Tag: news

Le Moulin (Huang Ya-Li, 2016) out on Blu-ray and DVD

Just a quick post to share my excitement for a new home video release. I found out only a few days ago that from last June Le Moulin, one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in recent years, is available for on DVD and Blu-ray. The movie, directed by Huang Ya-Li, is a complex and fascinating exploration of the first Taiwan’s modern poetry group, Le Moulin Poetry Society, active in the island during the 1930s, when Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule. You can read my piece on the movie here.

Le Moulin was made available in Taiwan by Fisfisa Media, but it comes with English, Traditional Chinese and Japanese subtitles, for more details on the technical aspects of the DVD and Blu-ray, please check the YesAsia page, where you can also order the movie.

I haven’t had the chance to check the DVD/Blu-ray yet, but it is nice to see that it also comes with a booklet of essays written by relatives of the Le Moulin poets and literary figures.

I will update this post once I get the release.

Best documentaries of 2017

Although I saw fewer documentaries released in 2017 than I wanted, this was for me the year of the box-set (Wiseman, Rouch, etc.), there were a couple that really impacted and resonated with me for long time, and others that, for various reasons, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed discovering.
It might sound tautological, but it is always better to clarify: this is the list of my favourite non-fiction movies, thus it reflects my taste in documentary and it’s very partial.

Outstanding works:

Also Know as Jihadi (Eric Baudelaire)
An homage to and partially a remake of Adachi Masao’s A.K.A. Serial Killer. Baudelaire’s finest work to date.

Letter #69 (Lin Hsin-i)
My fascination with the works of this young Taiwanese artist continues. read more

Machines (Rahul Jain)
You can read my review here

Rubber Costed Steel (Lawrence Abu Hamdan)
Short but powerful, thematically and aesthetically.

Honorable mentions:

Sennan Asbestos Disaster (Hara Kazuo)
Hara is back after more than 10 years with a work about the legal battle between the Citizen Group for Sennan Asbestos Damage and the Japanese government.

Ex-Libris: New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)
Not my favourite by the American legendary director, but Wiseman is Wiseman.

Donkeyote (Chico Pereira)

A Yangtze Landscape (Xu Xin)

Dislocation Blues (Sky Hopinka)

Turtle Rock (Xiao Xiao)
A soothing and beautifully shot documentary set in a remote village in China, the black and white photography reminded me of Lav Diaz.

Special (re)discoveries:

The Mad Masters (Jean Rouch, 1955)
Whatever it is, docufiction, ethnofiction, problematic documentary or theatrical exploitation, it’s a powerful and raw punch. Masterpiece.

Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Abbas Fahdel, 2015)
Probably the best documentary I’ve seen in 2017.

A House in Ninh Hoa (Nguyễn Phương-Đan &. Philip Widmann, 2016)
You can read my review and interview with the director here.

Beirut Never More (Jocelyne Saab, 1976)
Jocelyne Saab was one of my cinematic discoveries of the year.

Yamagata City designated UNESCO Creative City of Film

The city of Yamagata has just been designated as member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for the field of Film, the first in Japan, joining other 116 existing member cities around the world.

As the readers of this blog have heard and read ad nauseam, the city is the place of the oldest, and arguably the most important, documentary film festival in the Asian continent, a place I had the pleasure of visiting several times in the last decade.

It goes without saying that this is great news for the festival and the city itself, and, as many commentators have pointed out, the congratulations should go first and foremost to the people of Yamagata, the volunteers and all the people involved, to one degree or another, in the organization of the festival.

Knowing how much Japanese people
Continue reading “Yamagata City designated UNESCO Creative City of Film”

Documentaries at the London Korean Film Festival 2017

The London Korean Film Festival has opened its 12th edition last Thursday and will run in the capital for two weeks, from November 10th through the 19th the festival will then go on tour around the UK, touching Sheffield, Manchester, Nottingham, Glasgow and Belfast.
In addition to showcasing a wide-range of titles produced in the Asian country, there will also be masterclasses, talks and collateral events, a special occasion for the British audience to get a glimpse of South Korean cinema and film culture in general. This year line-up includes not only UK and European premieres, animations, classics, shorts and indies, but also a fascinating focus on Korean Noir, “Illuminating the Dark Side of Society”, and, of particular interest for this blog, a program dedicated to documentary.

