Film Festival

[Anonymous]

Another film that I recommend that deals with issues of family is "Yi Yi", a film by Edward Yang.
The story follows the lives of a Taiwanese family and dealing with issues of life in a Confucian world: taking care of one's elderly parents, dealing with kids who are too modernized, and financial woes that come into everyone's life, in one shape of another. It is part comedy and drama--the themes are universal and I believe it is one of the greatest film epitomizing the life of a family in Taiwan. [Edit by="seun on Jan 15, 1:27:56 PM"][/Edit]
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[Anonymous]

Film: Yi Yi
Director: Edward Yang

The film follows the lives of a Taiwanese family -- NJ Jian, his wife, Min-Min, and their two kids. Life issues are explored: Mid-life crises, taking care of the elderly, dealing with generational differences, and second romances. It is both drama and comedy as each character goes from one disastrous situation and another. It's a film about acceptance and tolerance of one's situation, that not everything works out the way you want it to be. This is a great film to use in class dealing with exploring the lives of families--their dynamics, belief system, and hierarchy.

[Anonymous]

There was a controversy about this film, specifically the age of the actors who portrayed each of these characters. Some critics believed that the sexual content of the film was too mature for the actors to express, particularly the girl who played Chunhyang. I've only watched clips of the film so I do not know too much about it. Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Film: Cafe Lumiere
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Starring: Yo Hitoto and Tadanobu Asano

As a tribute to Yasujiro Ozu, director Hou Hsiao-Hsien immediately takes us to a scene where Yoko (Yo Hitoto), a young freelance writer, is hanging laundry while talking on a phone. Already, you see Ozu's influence in having the first shot be that of hanging laundry, a particular theme he is famous for. (Trains are another theme, also explored in this film). Yoko contends with her traditional parents by announcing her pregnancy and that she will not marry the baby's father. Her stoic acceptance of her situation is keenly felt by the audience. Feelings are kept hidden or deeply buried--this film is an interesting exploration into the inner lives of the Japanese whose culture promotes ambivalence and promoting the group over the individual. It is a meditative film about how one comes to terms with solitude. Like his predecessor, Hsien focuses on an ordinary life of a person. Rather than sensationalism or epic sagas, the reflective nature of this movie presents a fresh perspective on life and how one comes to terms with being lonely and alone.

[Anonymous]

I just finished watching "The First Emperor of China" film produced in 1989 by the National Film Board of Canada and China Xi'an Film Studio. I found it in Borders but it is also available through Amazon and razordigitalent.com. It is 42 minutes long and I also found a good lesson/media guide (www.dcmp.org/guides/3608.pdf) with a good parallel time line on world history. This is most appropriate for 6th grade history standards on China but is a good review for 7th grade history standards to review the challenges of imperial rule. The narration is in English and the actors speak Mandarin which lends authenticity. It is a little dated but is not gory or overly violent. It covers the difficulties of unification, Qin's ruthlessness and his ability to coordinate the building of the Great Wall. There are casts of thousands for battles and pageants. It covers the new reforms he put in place regarding the standardization of language, weights and measures. And although Shi Huang-di was a great believer in literacy, he burns books that do not ascribe to his legalistic beliefs. The building of his tomb and his obsession with immortality is described. The clothing and other decorative arts are beautifully displayed lending to the sense of grandeur. In the end of the film, there is a modern day portion about the discovery of his tomb and how the history of this emperor lives on. This may not be as modern as the more recent Discovery Channel program about Shi Huang-di but it covers the essentials in under an hour. Since my students have just finished studying the geography of China, I will be using this to stimulate prior knowledge about ancient China and introduction of continued imperial rule through the "middle ages".

Update: In preparing for lesson plan I went into the class CD which we were given at the end of the course and accessed dube-qin-han-dynasties.pdf and found it be a great intro for the film (with shots from the film) and overview of the period.[Edit by="eamador on Feb 3, 9:39:51 AM"][/Edit]
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[clay dube]

According to this Canadian Press story, three US films will be released in China this March. They are National Treasure: Book of Secrets, The Golden Compass, and 10,000 BC. Will Smith's The Pursuit of Happyness was released in January. Only 20 foreign films are officially released in China each year, though people routinely watch a large variety of films via pirated DVD copies.

