eager to escape the Eskimo’s meat locker that is Beijing, I was thrilled when my friend Tao Yang invited me to wayfare around Shanghai for the weekend. We’ve walked miles around the old city, eaten the most unbelievable soup dumplings, and taken the requisite pictures in which Pudong Tower appears to be growing out of our heads (coming soon…).
As they say in Shanghai, 生活蛮好。 Life is pretty darn good.
oh RLY?! (lolz, by the way. Serious lolz.)
What I find so thrilling about Shanghai, apart from its reasonable temperature and welcome walkability, is the amazing cinematic quality of this city. Maybe it’s because my associations with Shanghai are all from movies (Admittedly, this is case with most places. My entire geographic knowledge of LA is based on the conversation Cher and Josh have in the car in Clueless.), but Shanghai’s reputation as a historic, romantic, dramatic city becomes strikingly apparent as you stroll through the old city. Shanghai has a charm (no matter how reproduced or manufactured, in some cases) that is rare in Beijing and the crowds of moter-bikes, low, stacked houses, and sprawling courtyards are more vivid and visual than any cinematic simulacra.
This Zhou Xuan is not the same as that Zhou Xuan…
This is a total film nerd’s dream*: We’re staying right on Suzhou River, have seen the Paramount Theater where the stars of the 1930s and 40s flocked, the 新世界 signs of old Shanghai, and seen the old gongyu (apartment) of many a famed Shanghai star, including Zhou Xuan. (It’s right beside the old residence of Eileen Chang, FYI. In case you were, you know, really curious about the proximity of residences of, like, famous Chinese women from the 40s involved in the arts…)
Zhou Xuan is looking fierce.
Maybe we’ve lucked out with exceptionally sunny weather, but the light has been soft and beautiful and hits the river and peeks through the clothes hanging out the dry everywhere in an incredible way. I’m certainly no photographer or cinematographer, but I’m all swoony over this light.
It’s all very touristy and fun and the perfect city for a bunch of cinephiles to go roaming around in.
*Okay, a Chinese film nerd, probs. On that note, I am totally missing meeting Jia Zhang-Ke by being here in Shanghai this weekend. I’m trying not to think about it.
This entry was written by , posted on November 22, 2009 at 7:09 am, filed under Uncategorized, adventures, art, chinese, film, style, travel and tagged chinese cinema, shanghai, suzhou river, zhou xuan. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Further dispatches from the Hawaii International Film Festival:
HIFF is renowned for its promotion of Asian-American films, as well as American indies with Asian content, and this year’s selection is quite exciting. Two films that have impressed me in particular, both of which have also getting (well deserved) mad awards and press on the festival circuit this year–Made in China and Children of Invention.
Made in China is not, as the title immediately suggests to many people, a profoundly depressing documentary about Chinese factory workers (!!!), but rather a hysterical American-produced comedy about an oddball American entrepreneur on the loose in Shanghai.
Following his lifelong dream to invent novelty products in the tradition of Groucho glasses and slinkees, Johnson (Jackson Kuhne) travels to the motherland of all knick-nack production: good ol’ Zhongguo. What ensues is an always entertaining, often sweet, incredibly original film and one of the most unique American indie comedies I’ve seen in a long time. I may be a teeny tiny bit biased, since this film is about an American (yep) who travels to China (ah-huh) to start a business (mm-hmmm) and encounters a bizarre, inexplicable, frustrating, but sometimes magical world (yeeesh) and I can identify with the story just a smidge, but this is genuine and funny story that also sheds great light on the perils and pitfalls, but also triumphs, of life in China.
The film definitely has the stamp of an American indie comedy, but doesn’t lose itself in superfluous quirkiness. The film has was a huge hit at SXSW this year, winning its Grand Jury prize, which is super exciting for the film and especially for first-time director Judi Krant.
On the other end of the American indie spectrum is Children of Invention, a moving film that shows the American neo-realism movement at its very best. Directed by Tze Chun, the film tells the story of Raymond and Tina, two Chinese-American children who have to fend for themselves when their single mom, Elaine (Cindy Cheung, fragile and startling as a woman who struggles to keep her family afloat) finds herself trapped in a dangerous marketing scam. The film is certainly socially conscious and a powerful immigrant story, but it also shows great heart and prowess as a cinematic work. I was deeply impressed by Tze Chun’s ability to coax such confident and honest performances out of Michael Chen and Crystal Chiu, the respectively twelve and eight-year-old actors who play Raymond and Tina. Children of Invention has had an amazing festival run this year, from Sundance to winning the Puma Emerging Filmmaker award here at HIFF
Children of Invention has definitely garnered comparisons to So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain, which was released earlier this year. While the content of the two films is somewhat similar (both present partially autobiographical accounts of Asian/Asian-American siblings abandoned and left to their own devices), I was more struck by the similarities of each film’s calm, graceful pacing and assured storytelling. This films beautifully embody not only the current American neo-realism movement, but also the sophistication and global awareness of today’s American indies.
