Happy New Year! 新年快乐！

Boss' glasses

Dr. Barbara is cleaning her office and she found these old asymmetrical glasses. Sharp!

Howl's Moving Castle - LEGO

I want this!
Pictures from Flickr "imagine's brickzone"

whatever it is, i want one.

It is probably designed for gay men.

Yes, I am.

copycat

范儿

For those Taiwanese who knows nothing but badmouthing mainland China.

from My Mod Met

我喜欢这张照片

All That Heaven Allows (I) - 记录纽约电影节“先锋视野”(一)

昨 天，10月10号，纽约电影节结束了。一些电影还在林肯中心的Alice Tully Hall放着，但电影节结束了。对于电影节的评论到处都是，平民论者批判电影节精英主义，所有的片子都艰涩无比，精英主义者则说，这才是艺术。一方面因为 电影节的选片委员会成员大都是搞电影评论的，没什么策展人，缺乏策展的思维和经验，另一方面，其实也不都是纽约客的错，纽约电影节这样的电影节的主体，也 就是feature film的部分，会很受其先锋嘎纳电影节的影响。对今年嘎纳电影节作总结时，影人们说，如今去电影院看电影和穿了一身黑去教堂参加葬礼没什么区别。当然，电影和电影人也都是环境的产物，在过去的一年多时间里，这个世界并不快乐。

其实我不懂人们为什么会去电影节看大片儿，此处大片儿指Lars von Trier的Antichrist这样的片子。这样的片子一个月之后就会上剧院，何苦为赶这一个月的先锋花那荒谬的20刀。我同意这样的片子是要看大屏 幕，但这20刀实在是...纽约的美丽，纽约的罪恶...这年头看电影也要很富有吗？

对于我来说，电影节最有价值的是短片的部分，短片除 了在电影节很难在其它地方看到。纽约电影节“先锋视野”（Views from the Avant-Garde）今年是第13个年头。如果说今年的纽约电影节是有争议的一年，那么今年的“先锋视野”则是毫无争议非常好的一年。

每年的“视野”都是一个周末，全世界的“先锋”人们在林肯中心扎堆儿两天。今年的“视野”，10月2日至10月4日，分成11个单元，一共60部片子，长短不一，最长的“La Rabbia di Pasolini” 83分钟，最短的“Horizon Line”只有1分钟。

10 月2日周五下午，我谎称要去看医生请了半天假，然后直奔机场。2点半的航班，晚点半个多小时搞得我很紧张，因为我计划好要赶6点半开演的La Rabbia di Pasolini，好在飞机仍然在4点半左右到达了LGA。脏兮兮的厕所，没有礼貌的人群...一切的一切都大声地呼喊着，欢迎回到纽约。

一 班巴士，两班地铁，我6点就到了林肯中心的Walter Reade Theater。买好了当晚的一张票，周六的5张票和周日的5张票。Chris周六才到，孤单的我毫无戒备地到处乱逛乱看着，突然人群里 出现一张熟悉的脸，反应了两秒，才想起来是Patrick Friel，原来在芝加哥打工的老板，现在是同家组织Chicago Filmmakers办的Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival的主策划人。在这儿碰上他再自然不过了，不知为什么还是吓了我一跳，从他看我的眼神是认出我来了，我一个人不知所措了许久，最终过去打了 招呼。Patrick是个怪人，一个看上去像12岁男童的40岁老男人，一个即使和他相处很久你也不知道他在想什么，说什么是什么意思，那样的人。他的头 发如今稍长，Chris后来看到他，说他不像12岁男童了，像个女同。

6点半准时开演Pasolini的La Rabbia（愤怒）。观众里很多意大利人，很多意大利帅哥。我禁不住短信好朋友意大利女孩儿Eleonora，抱怨为什么意大利帅哥连看都没看我一眼，她说，都是gay吧。