[Anonymous]

Critique of "HERO"

I rented the 2 Asian movies recommended in our syllabus this weekend: "Hero" and "Farewell my Concubine". Of the two, I enjoyed "Hero" the most. It was produced by Quentin Tarantino, whose movies I really like, but this film will surprise you if you are familiar with his work. "Hero" demonstrates restraint when it comes to the use of violence but is a true action film.
Lots of really good historical references in this film, and I can see how you could use this film to good effect in the classroom. It is set in the time of the Qin Unification and makes reference to such historical facts as the standardization of the writing system, tied together strips of bamboo that served as books, the use of horses and chariot riding, the crossbow, and iron weaponry in warfare.
The movie has a great deal of depth to it and the reading that we are currently doing is ideal for interpreting various aspects of the film. The director states that it took him 2 years to write the script and you can see why. The basic storyline is told repeatedly within the film but from different perspectives and interpretations of the events. These multiple perspectives give reference to the legalist school of thought as exemplified by the ruler, the confucist stress on disciplining one's behavior as exemplified by the assassin's code, and the discusssion amongst the various assassins that makes reference to the Daoist ideals of having the goverment work for the good of the people.
There is a strong female role in this film with plenty of exploration of the ideas of yin and yang, feminine and masculine, receptive and assertive, weak and strong. There is also a stark use of color throughout the film which may be reference to the "six gi "(see page 38 in our text: East Asia; A Cultural, Social, and Political History.
All together I would highly recommend the film to the members of our class. I can also say that this film, or segments from it, would really help to bring the curriculum to life in the classroom. [Edit by="dkelly on Feb 24, 4:21:55 PM"][/Edit]
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[Anonymous]

The film I am reviewing is called "1000 Pieces of Gold." This is an American film released in 1991 staring Chris Cooper and Rosalind Chao, both of whom are excellent. The film is about a Chinese girl who is sold by her father to a marriage broker who sends her to San Francisco where she is sold to Chinese saloonkeeper in a gold mining town. The saloonkeeper wants the girl to work as a prostitute in his saloon, and not as a wife. The girl refuses and ends up a kind of slave to the saloonkeeper. She is eventually lost in a pocker game to the saloonkeeper's white business partner who takes her away from the saloon. At first the girl hates her new white owner, but over time they eventually fall in love.

This summary might sound like a really bad soap-opera, and it certainly could have been. But actually the film is a very good historical drama and shows in great detail the life of Chinese immigrants to California in the later 19th century. I teach 8th grade US history and for me the film provides a really good way to make the Chinese immigrant experience come alive for my students. It has lead to some excellent class discussions about immigration, race prejudice, gender issues and many others topics. The vast majority of my students are Latino who are themselves either immigrants, or the children of immigrants, and the film really hits home with them. The girls are very attracted to Rosalind Chao's character and are particularly impressed by the way she never gives up and constrantly displays a very strong will in the face of some really terrible things that happen to her.

I used the film as the basis for an essay in which students are asked to write a review of the film based on a number of promts I give them, or a comparision of the Chinese immigration experience with that of themselves or their own families. Many of the essays were really good for this project.

BTW, the film is rated PG13 so I don't have too much trouble showing it to my 8th graders, but the content may be a bit too adult for younger students.

[Anonymous]

Rise of the Feathered Dragon (2006); documentary (great title!)
This is an excellent movie for middle and high school science students studying topics such as fossils, dinosaurs, birds, evolution, and geology. It documents the recent work of a young paleontologist from U of Pennsylvania, Dr. Matt Lamanna and his friend and colleague from the Chinese Academy of Geologic Sciences, Dr. You Hailu.

The movie focuses on excavation work in the rugged desert-like Changma Basin in northwest China where the scientists find a 110 million year old bird fossil of Gansus yumenensis. The scientists use these findings to support their theory that birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs. The movie also highlights the 1996 discovery in the Liaoning Province of the first non-avian feathered dinosaur, found by a farmer named Li Yumin. The farmer invites the scientists to a homecooked feast and they discuss his breakthrough finding of the rare 125 million year old fossil that provided evidence of a direct evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.