The first movie presented will be Two Doors (2012) directed by Kim Il-rhan and Hong Ji-you, a documentary investigating the the Yongsan Disaster, when in January of 2009 a sit-in rally in central Seoul resulted in the deaths of five protesters and one police officer. While Two Doors focuses more on the legal aspects of the tragedy, amassing documents against the violence used to prohibit the demonstration and the sit-in, The Remnants  (2017) is about the personal tribulations and the legal problems that some the people who took part in the demonstration had to go through in the seven years after the tragedy. The movie was directed by Lee Hyuk-sang, who was also creative director behind Two Doors, and the festival has organised a special conversation with the director on November 2.
Goodbye my Hero (2017) by Han Younghee, a movie addressing labour relations and workers’ rights in contemporary South Korea, and Park Kyung-hyun’s Dream of Iron (2017), a film essay about the development of the steel industry in the country during the 1960s, will complete the section.
The ‘Women’s Voices’ s section includes also a documentary, Candle Wave Feminists (2017) by Kangyu Garam, a movie that delves into the revolution that led to former prime minister Park’s impeachment and her spiritual mentor Choi Soon-Sil’s arrest.

All the documentaries will be screened this week starting from tomorrow, October 31st.

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Retrospective of Taiwanese documentary cinema at the Jihlava International Doc Film Fest

Since the discovery of Le Moulin two or so years ago, non-fiction cinema in contemporary Taiwan has been one of my main cinematic obsessions and a research interest that drove me to explore the flourishing documentary scene of the island. This year edition of the  Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (October 24-29) is currently holding a retrospective on Taiwanese documentary from 1937 to 2014 titled Transparent Landscape: Taiwan, a program that presents 25 Taiwanese documentaries from the period, according to the festival “the historically most comprehensive showcase of Taiwanese documentary cinema ever”.  I won’t be able to attend it, but, it goes without saying, it’s an event I’m highly interested in and I hope a catalogue will be published, here the press release:

The section will include some of the most important works of Taiwanese independent filmmakers. Allowing a glimpse into Taiwan’s complicated historical-political development, these films offer significant insights into different periods of recent Taiwanese history.
The earliest Taiwanese documentaries are the 8mm ”home videos“, shot by photographer DENG Nan-guang in the 1930s. They realistically portray scenes of daily life under Japanese occupation, such as life and work along the Tamsui river and family outings. The recently restored short The Mountain by Richard Yao-chi CHEN (1967) will be presented outside of Taiwan for the first time. Other representative works from the1960s, are the films by renowned director BAI Jing-rui and photographer ZHUANG Ling. In this decade, only government-commissioned propaganda films could be produced, but with their creative ingenuity, those filmmakers still managed to convey the lives and thoughts of ordinary people.
The Green Team, the most important non-mainstream media in the period prior to and after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan (1987), will also be represented by two important productions. The Green Team documented many social movements and protests that took place on Taiwan’s road to democracy in the 80s, and their images eventually became weapons against the authoritarian state. There are obvious connections with the situation in Czech society in the late 80s before the collapse of the Soviet regime.
Apart from its focus on history, Transparent Landscape: Taiwan also pays tribute to the experimental spirit of Ji.hlava IDFF. By showcasing aesthetically experimental, creative films, traditional expectations on documentaries are challenged. The selection includes several masterpieces, such as works by internationally renowned artist CHEN Chieh-jen, photographer CHANG Chien-chi, the first Taiwanese to become a member of Magnum Photos, and YUAN Goang-ming, the pioneer of video art in Taiwan.
This comprehensive retrospective also includes early documentaries by the leading figures of Taiwanese cinema, such as CHUNG Mong-hong, WU Mi-sen, HUANG Ting-fu and others. Beginning from the 90s, they used experimental vocabulary to explore the boundaries of documentary filmmaking. Even today, their films are regarded as avant-garde filmmaking, no matter if they deal with aesthetic conceptions or with human problems.