La Rabbia原是Pasolini在1963年参加制作的一部纪录片，原片被制作公司剪得乱七八糟，完全不合Pasolini的意。当时制片公司同时还雇 用了另一个电影人Giovanni Fuareschi，计划两个人在最后成品中的戏份基本五五分成。由于Pasolini和Giovanni极端不合以及Pasolini对 Giovanni的极端鄙视，Pasolini曾宣称要将自己的名字从该纪录片项目中撤回。最终Pasolini并没有撤回他的名字，但由于对该项目的严 重不满，日后Pasolini拒绝了Ferranti请他重做La Rabbia的请求。2007年，Pasolini的第一个版本，也就是较长未受他人剪辑的版本的La Rabbia被发现。意大利导演Giuseppe Bertolucci根据历史文档重建了La Rabbia，努力将La Rabbia修复成Pasolini当年想象的样子，2008年公映。La Rabbia原片属于found-footage filmmaking，全片都是由newsreel组成，有历史事件譬如朝鲜战争，原子弹爆炸，名人譬如斯大林，玛丽莲梦露，也有反映平民百姓的譬如反映 意大利中产阶级生活的。Pasolini将newsreel编辑在一起，不按时间顺序或任何逻辑，完全顺应他的诗意，充满人性和愤怒。

纽 约电影节“视野”首先放了1963年版本中Pasolini的部分，只有十几分钟，具有明显且严重的破碎感，而且由于时间较短，很难把观众带入画外音诗歌 的意境之中。而Bertolucci2008年83分钟的版本则非常漂亮。足够的时间，足够的画面，足够的诗歌，人才能真的走进片子里面。两部片子放完之 后，又放了一些关于Pasolini的史料，有采访，也有六七十年代意大利的喜剧表演如何把Pasolini说成一个玩笑的片段。这些史料的放映使得当晚 的program不仅仅是关于La Rabbia的，并且是关于Pasolini的，以及电影文化（film culture）的。

晚上回到Susan的住处，几个朋友一起吃饭，看Arrested Development，晚上和Bajornas聊天到凌晨。他说，Sex and the City电影的全体人员，除了Sarah Jessica Parker，都非常mean。

busy week

While I am still trying to finish my writing on my first visit to the Views at NYFF, I am looking forward to a very busy movie week. YAH~

Wednesday: film studies lecture on Edgar G. Ulmer in the afternoon, UCLA Film and Television Archive double feature at night: The Salvation Hunters and In The Land Of The Head Hunters. AND dinner with Chris in between: recap of the Views. Hopefully he is bringing my very wanted films by Ben Russell.

Thursday: Cairo Station

Friday: Afghan Star

Saturday - Sunday: 24-Hour Horrorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Movie Marathon!

marathons

好吧，其实是被Chris说动了，下周末去24小时恐怖电影马拉松。 如果隔壁的
Jeni's冰激凌店24小时营业就好了，神经会需要salty caramel的安抚。
这回我不会像上次科幻24小时马拉松时硬着头皮到处找人陪我去了，反正也
找不到，这事儿不适合广大的人民群众。带好枕头，穿好宽松的背带裤（如果
不是因为要很多兜儿藏吃的，我宁愿穿睡裤），有B同学中间给我送两次饭，
就差不多了。

其实心还没从纽约电影节两天的“先锋视野”长跑回来，还在惯性地跑着。

我拿着恐怖电影马拉松的宣传单给Jennifer看，她说，yeah, it's
your kinda thing.

crawl

There are many sleeping drafts lying in the post archive of my blog. You'd be surprised how more frequently this blog would have been updated if all the drafts were actually finished. This blog is a symptom of my life. It's fractured, unfinished, unsatisfying, without a style of its own, without any consistency, and going nowhere. It's filled with failed attempts. I repeatedly tell myself that it's good that I am still reaching out to my dreams, but no real progress has been made so far. I am disappointed, frustrated and confused. Concentration is at large. Direction is at large.

I work for a boss who spends hours chitchatting. She likes coming to my desk to check on my work and hurry me on my work after chitchatting. She likes to make me feel bad if I am behind the schedule she sets for me. I feel fortunate for having a job. So have I been told to feel so, all the time. This job takes the bulk of my awake time. I'll be doing this job for many many more days, yet I don't know if this will be worth anything.

I stay in a country where I have no freedom, legally and financially. Freedom has always been the most important to me. In lack of freedom, I am quiet and dead. In most people's opinion, I am doing well. I have a job and I have successfully obtained a working visa. There were cheerful moments for such accomplishments, but they didn't last very long.

I watched the first episode of Ken Burns' new documentary on national parks yesterday. John Muir was a significant figure in the history of national parks, especially the Yosemite. When he was 52, he was home with his wife and daughters, away from the nature he loved. He was tied to the everyday chores, and he was dying. His wife sent him back to the wilderness because she knew that's where his life belongs.

