ISSN 1717-9559
Keyword Category : Asian Cinema
Abbas Kiarostami Anthony Wong Category 3 Chinese Cinema Dariush Mehrjui Fantasia Hideo Nakata Hong Kong Cinema Hong Kong Festival Hou Hsiao hsien Hou Yong Im Kwon Taek Indian Cinema Iranian Cinema J Horror Jackie Chan Jafar Pahani Japanese Cinema Johnny To Kenji Mizoguchi Kim Ki Duk King Hu Kiyoshi Kurosawa Kore Eda Hirokazu Korean Cinema Lee Kwongmo Mohsen Makhmalbaf Nakagawa Nobuo Okuzaki Kenzo Pang Brothers Park Ki Hyung Pink Cinema Puppetmaster Ritwik Ghatak Satyajit Ray Shin Sang Ok Sion Sono Sogo Ishii Stanley Kwan Stephen Chiau T.F. Mous Taiwan Cinema Takashi Miike Tony Rayns Tsai Ming Liang Wong Kar wai Zhang Yimou
1.
An genre analysis of Park Chan-Wook's particular brand of film thriller.
2.
Author Guan-Soon wrestles through the virutes and ambiguities of Zhang Yimou’s Hero, a film which, according to Guan-Soon, negotiates between a Hollywood style blockbuster and a culturally savvy Chinese martial arts epic.
3.
In-depth review of the Fantasia International Film Festival's first DVD release, a compilation of outstanding shorts shown at the festival over the past several years.
4.
An in-depth interview with one of the driving forces behind the promotion and critical appreciation of Asian cinema, Tony Rayns.
5.
A report on the 2006 installment of the Vancouver International Film Festival, sorting out what author Archibald feels is the ossification of a common arthouse aesthetic.
6.
An interview with director, cast and select production people of the refreshingly original indie horror film, Shallow Ground.
7.
Rist celebrates the Honk Kong Film Festival as it celebrates its 30th Year Anniversary.
8.
A report on Fantasia Film Festival 2006, discussing issues related to form-content, style for style's sake, and short films featuring man eating cats.
9.
An interview with the director of Strange Circus and The Suicide Club, Sion Sono.
10.
A report on the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, concentrating on the feature fiction films.
11.
A report on the 10th Year Anniversary of Fantasia, focusing on films featuring particularly nasty male pyschos.
12.
A review essay of Dai Sijie's France-China production of Sijie's own novel, set during China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Author Garrett analyzes (among other elements) how, during one of the darkest periods in China's cultural history, great art (much of it destroyed as part of the 're-education' program) survived through the perseverance of the human spirit.
13.
An in-depth book review essay of Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy, the fascinating first hand account about some of the more prominent members of China's Fifth Generation filmmakers, written by a professor from the Beijing Academy, Ni Zhen.
14.
A review of the final Merchant-Ivory film, The White Countess, “a high-brow romance drama without romantic love.”
15.
An in-depth analysis of the representation of women in contemporary Iranian cinema.
16.
This essay examines Mohsen Makhmalbaf's intertextual use of Rumi's famous poem The Three Fish in his early third phase film, Time of Love.
17.
A somewhat irreverent, insightful analysis of two recent female-centered Iranian documentaries, The Ladies Room and Iranian Journey.
18.
An exploration of the art of fight choreography as defined by wuxia pan master King Hu.
19.
An overview of all the best of Canadian, American, and International cinema screened in Montreal during 2005.
20.
A report on the 29th International Hong Kong Film festival.
21.
An inside look at one of the more intriguing film festivals in North America, the Telluride Film Festival.
22.
Report on the 19th Leeds International Film Festival,
23.
An in-depth report on the Fantasia International film festival, with a focus on the Thai films, the shorts, and some impressive US films.
24.
Writer Randolph Jordan weaves through a thematic pattern of pregnancy/death/rebirth which left its mark on FanTasia 2005.
25.
Montreal's animator/filmmaker Rick Trembles interviews the living legend of fantastic cinema, stop-motion animator extraordinaire, Ray Harryhausen.
26.
An interview with the director of the indie reality-based melodrama (in the good sense) Firecracker.
27.
An interview with director Tomoko Matsunashi on her film The Way of the Director.
28.
An in-depth interview with Brazil's horror master Jose Mojica Marins.