You can find the complete program here, and more information about documentary in Taiwan on the TaiwanDoc page.

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Kobe Discovery Film Festival 神戸発掘映画祭 2017

A new beginning for the Kobe Documentary Film Festival. From this year the annual event held at the Kobe Planet Film Archive since 2009 will change its name and concept into Kobe Discovery Film Festival (神戸発掘映画祭). The renaming reflects a shift of the festival’s focus from documentary to film and moving image preservation and restoration, and the (re)discovery of less known movies from the past, something on the lines of what, with great success, Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna has been able to become in recent years. I really like the idea, because I think that in an era like the one we live in, when digital images are produced, consumed and binged frenetically every day, going back to the dawn of cinema and exploring the fringes of film culture is a refreshing and re-balancing practice, especially in Japan.

The festival, although it is more a cinematic event organized in four days than an actual film festival, is also an opportunity to reflect on the importance of cinema archives in the contemporary mediascape, it may sounds tautological, but Kobe Planet Film Archive before being a theater is first of all, well, an important film archive.

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The first edition of the Discovery Film Festival will take place from November 23 to 26 and is divided in six sections.
Amateur cinema discovered: home movie day, with screening of 13 Japanese short movies made in prewar Japan during the 1930s (there’s even a colour film, 兵隊と花), is an interesting occasion to get a glimpse of the everyday life in Japan in a period when the country was rapidly changing (mainly for the worst).
100 years of animation in Japan is dedicated to celebrate the early animations made in the country, divided in three sub-sections the program will present early examples of amateur experimental animation and silhouette animation, and some early works from the 1920s, including  An Old Fool (のろまな爺, 1924) by Ōfuji Noburō, rediscovered by the Planet Film Archive itself few years back. In the program also a couple of works recently discovered (sorry I don’t have the English titles): HOT CHINA　聖林（ハリウッド）見物, マンガ　空中凸凹拳闘 (1941),  カテイ石鹸 (an advertisement made in 1921) and 小人の電話 (1953).
The latest digitized films is a program that will showcase an interesting selection of movies recently digitized from 35mm prints, otherwise impossible to screen, by the Kobe Design University, while Selected by Planet will present a bunch of movies from its archives, including The Peerless Patriot (国士無双, 1932) directed by Itami Mansaku (father of Itami Jūzō), and the 1950’s 海魔陸をいく (no English title) by Igayama Masamitsu, a film between documentary and narrative cinema similar, as far as I know, to the works of Jean Painlevé.
A special screening of the color (Konikolor) version of A Jazz Girl is Born (ジャズ娘誕生, 1957) by Sunohara Masahisa, shown last year at Il Cinema Ritrovato, and a series of 8mm experiments by musician and filmmaker Mori Ari will conclude the festival. You can find the entire program (in Japanese) here.

The idea and the concept behind the Kobe Discovery Film Festival are really promising, also considering the important position of Planet Archive in preservation and restoration in Japan, and I whish the organizers the best of luck.

Yamagata 2017 – day 5 (finale)

October 10th

My last day in Yamagata. The festival will officially wrap up in a couple of days, but there are only a few screenings left and the main part of the festival ended de facto today. It would be a good idea if the organizers could spread the movies a bit more, as the festival is designed now, everything tends to be concentrated during the long week end (Friday to Monday) when film buffs from other part of Japan visit Yamagata.

In the morning I saw Genet in Shatila (1976) by Richard Dindo, long time ago I read the book the movie is based on (Four hours in Chatila) and it was a pleasure to rediscover its poetry and Jean Genet’s attachment to the Palestine cause. The second movie of the day was Here and Elsewhere by J.L. Godard and J.P. Gorin, a turning point in Godard’s career because it trailblazed and anticipated an approach towards the image and the use of it and many stylistic elements that would fully thrive and bloom in his next movies, culminating with Histoire(s) du Cinéma.