Some people need periodical success to motivate their lives, like making a million dollars or getting a promotion. I need to be with the people I appreciate, doing the things I love.

Cai Kangyong said, sometimes in life we need to crawl to progress, if crawling is the only way to progress, then crawl we shall.
Jennifer said to me, you patience will pay off some day.

I started watching films seriously when I was in highschool; I started studying French when I was in college; the study of both came to their climax at OSU graduate school. After school, I no longer have an environment to continue a systematic and intensive study, but I refuse to let them die. This past saturday, I was told that my dream might never come true. I cried, not because I was mad at the person who said this to me, but because I realized, what he said might be true. For the first time in years my dream was shaken.

I had been here before, but I had believed in myself firmly and waited patiently and optimistically. My spirit was so young and blind at the time that I didn't even have an alternative plan. Today I have too much to lose. I can only crawl, but I'll try to keep myself blind, so that I can still crawl, as if I am crawling towards a goal.

a chocolate house, in this economy

Recently I discovered David Lebovitz's blog. David is an American food critic currently living in Paris. I discovered his blog from an airplane magazine article in which he talks about how doing a cooking show is much more difficult than what people would normally imagine. I am no foodie. Food, especially western cuisine, is completely foreign to me. David Lebovitz's writing is informative and witty. He makes everything sound so easy and his pictures make everything look so delicious. I know even though the recipes are just right up there, the caramelized white chocolate ice cream I make will probably taste very different. Yet I am still always heavily tempted.

I find myself reading David lebovitz's blog a lot more often and enthusiastically than some of my favorite film blogs. His blog has practically become a second shelter for this hopeless dreamer(me)'s dreams. Film used to be the one and the only. Unlike those film blogs, David's writing on food, restaurants and everything food related doesn't remind me of any unfulfilled academic ambition of mine, so it is an even warmer shelter. And unlike films, food is usually a lot more delightful. It is too often that a good film contains more reality and emotion than my nerve can handle after a day's work. I know I need to work on my nerve, otherwise I will be losing my chance of becoming a qualified cinephile. However, it is just so much easier to turn to those lovely pictures of chocolates, apricots, fresh sea food...aren't they just as bright as sunshine?

Another reason I like David Lebovitz's blog is that it doesn't show much of what has been defined as "this economy". In this economy, David Lebovitz is still looking for the darkest chocolate, the creamist scoop of ice cream, and the perfect antique café au lait bowls. It is such a comfort to read his blog while for my job as a money-begging chick, all I type everyday is "deficit budget", "reduced funding", etc.

David Lebovitz is not living in a vacancy of reality. On his facebook page, he links all kinds of webpages including many journal articles that tell sad stories of good restaurants closing due to this economy. Maybe it comes down to a matter of selective memory, maybe he doesn't want this economy to ruin the mood of his blog too.

As long as David Lebovitz is not talking about "this economy", I have a place to dream and dream only.

sad, indeed

I posted a YouTube link of BLU's MUTO on my account on Douban. 3 friends told me they couldn't open it because YouTube is possibly banned in China, too.

How can this still be surprising to me, after they banned Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, and hundreds of critics' blog?

So I wrote another entry informing my friends of the link on Vimeo and the download link on BLU's website. This is the English translation of my entry:

The link of MUTO on YouTube cannot be opened in China. I wonder if Vimeo can be opened.
If not, please try BLU's website blublu.org. MUTO is free for download. Monetary donation is not required but appreciated. However donation is in Euro, because BLU is a Europe-based artist. Harvard University sent him an invitation to draw a wall in Harvard, BLU refused.

After I posted my entry, I was told that my entry is being censored. For the sake of my life, I cannot figure out why. I wonder if it is something I said or I drew the "lucky straw" in a random censorship policy? Douban showed me a list of possible reasons an entry could be censored or deleted for. It is a list of all kinds of policy that you cannot criticize. Criticizing a policy is against the policy. It is self-protective.

This might be the most pathetic and insecure way to establish an authority. Of course it is not Douban's fault. It is the policy environment that Douban has to survive. Douban is just a website after all. It can be easily censored or deleted, just like my entry, due to its violation of some bigger policy.

Eva could survive in China because she works with commercial/mainstream cinema. Danjie could develop a career in China because she deals with mainstream visual arts. Not me, not now. The whole idea of avant-garde is against unity, against censorship, against constraints, against power, against any form of control. It is supposed to be limitless. I love China, but I know I cannot go back.