29.
A report on La Cinémathèque's major retrospective of the works of Malaysian-born Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang.
30.
A look back at one of Makhmalbaf's most important mid-career political films, Marriage of the Blessed.
31.
A look back at some Iranian shorts and a feature documentary which have an element of reflexivity which is common to most Iranian cinema.
32.
In October 2004 New Zealand held its first ever Korean Film Festival in Auckland, not only revealing that Asians have other pastimes than boy racing, kidnapping, and pouring their money into the NZ education system, but also showing how one small country has turned its film industry into a force to be reckoned with on the global scene.
33.
As I said in my most recent Fantasia International Film festival report, the director of “Bottled Fool”, Hiroki Yamaguchi, is a good bet to become the next big thing out of Japan. After making a prize winning short in 1999 at the age of 21 (“Shinya Zoki”/“Midnight Viscera”) he soon completed his first feature film in the same year, “Hateshinai tameiki” (1999).
34.
On the occasion of Fuon (The Crying Wind, Japan, 2004, 106 mins.) showing in competition at the 2004 Festival des Films du Monde (World Film Festival), in Montreal, the director of the film, Higashi Yoichi, along with principal actor, Uema Muneo, and Yamagami Tetsujiro, the film’s producer were interviewed by Peter Rist for Offscreen.
35.
A study of two recent art house films (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Father and Son) which feature male relationships at their emotional center.
36.
Part-two of Fantasia Festival report.
37.
Fantasia is back after a one year hiatus, stonger than ever.
38.
Festival report which covers events from 2002 to 2004.
40.
Writer Rist concentrates on the Asian offerings at the 27th edition of the WFF.
41.
Randolph Jordan stretches his writer's arms in his two-part Fantasia 2003 report, using part one to reflect on cult cinema spectatorship.
42.
Jordan uses part two of his report as an extended mediation on Fantasia (and Jordan) favorite Takashi Miike.
44.
In September 2002, at the Toronto International Film Festival, I was very pleased to meet Cheng-Sim Lim, the Head of Programming at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, who told me she was curating a series of films celebrating the history of Chinese Martial Arts on film!
45.
The long wait is over. After a one year hiatus for economic and logistical reasons, the FanTasia International Film Festival is back (July 17-August 10, 2003).
46.
Director Teruo Ishii was a featured director at the 5th Udine Far East Film Festival. Curti analyzes Ishii's ero-guro (erotic-grotesque) cinema.
47.
A round-up of some of the best from one of the more interesting National cinemas of the past few years.
48.
An in-depth DVD review of Wakamatsu's seminal Roman Porno film.
49.
A round-up of some of the best from one of the more interesting National cinemas of the past few years.
50.
Active before and after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, writer-director Bahram Baizai is an important figure of Iranian cinema. Yet he has yet to receive the awards and accolades of his contemporaries, like Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Panahi, and Majidi, at least not in the West.
51.
Boistered by a half-year sabbatical, Peter Rist was a man on a mission, and watched over 250 films on the big screen in 2002. Rist gives us an idea about what makes Montreal one of the best cities in North American for the discerning filmgoer, and how it can be even better.
52.
A recurring element that struck me during the 2002 Festival International Nouveau Cinéma Nouveaux Medias’ and which I have decided to use as my anchor for this report, is the fragmented narrative, and/or the anthology or omnibus format. Many films at the FCMM were structured using this time honored tradition. Films covered in this report include 11’09’’01, Ten, Gambling, Gods and LSD, Dolls, and Elsewhere.
53.
As an invited guest to Pi-Fan, Professor Rist was asked to share his knowledge of King Hu to interested observers. Offscreen extends the privilege to its readers.
54.
Iranian cinema once again leads the way at the Montreal World Film Festival.
55.
Hospitality Korean style makes Professor Rist's first (and certainly not last) trip to Pi-Fan (5th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival) an event to remember.
56.
Vesia offers a culturally based analysis of the Gangster film, Hong Kong style.
57.
Often overlooked in action cinema, the art of choreography gets its due. Includes an interview with Hong Kong choreographer Loon Sheng.
58.
Kudos to Columbia-Tristar for their continued excellence in Asian DVD's.
59.
Professor Peter Rist visits and revisits one of the most exciting Film Fests anywhere.
