Cine-East: New East Asian Cinema
a Spring 2008 film series at Duke University
"Six evenings of great films from and about China, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea -
everything from classic melodrama to historical documentary, from epic war films
to
rock & roll schoolgirls, from dynamic animation to the ultimate in outrageous action-comedy!"
Films will be screened in the Griffith Film Theater
in the Bryan Center on Duke's West Campus,
or the Physics Building on West Campus,
or the East Duke Building on East Campus,
and are free and open to the general public.
Sponsored by
the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute
and the Film/Video/Digital Program
with support from
the Dept. of Asian & African languages & Literature
and the Center for International Studies
Th 1/24 East Duke 204B (7pm) |
The Housemaid (Hanyo)
-- Followed by a Q&A with Prof. Kim Soyoung!
(Ki-Young Kim, 1960, 90 min. Korea, Korean, Black and White, DVD)
A consensus pick as one of the top three Korean films of all time, Kim Ki-young's masterpiece The Housemaid occupies a place all its own within Golden Age Korean cinema. A domestic thriller that builds in intensity right up until its startling resolution, the film doubles as a manic tour-de-force and a cutting satire of the aspirations and values of modern society. With inspired editing and a restless camera (not to mention that famous bottle of rat poison), Kim gradually heightens the sense of tension and claustrophobia, creating scenes of startling intensity. The performance he draws out of young actress Lee Eun-shim as the housemaid (the woman on the far left in the photo above) is unlike anything else shot in Korea in that decade, or indeed ever since. ** Followed by a Q&A with visiting professor/filmmaker Kim Soyoung! **
2/4 *Physics 128* (7pm) | Special Event
Screening with S. Korean filmmaker Kim Soyoung!
{Location: Physics building room 128 - parking available in Bryan Center garage}
Visiting scholar and filmmaker Kim Soyoung will screen the first 2 parts of her celebrated “Women’s History Trilogy”: Koryu: Southern Women/South Korea and I’ll Be Seeing Her: Women in Korean Cinema.
Koryu: Southern Women, South Korea
(Kim Soyoung, 2000, 76 min., S. Korea, Korean with English subtiltes, Color, DVD)
Koryu: Southern Women/South Korea addresses specific issues surrounding women's modes of expression and existence in both pre-modern and modern Korea. The film also follows the lives of several women to construct a complex and multiple portrait of women's lives as diasporic, or koryu: temporary living in an alien land – women living in man's land.
and
I’ll Be Seeing Her: Women in Korean Cinema
(Kim Soyoung, 2003, 51 min., S. Korea, Korean with English subtitles, Color & B/W, DVD)
I'll Be Seeing Her is a documentary on women in Korean cinema that deliberately eschews the traditional modes of documentary filmmaking. It manipulates and selectively re-presents the images of women in the Golden Age of Korean cinema (1950s-1960s), blending realistic and fantastic modes of presentation, while celebrating the women both on the screen and in the theaters of those times.
-- Followed by a Q&A with director Kim Soyoung!
About the director:
Any discussion of Korean film study would be lacking without mention of Kim Soyoung. As the head of the Department of Cinema Studies in the School of Film and Multimedia at the Korean National University of the Arts, she stands out not only as a scholar providing challenging theoretical analyses of Korean film but also as a successful filmmaker and feminist activist in her own right. Her impact extends also to the numerous women she has instructed who are now working in various roles (directors, producers) within the modern Korean film industry. Her books include Specters of Modernity: Fantastic Korean Cinema; Kim Soyoung's Film Reviews; Cinema: Blue Flower in the Land of Technology. She served as editor of Cine-Feminism: Reading popular Cinema. She has also published several essays in Anglophone journals or books. Her film works include Koryu: Southern Women/South Korea (2000), I'll Be Seeing Her: Women in Korean Cinema (2002), and new women: her first song (2004).