BLU, genius

on youtube: MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU
on vimeo: MUTO

宋冬

I studied painting over weekends with Song Dong for a year. Now he is the hero in the New York Times Art Section headline story. Unbelieveable.

The show at MoMA is what the Times calls The Collective Ingredients of a Beijing Life, which is a heavy dose of accelerator to my homesickness. The show will continue through September 21. I hope we have time on our east-coast trip so that I can take my parents to see the show. I am sure my mom still has a pretty clear recollection of how he hated my dumpling painting, how he loved my paper-collage chair, and his long hair. If we can't make it in late July, I must go on my labor day trip to New York.

宋冬, another reason to go to New York.

Missing

When Chen Qizhen sings in her Meaning of Traveling:

You've tasted the night of Paris
You've stepped on the snow of Beijing

I always miss Beijing, very much.

Death meets Judgment

David Carradine died yesterday.

He was found in a hotel room closet with a rope tied to his neck and genitals.

First it was reported as suicide. I wondered, why genitals?

Today it is reported that his death might be an accident from attempting auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Film people are trying to divert public attention from the cause of his death to the fact that he's dead.

Death collides with judgment, who wins?

Something I learnt about Jean-Pierre Melville

Parts of several interviews with Jean-Pierre Melville.

I think it was the day I was given a Pathe Baby camera, a hand-cranked model, for my sixth birthday, so it was in 1923 that I made my debut as a filmmaker and decided on my path. my love for cinema started with the talkies, around 1929/30s. the first time I heard a word coming from a screen was in White Shadows in the South Seas by Van Dyke and Flaherty, when Monte Blue suddenly said, "civilization, civilization." it was the first time I'd heard talking cinema. at that very moment, I fell madly in love.

What did you do?

I produced and directed Le Silence de La Mer.
I think your first film should be made with your own blood.

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Do you enjoy editing?
Very much. It's without a doubt what I enjoy the most, that and writing. Writing and editing. In other words, the inspiration and the finishing touches.

Do you like filmming?
Not at all. Filming is absolutely horrible. I call it "tedious formality." I hate shooting. My only relief in the whole tiresome business are the wonderful moments when i am directing actors.

Are you hard on your actors, the people you work with?

No, not with the actors, that would be foolish. You can't be hard on any actor, of any kind. It is a fragile thing. It is hard to be in front of a camera and still look natural. I am much more demanding of those behind the camera.

How do you rate yourself as an actor?

Awful, like any amateur trying to do a job that is not his.

Did that make your mise-en-scene more difficult?

Not in terms of mise-en-scene, but in terms of where to place myself. In certain scenes, i am looking at the actors speaking to me, and it is obvious i am watching if they are doing what i asked.

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I think the greatest difficulty is portraying sexulity.

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I represent virtue.

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In terms of censorship, I am a puritan. That said, I can forgive anything as long as it has quality.

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what do gangsters represent for you?

Nothing at all. I think they are pathetic losers. but it so happens that the gangster story is a very suitable vehicle for the particular form of modern tragedy called film noir, which was born from american detective novels. It is a flexible genre. You can put whatever u want into it, good or bad. and it is a fairly easy vehicle to use to tell stories that matter to you, about individual freedom, friendship, or rather human relationships, because they're not always friendly. Or betrayal, one of the driving forces in american crime novels.

Do you know any gangsters?
yes, i knew quite a few, but they are nothing like the gangsters in my films.

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I assure you, alone in my room at 3:00am, i am not only modest but humble.

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I like to take risks.

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My films never follow the current trend.

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It's a film's duty to be commercial. Above all, it's a product.

It is the honest point of view of an artist: you have to please.

I recently finished Akira Kurosawa's autobiography Something Like An Autobiography. The Chinese title is The Oil of Toads. Kurosawa probably didn't get a chance to decide how to name the foreign versions of his autobiography, but the editor' choice certainly reflect the taste of a culture. The Oil of Toads comes from a Japanese folk tale about a special kind of toad in the mountains in Japan. Those toads are uglier than the usual ones and they have a couple more legs. People catch them and put them in front of a mirror or into a glass tank. Once the toads see from the reflection how ugly they are, they sweat oil all over their body. This oil is a precious medicine used to heal burn wounds. It's said when Kurosawa looked back at his past, he felt like one of those toads, discovering all the awkwardness and unbearableness of himself and sweating oil all over, and the essence of the oil forms this book. I am not sure if the American editor is aware of this story and how Kurosawa compared himself to a fictional toad, but I do think The Oil of Toads might be a little elusive for American readers. Something Like An Autobiography is more direct, simpler, yet still retains a taste of Kurosawa's humbleness, which can be found everywhere in this book. On the notion of hunbleness, the American title and the Chinese one do agree. Personally I prefer The Oil of Toads. It's more intriguing.