60.
Perhaps still an appendice to the mega-Just For Laughs Comedy Festival, the new programming crew are out to make a mark.
62.
Sándor Lau treats us to coverage of New Zealand's wackiest and most challenging festival
63.
Firstrun Features does an admirable job with the DVD transfer of Dariush Mehrjui's excellent Leila.
64.
Although there is a fear among film purists where digital revolution is concerned, those of us who study film are more often inclined to acknowledge the benefits of digital technology. For such reasons as the recent DVD-Rom entitled Masterpieces of Silent Japanese Cinema.
65.
Part two of Randolph Jordan's coverage of Montreal's FCMM Festival International Nouveau Cinéma et Nouveaux Médias.
66.
Randolph Jordan summarizes Fantasia 2001 in light of the tragic event of 9/11, an event which may perhaps change how reality-based violence is treated in films and other forms of entertainment.
67.
Fantasia, in its 6th year, continues to grow and mature as an important and eclectic film festival.
68.
Offscreen welcomes Randolph Jordan with his first of a two-part festival report on Fantasia 2001.
69.
Part two of Peter Rist's critical assessment of Iranian films that played at the most recent of the major Montreal film festivals.
70.
An in-depth festival report on the fifth installment of the Fantasia Film Festival (2000).
71.
The first of a two-part critical assessment of recent Iranian cinema seen through the eyes of Montreal film critic and film professor Peter Rist.
72.
One of the grand masters of contemporary cinema visits Montreal. Read an exclusive interview here at Offscreen.
73.
Interview with Republic of Korea director Park Ki-Hyung on his smash debut horror hit Whispering Corridors (1998).
74.
Another edition of the FCMM has come and gone, and I can not remember an edition which featured as many programmers and organizers brimming with perennial smiles.
75.
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is an impassioned cinema verite-styled account of the one-man wrecking crew/dissident Okuzaki Kenzo, an ex-Private of the 36th Engineering Corps who fought in the West Pacific during World War 2. Read review of recent book on the film.
76.
What happens when Hollywood begins to copy Hong Kong, and Hong Kong begins to copy Hollywood?
78.
Read here about The 24th International Hong Kong Film Festival.
80.
An in-depth interview with the director of the smash horror hit series Ring.
81.
The 1st AmérAsia International Film & Video Festival (Dec. 3-Dec.12, 1999) is following a fairly recent Montreal trend in Asian themed film events, but differs in its slant.
82.
An in-depth historical analysis of pre-Revolution Iranian cinema.
83.
The continual blur of Montreal Film festivals does not allow the seasoned filmgoer much chance to breathe, let alone contemplate each individual festival within the city’s cinematic global whole.
84.
During the 1999 Fantasia Film Festival Montrealers were “graced” with the presence of Grace Quek (alias Annabel Chong), in town promoting a documentary about her life entitled SEX: The Annabel Chong Story, directed by Canadian filmmaker Gough Lewis.
85.
From May 19th to May 30th Montreal will host an historically important cultural event when The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and IITS at Concordia University in association with Ciné-Asia present the film series: Chinese Cinema: 1933-1949.
86.
Sopyanje is a stirring Korean style road movie that weaves emotive Korean folk music (Pansori) and pastoral landscapes with a powerful plea for Korean identity.
87.
Getting an interviewing with Zhang Yimou is difficult. Even in my hometown Beijing, I felt he was harder to reach than he was in Montreal last winter.
88.
No one to be Missed, which in Zhang Yimou's words is one of my best movies, deals with a rural town's school drop-out problem. Zhang Yimou is a director known for having excellent work relations with his film crew.
90.
Korea was the spotlighted nation at the 1998 Montreal World Film Festival (August 27-September 7). One of the nine Korean films featured was Lee Kwangmo's Spring in my Hometown , a poignant story about the effects of the Korean War on two neighboring families in a small village in South Korea.
91.
In its 27th version, the International Festival of New Films / New Media in Montreal took a leap forward by returning to its roots. In shifting focus from the carnival-like elements that have predominated since the festival's move to a summer venue and back to the programming, the festival again filled its important niche on the Montreal festival landscape.
92.
Interview conducted by Donato Totaro, Mitch Davis, and Jason J. Slater in Montreal, Canada during the 1999 Fantasia Film Festival. Photos taken by King-Wai Chou.