Kim Soyoung is very active as an international editor, film archivist, and festival curator. She has been a major factor in bringing international attention to such neglected directors of previous generations as Kim Ki-young (The Housemaid/Hanyo) and restoring critical respectability to many films of the late 1950s and early 60s. She has also played an important role in getting prominent film scholars, curators, and critics from other nations in both Asia and the West to include Korean films in festivals and to write about them.
Related Event:
Tu 2/12 Griffith (7pm) |
Buffalo Boy
-- Special screening with director Minh Nguyen-Vô!
(Minh Nguyen-Vô, 2004, 102 min, Vietnam, Belgium, France, Vietnamese, Color)
A teenager coming of age in Vietnam in the '40s is faced with new challenges and troubling news as he asserts his independence in this drama. Kim (Le The Lu) is a 15-year-old living in a rural area where a six-month rainy season causes frequent flooding, threatening the lives of the water buffalo which are crucial to the livelihood of the farmers.
Eager to prove himself, Kim is given the important task of leading two buffalo to higher ground by his father Dinh (Nguyen Huu Thanh), but the flooding proves to be more than Kim counted on, and he returns with the news that one of the animals died during the journey.
After an angry confrontation with Dinh, Kim strikes out on his own and goes to work for a farmer named Det (Kra Zan Sram), while striking up a friendship with Ban (Nguyen Thi Kieu Trihn), a woman who works with Det. Kim and Dinh resolve their differences shortly before Dinh's passing, but now Kim must deal with the responsibilities of burying his father and the startling revelation that his mother is not who he believed she was.
Minh Nguyen-Vô presents this mythic tale with indelible images of the majestic and sacred buffalos charging through flood waters contrasted with the solitary rower gliding through the waters, each representing opposite phases of the spiritual and moving journey.
** Top Prize, New Director's Competition, 2004 Chicago Film Festival
** 2004 Locarno Film Festival
** 2005 Toronto Film Festival
** 2005 Vietnamese Film Festival
** 2005 Bangkok Film Festival
-- Followed by a Q&A with director Minh Nguyen-Vo!
About the director: Nguyen-Vô Nghiem-Minh grew up near an American Air Force base, in a rural area of Vietnam, during the years of the Vietnam War. His parents operated a one-room cinema, and the boy grew up with movies that provided both a means of escape, from the violence of the war, and a window to the world. Nghiem-Minh studied engineering in France and earned a PhD in applied physics from UCLA in 1984, where he developed a special interest in the interaction between light and sound in physics. This led to studies in cinema and new media at UCLA. He directed Crimson Wings (1999), a short film, and Places and Times, a travel documentary. The script for Buffalo Boy, based on short stories Nghiem- Minh remembered from childhood, was selected by IFP/West Screenwriters Lab 2000. Buffalo Boy is his first feature film.
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, the Vietnamese Students Association, the University Writing Program, the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, and the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature.
W 3/5 Griffith (7pm) |
Letters from Iwo Jima
-- Introduced by screenwriter Iris Yamashita, with Q&A to follow!
(Clint Eastwood, 2006, 141 min, USA, English, Japanese, Color, 35mm)
The island of Iwo Jima stands between the American military force and the home islands of Japan. Therefore the Imperial Japanese Army is desperate to prevent it from falling into American hands and providing a launching point for an invasion of Japan. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi is given command of the forces on the island and sets out to prepare for the imminent attack. General Kuribayashi, however, does not favor the rigid traditional approach recommended by his subordinates, and resentment and resistance fester among his staff. In the lower echelons, a young soldier, Saigo, a poor baker in civilian life, strives with his friends to survive the harsh regime of the Japanese army itself, all the while knowing that a fierce battle looms. When the American invasion begins, both Kuribayashi and Saigo find strength, honor, courage, and horrors beyond imagination.
Clint Eastwood’s companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers presents a powerful and artistic rendering of the events leading up to the Battle of Iwo Jima. A sympathetic portrait of the Japanese soldiers who fought to defend the island from U.S. Marine Corps, the film has earned Eastwood universal praise for de-mythifying the often sanctimonious portrayal of war combat while sensitively evoking the experiences of an American foe.