I am not an expert on Kurosawa. I have only seen some of the most famous ones. Like many Chinese "cultural youth", my viewing experience of Japanese cinema started with more contemporary filmmakers such as Shunji Iwai and Takeshi Kitano. Films like Kids Return, April Story deeply marked our youthhood. While we received the very much needed sex education in western movies like 91/2 Weeks, we identified our depressed growing pains and emotions with those characters in Japanese movies. As for filmmakers like Nagisa Oshima and Akira Kurosawa that are probably considered national treasure in Japan, I labeled them as antiques from the history of civilization and shelved them for a long time before I could put my hands on them.

Luckily my entrance into Kurosawa's world was a serious one. It was in a theatre theory class for which we all needed to write a paper comparing one stylistic factor among 3 Shakespearean productions. In addition to two theatrical productions, I picked Throne of Blood, which is an adaptation of Macbeth. The stylistic factor I picked was the different portrayal of Lady Macbeth. I studied the film very closely. Although I haven't seen that many adaptation movies of Shakespearean theatre, I stronglyly agree with what's been widely believed that Throne of Blood is the best cinematic adaptation of Shakespear. It is simply one of the best filmes ever made. What amazed me the most is how Kurosawa perfectly combined the Japanese Noh theatre with a western story. Neither did the style of Noh theatre become an obstacle in delivering the story, nor did the story look awkward in a Japanese costume. The more I studied it, the more I was excited about it and the more I believed Kurosawa was a genius.

I love how Kurosawa called making a sequel for any movie is a wait-for-windfalls behavior. Of course, in Chinese it's called "waiting beside a tree for more hares to come". It's such a precise description of its nature and motive and stupidity.

Second Wajda Double Feature Night

Last thursday, it was the first double-feature screening of Andrzej Wajda's films: Pokolenie (A Generation) and Kanal (Canal). Throughout the screening I was thinking to myself: Why did I think I could possibly find Wajda's movies interesting? When Jake said they were boring, why wouldn't I believe him? Next time when someone who is capable of enjoying Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles tells me something is boring, I am gonna believe him.

A Generation

Kanal

Yesterday, it was another double-feature screening of Andrzej Wajda. Though exhausted last week, I still went. Hoping there is more to Wajda than drainy war movies, I decided not to forfeit the theatre.

The two films screened last night were Popiol i diament (Ashes and Diamonds) and Wszystko na sprzedaz (Everything for Sale). Ashes and Diamonds, with Pokolenie (A Generation) and Kanal (Canal), completed Wajda's unintended WWII triology. Ashes is my favorite among the three. Both Chris and Cassey expressed that they liked Kanal too. I could see how Kanal is a great film, but it is definitely a more demanding movie. I was not at all in the mood or at the energy level to enjoy it. As for A Generation, the most interesting thing for me is the brief appearance of Roman Polanski. He is in the second A-Generation picture above. His character is the most naughty soldier of that small underground Communist group. The way he played the character is quite playful, which is not very far from his interesting personality and experience in real life. Ashes is a more mature "Polish New Waver". There was a French New Wave, a Czech New Wave...a Polish New Wave too. Editing and cinematography were unconventional and playful, and this is especially discernible in Ashes. Fast editing delivers the result quickly enough to eliminate the process. Always ending with a strong and interesting image/perspective, it is the result that stands out, not process. Quite Godardesque.

Ashes and Diamonds

I was not very impressed with Everything for Sale. There are some really beautiful images, but the story and overal structure of the film are not strong. It's a film about filmmaking. Films about filmmaking always present a challenge to filmmakers on whether the sophisticated psychological relationships among all actors/actresses/characters can be played well. It's a test of a director's ability to handle psychoanalysis and parallel universes: filmic reality and afilmic reality. François Truffaut did well in his La Nuit américaine (Day for Night), and Robert Altman did even better in The Player. Wajda once said in an interview that he doesn't like love stories, but he's always excited about wars and killings. Obviously, Wajda is more of a alive-or-dead big picture kind of guy, intertwining multi dimensions of human beings is not his forte.

