Week 11, March 20th

Asian and Third World Cinema Eastern Europe

Readings: Thompson & Bordwell, Chapter 18 Postwar Cinema beyond the West pp 391- 414; Chapter 25 New Cinemas and New Developments: Europe and the USSR since the 1970’s pp 605- 632; Chapter 26 Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa since the 1970’s pp 633–648.

Screening:

Rashomon (1950) and Ran (1985); Akira Kurosawa; “The man who left his will on film” (1970) Nagisa Oshima; Yellow Earth (1984) Chen Kaige; Farewell my Concubine (1992), Chen Kaige; Red Sorghum (1988) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991) Zhang Yimou. A Short Film about Killing (1988) Krzystof Kieslowski; Three Colours: Blue (1993); White (1994) Red (1994) Krzystof Kieslowski

Japanese Cinema

Jidai-geki historical films

Gendai-geki contemporary films

Influence of

Kabuki

Noh Drama

Japanese painting

Akira Kurosawa 1910-1998

Influence

The first Japanese film director to win international acclaim, with such films as Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Kagemusha (1980), and Ran (1985).

• Rashomon (1950) won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, and an Academy Award for best foreign film

Seven Samurai. (1954)• Dersu Uzala (1975) • Kagemusha (1980) • Ran (1985) Oscar. Another 25 wins & 15

nominations

“Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script ["Rashomon"] portrays such human beings - the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave - even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unscrolled and displayed by the ego." (from Something Like an Autobiography by Kurosawa)

Ran (1985) 160 min

The story was inspired by Samurai legends of the daimyo Mori Motonari, as well as on the Shakespearean tragedy King Lear.

'Ran' is the Japanese word for chaos, riot, dissension.

Japanese Sengoku-era warlord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) abdicates to his three sons, and the two corrupt ones turn against him.

Major themes

Ran is “a relentless chronicle of base lust for power, betrayal of the father by his sons, and pervasive wars and murders that destroy all the main characters.”Stephen Prince The Warrior's Camera. Princeton University Press 1999: 284

A warning to the destructive power of war.

Despotic power leads to self-destruction.

War

"When I read that three arrows together are invincible, that's not true. I started doubting, and that's when I started thinking: the house was prosperous and the sons were courageous. What if this fascinating man had bad sons?"—Akira Kurosawa

War 2

All the technological progress of these last years has only taught human beings how to kill more of each other faster. It's very difficult for me to retain a sanguine outlook on life under such circumstances." — Akira Kurosawa

King Lear

“What has always troubled me about 'King Lear' is that Shakespeare gives his characters no past. ... In Ran, I have tried to give Lear a history." — Akira Kurosawa

In place of Lear’s daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, Lord Hidetora has three sons, Taro, Jiro, and Saburo. In both, the warlord foolishly banishes anyone who disagrees with him as a matter of pride — in Lear it is the Earl of Kent and Cordelia and in Ran it is both Tango and Saburo.

King Lear 2

The conflict in both is that two of the lord's children ultimately turn against him, while the third supports him, though Hidetora's sons are far more ruthless than Goneril and Regan. Both King Lear and Ran ultimately end with the death of the entire family, including the hapless Lord.

Characteristics

• Visually expressive• Slower pacing• Somewhat didactic… & moralistic • Mood and atmosphere heightened with

Sentimentality occasionally evident• Action and dynamic use of cinematography• Theatrical traditions of noh (No) drama and

kabuki plays.

The Chinese “3 Cinemas”

The history of Chinese-language cinema has three separate threads of development:

• Cinema of Hong Kong

• Cinema of China

• Cinema of Taiwan.

Origins

Motion pictures were introduced to China in 1896. The first recorded screening of a motion picture in China occurred in Shanghai on August 11, 1896, as an "act" on a variety bill. The first Chinese film, a recording of the Beijing Opera, was made in November 1905.

1st ‘golden period’ of Chinese cinema

However, the first truly important Chinese films were produced beginning in the 1930s, with the advent of the "progressive" or "left-wing" movement, like 's Spring Silkworms (1933), Sun Yu's The Big Road (1935), and Wu Yonggang's The Goddess (1934). These progressive films were noted for their emphasis on class struggle and external threats (i.e. Japanese aggression), as well as on their focus on common people, such as a family of silk farmers in Spring Silkworms and a prostitute in The Goddess

The 2nd Golden Age, late 1940s

The film industry continued to develop after 1945. Production in Shanghai once again resumed as a new crop of studios took the place that Lianhua and Mingxing had occupied in the previous decade. In 1946, Cai Chusheng returned to Shanghai to revive the Lianhua name as the "Lianhua Film Society."This in turn became which would go on to become one of the most important studios of the era, putting out the classics, (1948), The Spring River Flows East (1947), and Crows and Sparrows (1949).[

The Communist era, 1950s-1960s

The number of movie-viewers increased sharply, from 47 million in 1949 to 415 million in 1959. Movie attendance reached an all-time high of 4.17 billion entries in that same year. In the 17 years between the founding of the People's Republic of China and the Cultural Revolution, 603 feature films and 8,342 reels of documentaries and newsreels were produced, sponsored mostly as Communist propaganda by the government

Cultural Revolution

During the Cultural Revolution, the film industry was severely restricted. Almost all previous films were banned, and only a few new ones were produced, the most notable being a ballet version of the revolutionary opera The Red Detachment of Women (1971). Feature film production came almost to a standstill in the early years from 1967 to 1972. Movie production revived after 1972 under the strict jurisdiction of the Gang of Four until 1976, when they were overthrown.

mid-late 1980s

Beginning in the, the rise of the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers brought increased popularity of Chinese cinema abroad. Most of the filmmakers who constitute the Fifth Generation had graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982 Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Chen Kaige, and others.