Seeing MIC, Children of Invention, and even Treeless Mountain, and meeting the fantastic director, producers, and actors who worked to make these films so compelling, gives me enormous faith in the future of American indie cinema. The remarkable ingenuity of these films more than makes up for their minimal budgets and I find it fitting that both the films incorporate themes about invention and innovation. Just as MIC’s Johnson longs to be a novelty inventor and Children of Invention’s Raymond and Tina make and sell toys and inventions to finance their dreams, so do these filmmakers who, even when the odds are stacked against them, rely on great invention and improvisation to create great work.
This entry was written by , posted on October 22, 2009 at 6:41 pm, filed under Uncategorized, adventures, art, film, travel and tagged children of invention, hawaii international film festival, hiff, judi krant, made in china, treeless mountain, tze chun. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
According to a whole hell of a lot of Chinese people, Gasp (气喘吁吁) is pretty much the worst movie ever made. (Clearly, these people have never seen He’s Just Not That Into Making The Stupidest Movie Ever.)
I, and approximately…one other person think that Gasp is on the of the most original, compelling Chinese movies this side of a ten minute Jia Zhang-Ke tracking shot. (No offense to good ol’ JZK, but this is a new kind of Chinese movie!)
Sure, it’s slightly rude and vaguely surrealist in a way that is totally unappealing to epic-loving Chinese audiences, but Gasp tackles some of the weightier issues of modern urban life in China with an incredible style and humor, even irony, rare to contemporary Chinese filmmaking.
The film tells the story of Frank (John Savage), a dopey Texan hit hard by the recession who travels to Beijing in hopes of selling his family cheese company to a Chinese investor. In Beijing, he encounters an outrageous cast of characters, from Mr. Lee (Ge You, one of the most famous comedians in China, for whom this movie represents a Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine-like leap), a business man in a serious life crisis, to aspiring starlets, lunatic business people, and a strange host of expats. Set almost entirely within Beijing, Gasp (directed by Beijinger Zheng Zhong, who penned 2004’s also-controversial, also-surrealistic Baober In Love) is political, timely, culturally significant, but it also succeeds on a much higher plane–it’s the first Chinese movie I’ve ever seen that is able to comment on the fact that China is such a totally bizarro place.
With a formal style that shows Beijing through Frank’s boggled, often baijiu-addled eyes, the film is spliced, diced, and often utterly baffling. Through jump cuts galore and strange slices of story, we see Beijing and all its denizens as complicated, miserable, ecstatic, hungry–a range of bizarre moods and appetites in this bizarre city. Chinese audiences may not like Gasp for the very reason I like it so much: it embraces China as an disjointed pastiche of old and new, an unresolved society with quirks and flaws to play with the best of ‘em. The film lacks a linear narrative structure, it jumps around and confuses–much like life in this and any city.
Gasp is part of a new generation of Chinese films that subscribe more to genre than previous generations and this comedy takes its humor like I take my coffee–black, black, black. There are some terrifically funny moments in the film: a model learns that she’s been hired only to showcase only her more…bulbous physical attributes, an African-American expat teaches Ebonics to a group of eager young Chinese, as well as a lot of Lost In Translation-style misunderstandings and mistranslations. That being said, this film may garner comparisons to Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation as a stranger-in-a-strange (Asian)-land story, but Gasp achieves what Coppola could not–a real attempt to understand China, beyond the facade of strange and different. Zheng Zhong is clearly influenced by a lot of global cinema, but think Jarmusch-style sensibility rather than the muted crises of Sofia Coppola’s work.
This film may resonate with me and not with Chinese audiences for several reasons–I’m an expat living in Beijing, I like weird films, I’m not easily offended by criticisms of China (or even the US, for that matter), but I think that this is, by and large, a film that will be mostly appreciated by a foreign, non-Chinese audience. Gasp is window into a China we’ve never seen on-screen before, a China that embraces style and wit and all the contradictions that make this place what it is.
The film isn’t perfect and does feel too fragmented and frantic at times, but it is also daring and original. The film also features a pretty badass soundtrack by Howie B and some incredible art direction and costume design, which can ice over even a crumbly film. It is my fervent hope that Gasp will be seen by an international audience some day and provide a jump-cut-laden, non-linear window into one of many crazy Beijing stories.
Trailer (no subtitles, but little dialog) can been seen here.
This entry was written by , posted on October 2, 2009 at 12:19 am, filed under art, beijing, film, style and tagged beiing film, beijing, film, gasp, zheng zhong. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
This week marks the Manhattan Short Film Festival–a festival that allegedly screens the ten best short films in the world, all over the world.