Everything for Sale

-------discussion about movie stops here-------

Seating is always the first question to be answered when we enter a theatre. For movies like Wajda's, I need to sit far from the screen so that the screen frame is within my eyesight limit and I can still enjoy the aesthetic of the film even when I am not getting all the historic background or details.

Last night after I seated myself in the very last row, a mid-age man passed me and found a seat two rows in fromt of me. I realized it's not A guy. It's THE guy. I know this guy. I used to see him all the time on #7 bus when I was living in University Village. He's Asian, possibly Chinese. He has a weird face. There's something like a big tumor sticking out on his forehead. He's short. Although he always wears a boyish jean overall, I know he's not young. I have always wondered what he does. I see him on campus a lot, but obviously he's not a student or teacher because he never shows his buckeye ID and always pays for bus fare. As frequently as he takes bus, almost daily, he never uses a pass, always pays cash. He never has anything with him, no bag of any kind. He's like this sad weird-looking puzzle to me. While I went down the memory lane, he turned around and smiled at me. I politely smiled back but immediately regretted, because he started talking to me, obviously a person who doesn't have much chance to showcase his knowledge in anything. Do you know this movie? Have you seen it before? You should pay attention to the actress. Do you know the historical background? Oh, you have to know something about the background to understand the movie. Are you an art student? What do you study? I thought you have to be an art student of some kind to... Not bothering to finish the sentence, he turned back. Throughout the one-speaker conversation, I just kept smiling and nodding politely. I said I didn't know much about the history and I told him I am not a student...any more. I didn't say "art student" and I gave it a long pause between "student" and "any more", trying to get out of this conversation yet remain honest at the same time. It worked. I knew why he stopped talking to me. He was probably thinking why someone who is ignorant in both the history and art come to see this movie? He stopped talking to me. That's all I wanted.

I felt sad for him, for why he started talking to me and why he stopped as well. His enthusiasm about a converstaion was lit in a second by a mere chance of human contact and was killed in half a second by a quick judgment. I am glad I don't look like an artist or art student. As puzzling as this guy is, I hope this is my first and last contact with him.

Striking Hunger

The screening of Steve McQueen's Hunger brought a full house to Wexner Wednesday night. I knew Steve McQueen was a big deal, but I didn't know he was such a big deal. Admission was special priced; Sherri, Wexner's Director, was there for the introduction; and everybody was there, film studies people, college of arts people, all those artsy and filmsy faces.


When you see this poster, what do you think this beautiful pattern is? Would you have a better clue if you were told first that the film is about a famous hunter strike in the prison of Northern Ireland? It is shit, poop, human discharge...however you name it. It's the trace of shit on the wall after a prison guard cleaned it, or tried to, with high-pressure water. There is no toilet in the prison cells, so prisoners pour their urine out through the gap between the cell door and floor, and they paint their poop on the wall, with their bare hands.

Steve McQueen is an extremely normal looking African-British. If you don't know who he is, you probably would assume he is one of those cleaners with a broom, paper towels and detergent waiting outside a lady's bathroom. No racial profiling here I swear to god, but the way he dresses and his look are just not artsy or schorlarly or nerdy or weird in any way.

The movie will definitely make one of the top 10 movies I see in 2009. It is filled with control, power, and defiance. The tension never stops. I could barely remember to blink my eyes or to breath. I could feel vividly how my body was being electrified again and again and again. It's different from the kind of shock created by fast editing or huge explosion. The tension of the movie runs under the skin, constantly. I would want to watch the movie for a second time or even more, not to appreciate the art of it, but just to experience the movie.

The tension of the movie is created by extremities. The violent and appalling imagery counters the rigorous image composition and patient construction of pace and rhythm. Good movies are not the perfect ones. Good movies teach you how to watch them. Like Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Hunger trains you to be observative. Hunger leads you through a maze of daily rituals of prisoners and prison guards with great patience. Movie starts with a man soaking his hands in the water. The knuckles are seriously wounded, red. Why? The way he puts on his rings and his clothes are neatly folded and placed, you know it must have been like this for however many years in his adult life. Before he leaves his house, he looks around and checks if anyone has placed any bomb under his car. Again, you know he does it everyday. But why? Only after a quarter of the movie has gone by, the movie reveals that he is a prison guard whose job is to beat up prisoners, which explains his wound and precaution.