Key Chinese films in the 80’s & 90’s

Rejection of traditional methods of storytelling and opted for a more free and unorthodox approach.Zhang Junzhao's One and Eight (1983) and Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984) in particular were taken to mark the beginnings of the Fifth Generation. The most famous of the Fifth Generation directors, Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, went on to produce celebrated works such as (1987), Ju Dou (1989), Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991), which were not only acclaimed by Chinese cinema-goers but by the Western art house audience

Yellow Earth (1984)

Yellow earth focuses on the story of a Communist soldier who is sent to the countryside to collect folk songs for the Communist Revolution. There he stays with a peasant family and learns that the happy songs he was sent to collect do not exist; the songs he finds are about hardship and suffering. He returns to the Army, but promises to come back for the young girl, Cuiqiao, who has been spellbound by his talk of the freedom women have under Communist rule and who wants to join the Communist Army.

Farewell My Concubine. A classic Chinese love story, of the warlord, Xiang Yu and his beloved Yu Ji. Locked in battle, he tries to send his mistress to safety but she refuses, saying she would rather die by his side than live without him.

Sixth Generation

The recent era --the “return of the amateur filmmaker” as state censorship policies have produced an edgy underground film movement loosely referred to as the Sixth Generation.

Films are shot quickly and cheaply, a documentary feel, with long takes, hand-held cameras, ambient sound; c.w. Italian neorealism and cinéma vérité Not the often lush productions of the Fifth Generation.

Chen Kaige; Farewell my Concubine (1992),

Krzysztof Kieslowski(1941-1996) Three Colours: Blue,

White Red

A distinctive voice in Polish cinema, known for his uncompromising moral stance, Kieslowski first came to attention in the early 1970s for his incisive (often shelved) documentaries and shorts on the political reality of life in Poland.

His features of the late 1970s explored the relationship between the personal and the political with style, directness and a raw edge of realism, making him a key figure in the 'cinema of moral unrest'.

Blue (1993.)

Juliette Binoche won the Cesar Award and the Venice Film Festival Award as Best Actress for her role in the first film of Kieslowski's acclaimed Three Colors trilogy. She plays a woman who becomes entangled in a mysterious web of passion and lies after she digs into the past life of her recently and unexpectedly deceased husband.

White (1994, 92 mins.)

The second part of Kieslowski's trilogy is also the wittiest of the three. Zbigniew Zamachowski stars as a Polish man whose life disintegrates when his new French bride (Julie Delpy) deserts him after only six months. Forced to begin anew, he returns to Poland and plans a clever scheme of revenge against her.

Themes

Kieslowski often deals with illness, loss and death, but deep pools of humor float beneath the surfaces of his films. There is a sequence in "White" (1994) where his hero, a Polish hairdresser, is so desperately homesick in Paris that he arranges to be sent back to Warsaw, curled up inside a suitcase.

His friend at the other end watches the airport conveyor belt with horror: The bag is not there, it has been stolen by thieves who break the lock, find only the little man, beat him savagely and throw him on a rubbish heap. Staggering to his feet, he looks around, bloody but triumphant, and cries out, "Home at last!"

Red (1994.)

Kieslowski's striking conclusion of his trilogy stars Irene Jacob as a model, separated from her lover, who is brought by accident into the life of the aging Jean-Louis Trintignant, a retired judge and electronic peeping Tom. As Jacob's character slowly uncovers her lover's secret life, she discovers that her own past is inevitably linked to her destiny.

Irene Jacob as Valentine, a woman in Geneva whose car strikes a beautiful golden retriever. She nurses the dog back to health and returns it to its owner, a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who tells her she can keep it. He is beyond worrying about dogs.

He occupies his days intercepting the telephone calls of his neighbors, and he watches them through his windows almost like God--actually, just like God--curious, since they have free will, what they will do next. After a lifetime of passing verdicts, he wants to be a detached observer.

Kieslowski made most of his early work in Poland during the Cold War, and because his masterpiece "The Decalogue" consists of 10 one-hour films. He has still not received the kind of recognition given those he deserves to be named with, such as Bergman, Ozu, Kurosawa, Fellini, and Bunuel.

Columbia University professor and film critic Annette Insdorf, who knew Kieslowski well and often translated for him, says, “It's rare that you say about some film director, 'What a good man.' But he was. Very by-the-way, emotional, very non-sentimental, dry in his wit and in his bearing, but he really made an impression.”

Free will?

Her book, Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski, provides the key to his work in its title. Kieslowski almost never made a film about characters who lacked choices. Indeed, his films were usually about their choices, how they arrived at them, and the close connections they made or missed.

sources

Film History: An Introduction. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell. Second edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.

The Oxford History of World Cinema. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (ed). Oxford University Press, 1999.