On Tuesday, the Beijing Film Festival is hosting the Beijing branch of the Manhattan Shorts at Yugong Yishan (愚公移山) off the Zhangzizhonglu (张自忠路) subway station. The ten films this year promise to be fantastic and come from the US, Sweden, Mozambique, France, Australia, Italy, Spain, the UK, and Israel. At least three of the directors of this year’s shorts are female, which is (as sad as this is…) a pretty decent percentage in the world of film-making.
A still from 'Plastic,' the short from Australia
So, if you’re in Beijing next week, come by Yugong Yishan at 7pm and check out the shorts! If you’re…almost anywhere else on the globe, find a location near you and check them out anywhere. Aaaah, the beauty of globalism.
This entry was written by , posted on September 19, 2009 at 5:11 am, filed under beijing, film, news and tagged film, manhattan shorts, shirt film, yugong yishan. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The Setting: Chaoyangmen area of Beijing–a bigger, scarier midtown-on-steroids kind of area. The future home of Zaha Hadid’s big bulbous behmoth SOHO compound, which you know is going to wake up in the middle of the night and have a transformers-like pimp battle with Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV building.
It’s a motherfucking walk-off.
But I digress…
The action: I stand before the Chaoyangmen subway station, waiting for a woman named Sophia. Yesterday, I responded to an ad on beijinger.com: Need femail assistant. Speak good English. Fillm Company. Today, I am waiting for Sophia, whomever she may be, to take me to the company office and meet the manager. I have no further details.
This all sounds incredibly foolish on my part, but let me rationalize. If the company is, in fact, a Fillm Company, but produces perhaps not the kinds of films intended for a public viewing audience, I can detect that pretty quickly and bolt. If Sophia is planning to sell me into slavery, prostitution, or any other form of non-consensual labor, she probably wouldn’t have asked to meet me at 10:30 in the morning outside one of Beijing’s busiest subway stations. Just to be on the safe side , I keep a look out for slowly-moving white vans. In any case, I’m looking for a part time job that isn’t teaching English and this is one of the few offers I’ve seen to that effect.
Sophia finally shows up with a confused-looking Russian woman who wears sheer white stockings beneath her lime green sandal wedges. As we follow Sophia through throngs of business people, I ask the Russian girl if she knows anything about the job, which she doesn’t, but she seems nice enough and doesn’t give off a strong hooker vibe, so I keep going. We finally arrive at a tall office building and climb (ascend, more like) to the eighteenth floor, where I am asked to wait in an austere lobby while the Russian girl and Sophia meet with this mysterious manager. I search for signs of where I might be, but there are no literal or figurative signs. There are several well-dressed young Chinese people working in the office and though none of them offer any hints, one brings me a paper cup of warm water. I sniff the cup for poison or roofies, even though I don’t know what poison or roofies smell like or even if they can be detected as such.
this is one of the photos you get if you image search "chinese actress"
Finally, Sophia returns with the Russian girl and waves me down a hallway. Before I go, I ask the Russian girl, “How was it?
“Normal,” she replies, and exits. Thanks.
Inside the conference room are three women, one of whom is extremely thin and pretty in the delicate, fragile kind of way that Chinese go crazy for. They invite me to sit and down and introduce myself. I do so in pathetically halting Chinese, since I’ve inferred that none of them speaks any English. I’ve finished my introductory monologue and still don’t know what job I’m interviewing for. “So, what project is your company working on now?” I ask, so as not to seem totally idiotic. The pretty girl speaks up, “Don’t you know that the job is to be my personal assistant?” Ummm…no.
this, too, with the hat.
So, it turns out this girl is an actress/model who needs an English-speaking PA to wait on her hand and foot, which is not exactly what I bargained for…although it would have been ridiculous of me to have any expectations at all. I finish out the interview with Chinese-approved smiling and nodding and am finally escorted out by Sophia. “I think they like you because you speak Chinese very soft like a child and you are American person. You are good for job. I call you.”
Before leaving, I ask Sophia the name of the actress. “I don’t know,” she giggles.
tang wei is cool, but she is not the person who interviewed me
So….that was my morning. I just found out it’s a really bad idea to google “Chinese Actress,” unless you’re looking for porn or an interesting, spiky new hairdo, so the whole thing remains an odd mystery.
To be continued…?
This entry was written by , posted on September 15, 2009 at 6:01 am, filed under adventures, beijing, film and tagged cctv, chaoyangmen, rem koolhaas, wtf, zaha hadid. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
because i just bought all these dvds for under 20 dollars:
(to be sung to the tune of notorious): CRITERION
and the icing:
wong kar wai box set bch plzzzzzzz.
THAT IS ALL. NERDS OUT.
This entry was written by , posted on September 12, 2009 at 7:57 am, filed under film and tagged criterion collection, dvd, godard, suck it. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.