Besides the scientific findings, the movie allows viewers to see China’s varied landscapes from city to farmland to desert; there is mention of the Silk Road; it shows a funeral procession in a rural village; scientists show their fossil findings to local children in Changma who are very curious and interested and then they build origami paper dragons with them; and a fun scene is when Lamanna promises to eat a duck foot if they unearth a rare bird fossil (which they do!); behind the visuals is a soundtrack playing beautiful traditional Chinese music.

Besides the exciting content, one additional thing teachers can discuss with students is how scientists from all parts of the world often work collaboratively for the common goal of adding to scientific understanding of various topics – in this case in the evolutionary link of dinosaurs and birds. Teachers can also use this movie to discuss how China is rich in a wide variety of other archaeological findings (humans, plants, etc).

[Anonymous]

After reading the book Wild Swans: 3 Daughters of China, the movie "To Live" provided a terrific recap of that era in China. The movie highlights the struggles of one family from the 40's through the 60's. One image that stuck with me was the period where doctors were put into detention while young medical students with very little training were put in charge at hospitals and the obvious damage and destruction this caused to many people's health and lives. The struggle of people to survive the conditions brought on by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and to rise above them, was both heartbreaking and inspiring. It seems so sad that so much of some people's lifetimes was spent on needless struggle. I highly recommend this movie, and it is probably the best depiction of that time period of any Chinese film I have seen so far.

[Anonymous]

There is the Japan Film Festival Los Angeles starting this weekend, April 11-17, 18-20, 2008. It will have everything from feature films to anime.

Home page: http://www.vconline.org/index.cfm

Festival Information: http://www.vconline.org/japanff08.cfm

[Anonymous]

In the film, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman the character of chef Chen asks the question, ‘is this all there is to life?’ Throughout the movie, each of the characters struggles with this question; however, the real struggle seems to be between what is expected of them and what they desire. The answer to the central question seems to be, yes: eat, drink, man, woman is more than enough for a life—if, in fulfilling those basic needs, you also follow the desires of your heart.

Another key comment comes from Second Sister as Oldest Sister is complaining about the neighbors who loudly sing every night. Second Sister says, ‘we communicate through food, why shouldn’t they through song?’ Although she is saying it with sarcasm, it is a truth that is carried through the film. It is through food that the father shows his affection for his family, and it is through cooking that Second Sister expresses herself and her need to also give care and affection. The preparation and serving of food is the legacy of the father to the Second Daughter and it is the art that they both practice. Also, it is over food that the family comes together for all major discussions and announcements. Just as the kitchen table is centrally placed in the house, the meals are central to all the drama of the family, all imbalances (emotional and physical) are reflected in the meals, who prepares them and who is present to eat them.

[Anonymous]

Trav's Travels in China is a wonderful 20-minute kids' video about the different regions of China. It goes into the history, geography, clothing, foods, architecture, famous structures, and economy of each region. I found it appropriate for my third graders as it fit in with our curriculum, including studying economics and why communities grow and change. For example when they highlight the western region they talk about the harsh terrain and climate, droughts, and short growing season as being contributors to there being a smaller population there than in other areas. There is also a section on Tibet and Buddism which would fit in with recent news events. This is a great film for the elementary level, however I was only able to see it because a friend had a copy. I couldn't find it on Netflix, but I did find it for sale at amazon http://www.amazon.com/Travs-Travels-China-Geography-Kids/dp/1563456362 but there was only one available.

This is a repost for the film review requirement. I posted it in the wrong forum initially.

[Anonymous]

I love that there is finally something related to us primary teachers! It's very frustrating when everything is related to upper grades. You said that this video is appropriate for 3rd graders. I'm wondering if you think that this video would also be appropriate for students in first or second grade.

[Anonymous]

Wow, what a fantastic film. I think that I liked "Crouching Tiger" more, but "Hero" was fantastic.

I really liked how the story was told from several different perspectives. The use of color from one perspective to another was great. I was a little disappointed by the ending because I am a happy ending kind of guy, but overall the film was special.

I love how the film deals with history in a way that is accessable to this generation of movie-goers. Jet Li is a very popular film star, and I could show this film to my Humanities classes and give a history lesson while my students will feel like they are watching a karate film.

Very impressive. Rivals many of the other films that I have seen by other Chinese and Japanese directors.

[Author]

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