93.
Interview conducted by Donato Totaro, Mitch Davis, and Jason J. Slater in Montreal, Canada during the 1999 Fantasia Film Festival. Photos taken by King-Wai Chou.
94.
The extreme levels of violence found in Hong Kong and Japanese films confounds many Western viewers because Western culture, unlike most Eastern cultures, tends to moralize violence. Read on for a cultural contextualisation of violence Asian style.
95.
For the second year in a row, Le Festival des Films du Monde is putting the spotlight on a country in which the cinema is at the heart and soul of its nation's culture.
96.
Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival returns for its third successful year, presenting challenging Asian and International films. Read here for in-depth converage of Montreal's most popular (populist?) film fest.
97.
The following essay will demonstrate how The Puppetmaster is one of the purest Bergsonian films ever made.
98.
“I have selected fifty films that are my choices for the best films to have competed at Cannes.”
99.
The Untold Story: Bun Man is a cracker of a serial killer film, Hong Kong style.
100.
The first Korean film I saw was Im Kwon-Taek’s Adada (1987) at Montreal’s World Film Festival in August, 1988. But, with virtually no coverage of Korean cinema in the English language, nothing had led me to expect that Adada would be such an interesting work, thematically, stylistically, and in its narrative content.
101.
Early in 1997 the CCA (Cinémathèque Canada) ran a near complete retrospective on Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
102.
In 1996 James Quandt, programmer for the Cinematheque Ontario in collaboration with the Audio-Visual Division of the Japan Foundation,Tokyo organized the film series, Mizoguchi The Master.
103.
Having seen only three of the 60 plus films directed by Sang-Ok it may be premature to start tossing out superlatives, but his films seen at the recent Cinematheque Canada’s (CCA) Three Korean Master Filmmakers series represent one of the major international cinema revelations of recent years.
104.
The two great pillars of Indian cinema, Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, made remarkable, though considerably different, films in 1958: The Music Room and Ajantrik.
105.
In “Asian potpourri”, the adventurous reader will find a series of loosely connected reviews of films from Iran (from this past year's Festival of International Cinema and New Media) and Central Asia.
106.
There is no doubt about it, Asian cinema is hot, hotter and hottest on the International film circuit. Montreal, always on the vanguard where foreign film is concerned, has caught the bug.
107.
The Asian Cinema Studies Society held its fifth biennial Conference for the first time ever in Canada. The result was a hotbed of wide-ranging activities and academic pursuits from scholars across the world.
108.
The whirlwind that was Fant-Asia has come and gone, leaving in its wake some 70,000 spectators and a trail of cinematic blood and bullet-ridden body parts.
109.
The affable, soft-spoken Nacho Cerda is perhaps not what you'd expect from the director of one of Fant-Asia's most notorious films, Aftermath. But perhaps after reading this interview with Cerda you may feel that there is certainly more than meets the ...
110.
A Gun for Jennifer is a ballsy, energetic feminist revisionist take on the traditionally male revenge action film. After a successful festival run, it has seen comparisons to such female revenge films as Ms. 45 and Thelma and Louise, though...
111.
The inimitable Richard Stanley's films thus far include the cyper-punk cult science-fiction film Hardware (1990), the poetic experimental documentary on the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Voices of the Moon (1991) and the oneiric horror film...
112.
Fantasia ’97 promises to be as spectacular as last year’s edition, Montreal’s first festival of commercial (Fantasy and Action) Asian cinema, Fantasia, which was arguably the city’s most popular film festival of all time.
113.
I'm writing this nine days into Fant-Asia , Saturday the 19th, and one thing is clear, any doubts the organisers may have had concerning year two can rest in peace: the fest is a success far beyond their wildest dreams.
114.
The Love God is easily one of the most wildly inventive, original American genre films of recent years.
115.
After wishing to visit the city since childhood, I finally got the opportunity in 1997 to attend what is probably the best of the Asian film festivals and perhaps the finest non-competitive film festival anywhere in the world, the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF).
116.
Lucio Fulci's archetypical Italian zombie epic The Beyond plays at Fantasia in a pristine 35mm print.
117.
Last summer’s surprising smash-hit festival Fant-Asia is back with the same look, location and principal organizers, but with an added International component.
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