film festival

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

What I have learned after watching 3 Chinese foreign films.
1. Love them all
2. Probably can not watch in my classroom
3. My district has a very restrictive film policy
4. Idea.
Perhaps teachers are already doing this in the classroom - I have no clue. Instead of watching an entire movie just pick a segment and use that to springboard into your ideas. This way you can avoid any controversial issues that might occur and could get the movie approved more easily. In the movie ""Springtime in a Small Town" the beginning is a perfect way to talk about traditional and modern cultures. It is visual and students would understand. They could also see the results of bombing and could even be used when talking about any war. It also shows cultural duty. In the movie "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" there are a couple of different sections that could be shown. One is showing the results of Chairman Mao's "re-education." We talk about these issues but how it is shown in the movie would give students a better understanding of the repression. There is also a thread about banned books and how literature is not allowed. The third movie, "Beijing Bicycle," was my least favorite however it is about young adults, looking for a job and going to school. In the beginning it shows one of the characters in a job interview and what he has to do for his work. It also is shot in Beijing and illustrates the urban population in ways we could never describe.
And now I'm off to rent "Tampopo," it's Japanese and is about food. Wish me luck.

[Anonymous]

Yes, snippets (pre-screened by admin) work well in my classroom as well. Where are you finding these to rent?[Edit by="vdamrel on Apr 18, 7:22:01 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

I work in a store front and the video store is next door. And for a buck!

[Anonymous]

Funny, I was just thinking that same thought (snippets) tonight as I watched yet another amazing PBS offering- "Earthdays." What I envision is that eventually, someday, I will have such a large library of amazing DVDs (since I seem to see something amazing at least every few nights), that I will HAVE to show parts rather than the whole simply because I will have so much. IF a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth? I would have to speak for months to paint the pictures a good video can give in minutes. P.S.: I love the "film festival," idea. My way of doing things as well- go all the way and make it a party![Edit by="price on Apr 19, 11:39:41 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

I've viewed two films that I found very impressive. They are "A Girl from Hunan" and "Raise the Red Lantern." Both deal with the subjugation of women in the early part of the 20th century. "A Girl from Hunan" is the story of an uneducated twelve year old girl, Xiao Xiao, whose uncle arranges for her to marry a two year old boy. The story is set in a rural community in the early 1900s. The girl becomes a caregiver to her infant son, a housemaid to her mother-in-law, and a farmhand. This is a sad tale, but beautifully filmed and the message is clear. Poor Chinese girls are exploited and have no control over their lives. "Raise the Red Lantern" is set in an urban area during the 1920s. The heroine of this film is Songlian. She is older than Xiao and has attended college. Her stepmother has married her off to a wealthy warlord as his fourth wife (concubine). Although she is pampered by servants, in many ways she is even worse off than Xiao. She lives in her husband’s compound, which serves as a luxurious prison. The plight of Chinese women from all walks of life during this period is expressed in the stories of the other wives and by Songlian’s female servant. This is even more beautiful film than "A Girl from Hunan," but even sadder. Both films are G rated and could be shown in the classroom, but they are over-long for sixth graders. I think they would be appropriate for high school age students with more maturity and longer attention spans.

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I. M. Pei: Building China Modern. This American Masters film was aired on PBS March 31, 2010, and will be streamed online through the end of June. To view the documentary, visit
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/

Enjoy!

-Xin[Edit by="xjiang on Apr 23, 5:38:13 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

LOVE the PBS! Saw a very sad show two nights ago on the My Lai (Sp?) massacre. Very interesting- raises important and still pertinent questions about the rules of war, the importance of good leadership, what makes some people unquestioningly go to extremes (illegal) and be able to rationalize it while others stand up and say, "no, this is wrong."
Or does the system (obedience is highly valued in the armed forces) simply exclude the possibility of the appropriate disobedience of an order? As a public school teacher in the trenches (Detroit, LAUSD), I feel I can relate to the soldiers dilemmas- the reality versus the "rules," and PR.
ALSO, first of my personal FILM FESTIVAL offering: "The Quiet American," based on a Graham Greene novel (could never really get into Graham Greene, though I always liked his characters/set and setting/mood- but nothing else!) Michael Caine is very good cast against his competition for love- a very mediocre Brendan Fraser (is he any better these days? Because he was really stiff and unrealistic here)- It was good in that it showed the class disparities and realities for women struggling on their own in French Indochine circa 1952. It also showed America in all it's deceptive glory of the times. I guess that alone makes it a NON- HOLLYWOOD movie and therefore gets points from me. (Sorry LA people, I just want to barf on Hollywood and its non-thinking formulas and mindless script-writing and I know this is like telling me that Detroit auto workers are apathetic and build crappy cars, but both statements could be true.)
Next up: Some Japanese gangster flick- does that count for our class? I doubt I can show it to my kids.

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

I love the exchange going on here on films. Your contributions are terrific. For films and websites, though, we would like you to discuss those in the main Asia in My Curriculum forum. This is because others may find the ideas useful as well. Please hit reply.