The last movie I saw at the festival was The Targeted Island: A Shield Against Storms by Mikami Chie. Although the movie is shot like a TV documentary and I have some other issues with it, it ends with the most powerful final scene I’ve seen in Yamagata this year, a very young female protester and a very young policeman facing each other in silence under the rain. Breathtaking.

I guess that’s all for this year in Yamagata, the festival is always a special experience, even though keeping the quality of the movies selected high is becoming every time more and more difficult.
I’d like to give special thanks to all the people (directors, critics, scholars, film lovers and volunteers) I met and I discussed with during these five days, it has been an enriching experience.

Yamagata 2017 – day 4

October 9th

Today I had to write an article for Il Manifesto about the Politics and Film: Palestine and Lebanon 70s–80, so I could not see as many movies as I’d have liked to. Anyway, the first work of the day was Tremorings of Hope by Agatsuma Kazuki, a movie depicting the struggles of the people of Hadenya, one small community in Miyagi prefecture, to rebuild their lives after the tsunami completely erased their town. It was as I expected, not a bad movie but nothing exceptional or new, definitely too long though.

The only other movie I had the time to see was Once Upon a Time in Beirut: The Story of a Star by Jocelyne Saab, a complex interweaving of history and history of Lebanese cinema through the personal and fictional gaze of the director. A mesmerizing, tragic and fun film composed by images taken from Lebanese and not Lebanese movies of the first half of the 20th century. The icing on the cake was a Q & A with Saab herself via Skype.

Yamagata 2017 – day 3

October 8th

In the morning I attended the screening of my favorite documentaries by Satō Makoto, Self and Others and Memories of Agano, the latter just confirmed its powerful impact it has every time on me and its endless rewatchability. In the afternoon the panel with Mark Nornes and Akiyama Tamako, Satō Makoto Seen from Abroad, was very enriching from many different points of view and it cemented my belief that Satō, especially at the end of his career, was more in tune with the international context that the Japanese one.

I also had the chance to catch up with Ex Libris—The New York Public Library by Frederick Wiseman, not my favorite of his works perhaps, but still a compelling documentary masterfully constructed. I feel it’s a very American film, all his works are “very American” of course, but this one, just my opinion, can be appreciated more by people who live or have lived in the U.S.

The two night screenings were really different, both experimental, but one a complete let down (Hurrahh! by Jung Jae-hoon) and the other a small and unexpected jewel of a movie. Rubber Coated Steel by Lawrence Abu Hamdan mixes video art, documentary and a strong political stance like few other works have been able to do recently. Time permitting, I’ll write something in the near future.

Yamagata 2017 – day 2

October 7th

Yamagata is a special film event not only because is a filmfest devoted to documentary, but also because is a place where you can meet and talk with a variety of different people. One of the highlights of the first two days for me was the nice and eye-opening conversation I had with Matsumoto Masamichi, Athénée Français Cultural Center’s director, about Carmelo Bene, his cinema and his Terayama Shuji-like status in Italy and France.

For the morning screening of my second day at the festival, I chose In Memory of the Chinatown by Chen Chun-Tien, a movie that confirmed my idea that the Taiwanese documentary scene is at the moment one of the most intriguing and alive in Asia, particularly for its tendency to hybridizing genres and experimenting with form.

My afternoon screening was Sennan Asbestos Disaster, the latest movie by Hara Kazuo and the first one he shot, for a theatrical released at least, in a very long time. The viewing experience was one of the best I had so far in Yamagata, because I was sitting among the people appearing in the film, those affected by the asbestos pollution. Their comments and laughing aloud during the screening made it a really touching experience.

The last screening of the day I attended was dedicated to the short experimental films made by the late Matsumoto Toshio. The selection included

Mona Lisa, Atman, Everything Visible Is Empty, White Hole, Relation and Sway. Seeing them on the big screen and in 16mm was amazing, especially Atman was a hallucinatory trip. The screening was followed by a talk by Takashi Ito, who explain his relationship with Matsumoto and revealed some interesting and unknown fact about Atman (the diagram for shooting the movie designed by Matsumoto looked like a mandala, the person wearing the hannya mask was in fact a mannequin and the movie was shot using infrared film).