-- First-time Japanese-American screenwriter Iris Yamashita joins us to discuss her adaptation of Tadamichi Kuribayashi’s first hand account of the epochal event.
F 3/21 East Duke 204B (8pm) |
Tsui Hark’s The Warrior (animated)
("Tiger" Fu Yan and Chen Yue Hui, 2006 88 min, Hong Kong, Cantonese, Mandarin with English subtitles, Color)
The legendary Tsui Hark (Seven Swords, Zu Warriors) returns to the wonderful world of animation after his acclaimed A Chinese Ghost Story with this dazzling feature, based on the Wong Fei hung character from Tsui's famous Once Upon a Time in China film series! Wong must save the world from falling into a catastrophe when an evil spirit is unleashed by foreign enemies determined to conquer China. With amazing animation in the style of Miyazaki and wonderful fights choreographed by Tsui himself, the warrior is an eye-popping kung fu fantasy adventure for both fans of animation and martial arts alike!
W 3/26 Griffith (8pm) |
Linda Linda Linda
(Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005, 114min, Japan, Japanese, Color, 35mm)
Four schoolgirls put the axiom "the show must go on" to the test in this rock & roll teen comedy drama from Japan. Nozumi (Shiori Sekine) and Kyoto (Aki Maeda) are two friends who attend the same high school and have decided to put together a rock band to play the school's talent show. Things are going well until two days before the show, when the group's lead guitarist quits for fear of breaking her fingernails and the singer walks due to lack of interest. Determined to make a showing one way or another, Nozumi takes over as bass player, Kyoto becomes the group's drummer, and their pal Kei (Yu Kashii) is drafted as lead guitarist, even though keyboards are her first instrument. Needing a singer, the girls literally take on the first likely candidate who crosses their path. However, the new vocalist turns out to be Song (Doona Bae), a Korean exchange student who not only hasn't sang before, but has only the most rudimentary command of Japanese. The girls give themselves the goal of being able to play "Linda Linda Linda," a hit for the Japanese pop-punk band the Blue Hearts, in time for the show, but is there any way Kei and Song can overcome their steep learning curve? Linda Linda Linda received its North American premiere at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival.
W 4/16 Griffith (8pm) |
Kung Fu Hustle
(Stephen Chow, 2004, 95 min, China, Cantonese, Mandarin, Color, 35mm)
-- Experience the mayhem on the big screen, in 35mm!
Stephen Chow's follow-up to Shaolin Soccer ups the over-the-top action quotient by about three zillion percent. The story is set in 1930s Hong Kong, with Chow as a shaggy-haired, would-be bad guy named Sing, who gets caught up in the middle of a war between the top-hat-wearing Axe gang and the hard scrabble inhabitants of Pig Sty Alley. Chow--who wrote, produced, and directed--doesn't step in as the star here for quite a while, letting the comic duties fly in a myriad of directions: a landlady in curlers (Yuen Qiu) has a yell that can flatten buildings; people get kicked across courtyards and through walls; musician assassins whip ghost sabers from lyre strings, and a mental patient in pink flip-flops named "the Beast" (Leung Siu Lung) catches bullets in his fingers.
Buoyed by Soccer's box office success, Hustle uses bigger production values and a dizzying amount of CGI-enhanced martial arts (imagine Bruce Lee vs. Bugs Bunny in The Matrix). It's full of references to other films and filmmakers, revering spaghetti westerns and '70s Shaw brothers movies a la Tarantino's Kill Bill (fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping worked on both films). It also pays sly homage to the works of Wong Kar Wai, D.W. Griffith, Sam Raimi, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and Akira Kurosawa. Raymond Wong's inspired score matches each cinematic reference with the appropriate cue as the camera circles and swoops around the sprawling sets.
This is a real treat, more than a great action film or comedy, it's a great film period, and one that set box office records in the East!
Have questions about our schedule? Contact Hank Okazaki at hokazak@duke.edu