Film Festival:
http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/showpost.aspx?PostID=389&PageIndex=33

Web Resources:
http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/showpost.aspx?PostID=390

smiling,
clay[Edit by="Clay Dube on May 28, 12:36:13 PM"]PLEASE post your film and website reviews in the Asia in My Classroom forum, not in the seminar forum. Thank you. [/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I am finding it difficult to squeeze in a movie.

[Anonymous]

Shower (2000) Director Yang Zhang. This is a fabulous human-interest story that deals with the razing of villages in China in the name of progress. The film is about a son who has removed himself from his father and mentally challenged younger brother by moving to Beijing. When he receives news from his brother that the father has died he goes back to the home village. Once there he finds out that the father has not died, but that the village is going to be razed to make way for new construction. The film is a metaphor for all that is wrong, and right with China. It is a film about human relationships, and the larger constructs of society and how we deal with both the humane and inhumane ways in which we treat one another.
The father and brother run the bathhouse in the village, maintaining the traditional cultural rituals that revolve around an important center of public gathering. The older son comes to realize the importance of family and begins to value them in a new and enlightened way. Having embraced the urban milieu he is forced to confront his contradictory ideas about the village life that formed him as a young man.

Shower (2000) is rated PG 13 for nudity and language so it may need an administrative ok for middle school. The film presents the human dilemma that confronts the individual as they reach adulthood, what is our responsibility to our parents? The economic forces that drive people away from their villages into the cities is occurring in China now, but occurred with the post war generation here. How has that effected life in the U. S. ? The film can be used in social study classes, or in English classes as a stepping off point for a creative writing project dealing with intergenerational change., growing up with a sibling that has special needs, or how the student would react to a forced move.

[Anonymous]

Manufactured Landscapes (2006 Documentary) Director Jennifer Baichwal. This incredible, although slow, film is available as a download through ITunes. It is a documentary about the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky has traveled the globe photographing man-made landscapes, (strip mines, ship building yards, e-waste dumps, huge factories, etc.). The photographer finds beauty in the symmetry of human created landscapes; he views the large factories in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces of China as portraits of color and texture. The photographer is consumed by balance, design, texture, and symmetry in his photographs. The filmmaker is concerned with those things as well as telling a much more political story without the use of words. The filming of the photo shoots incorporates the time-line of consumer products. She shows the images of strip mining, the raw materials necessary to produce the consumer goods, down to the Chinese people sitting cross-legged in tiny villages taking apart motherboards to extract the valuable metal components for recycling. She talks about the chemical contamination that is endemic to recycling of these computer parts. Baichwal follows the photographer as he photographs ship building in China, and the dismantling of ships in Bangladesh by young men with acetylene torches. The film is a portrait of the third world and what the economically deprived will do to make a living. It contrasts the consumer goods with the price humanity must pay for a few people’s comfort on another continent.[Edit by="creynolds on May 26, 9:01:23 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Manufactured Landscapes (2006) this film is unrated by the MPAA rating system. It does not contain any nudity, or language issues. I have used this film in my art classes as inspiration for projects that deal with social issues (a California Visual Arts Standard for 9-12 grade). The film is slow, but very powerful. I prepare the students by asking for them to look at how the film progresses, what design and art elements are used effectively, and how does the film make you feel. After viewing the film (I usually stop the film where I want to reinforce the design and art elements or focus on social issues) we have a discussion about the filmmaker’s point of view. We talk about the progression of objects throughout the film. Assessment of the film comes from the discussion and the production of the social issue project.

[Anonymous]

This documentary from the National Geographic Society follows Lisa Ling and a group of American families who are in China in order to bring home a Chinese orphaned girl. I thought that this would be an interesting topic since it aroused many questions when Chinas; one child policy was discussed in one of our China sessions. Another reason is that I do not want to navigate the accepted list of videos one can show to their class.

The documentary looks at the unplanned consequences of China's one child policy and Chinese preference for male children. There are tremendous social consequences for a society that is gender unbalanced that includes the stealing of women and the selling of women.

My students will find this documentary very interesting and I can imagine the outrage that my female students may have upon hearing that female fetuses are aborted in my cases if the woman knows she is carrying a female. I believe it would be an interesting discussion to see where the students views are on governmental intervention .

There was a very poignant moment in which a Chinese man has a conversation with an American woman who had adopted a daughter a few years ago at a park and he says that he feels shamed that there are so many Chinese that should have helped and who could help the young girls who are abandoned in his country and it takes and American to do so.

I may end the discussion with an open ended question that asks the students to imagine a China where there is even a greater gender imbalance and try to come up with a list of problems that may create along with a list of solutions.

[Anonymous]

Just seeing the "abortion" word makes me hesitant about showing all of China's Lost Girls to my 7th graders (I used that word once in a discussion about how all religions have crazy fanatics and one of my sweet 7th grade boys asked me what an abortion was) but it sounds like a fasinating documentary. I would be interested in screening it and then showing clips to my students next year because they were very interested in how males/females were treated in China.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the review because this sounds like exactly the kind of film I would enjoy.

Pat

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