Another instance is the shit on the wall. With the prisoner who first appears in the movie entering his cell, he sees the inside of the space, unevenly browned walls. He looks around, probably trying to figure out what it is as all the audience are. His curiosity and ours, his fear and ours, encounter and merge at this moment through a point-of-view shot. You're so taken over by a desire of wanting to know that you almost forget you're watching a movie. You are no longer watching a movie. You are watching the walls. First I thought it was blood. Then I knew it is not blood from the texture of it, but I still didn't know what it was. As a matter of fact, it was still hard for me to believe what it is when I saw the scene of a prisoner sticking his hands in his pants and his ass. It is just beyond my imagination that any human would want to live in the middle of our own shit, but obviously it was not a matter of choice, and that's probably the best way to dispose it according to prisoner's experience after years.

McQueen comes from a fine art background. When an audience asked him about his poetic imgery, he said it was easy. Compared to the history of painting, that of film is nothing. He gains his inspiration from painting. McQueen speaks through image, so do the characters in his movie. A character who only appears twice, in the form of voice, in the movie is Margaret Thatcher. However, her voice is such an important vehicle in contextualizing the political environment of the hunger strike, virtually the only vehicle. Thatcher's voice is always accompanied with images. The second time, it is the image of the inside of prison. With her voice filling the hallway, her politics takes an invisible existence that haunts every prisoners and prison guards.

The core scene is a 17-minute long negotiation between Sands and a priest. It is seemingly the most laid-back scene of the whole movie: people are communicating, occasionally with a joke, with each other in a non-violence way. Both parties elaborate on their stance, but neither surrender. The encounter of verbalized opinions is violence in another form, and it takes you further in their mind and identity. The moment the priest is convinced, or let's say he gives up, you know it's the end of violence in the movie, but the start of Sands struggling in hunger.

With all the stories told and all the details depicted through a relatively slow pace, it is almost hard to believe that the movie is only 96 minute long. Again it is the extremities. There's no grey area, no neutral zone, no time for a nerve rest. There is very little dialogue in the movie. When prisoners and prison guards are separately portrayed, all of them are leading a life filled with oppressed silence; when they meet, it's explicit violence in the sound of beating and screaming.

It is not a story that many people can associate themselves with. McQueen spent 5 years working on this movie. He interviewed hunger strike survivors and then prison guards. As for history and history-telling, this movie can be only one version of it, but McQueen sure has delivered his vision clearly and beautifully.

A Stranger Not So Close To Me

I made a mistake by reading an article about grandpa this morning. My uncle wrote the article and my mom sent it to me because grandpa's 100th anniversary is coming in April. I read one paragraph and my eyes were filled with tears. I am in the office! Stop it!

The first part is titled "A Stranger Close To Me". That's exactly who grandpa was to me. I knew he was my grandpa; he was always there; he smiled all the time; I knew he was someone great, but I never felt I knew him. Obviously that's not just me, not just because I didn't live close to him. I learnt a lot about grandpa from uncle's writing, his career, his music, his hobbies, his research, and how he survived all the attacks and tortures during the Cultural Revolution. To many, grandpa is considered the third most important Chinese composer in modern Chinese history, next to the two who co-composed the National Anthem of China. To me, for a long time, he was just a name, a face, a biological origin where some of my blood came from. I didn't know how I was supposed to think about him, his fame and all the words and evidence of his greatness until I heard The Nirvana of Pheonix at a concert held by China's Ministry of Culture for his 90th birthday. I was convinced. I started looking up to this small man. I understood why my aunt said there probably would be nobody in the family who will exceed what grandpa had achieved.

The Nirvana of Pheonix is a modern symphony piece. It was later accompanied for chorus with a poem/lyrics written by Guo Moruo (the Chinese writer who was the closest to receiving a Literature Nobel Prize. he committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution before the Nobel Prize was granted, the prize was withdrawn because Nobel Prize only goes to people alive). The Nirvana of Pheonix changed what grandpa meant to me. I could vividly feel my love for him, but he was becoming more of a symbol, a symbol of great talent, and more distant.

When grandpa was sick in hospital, I only visited him once in ICU. I remember I stood in a corner and cried insanely for over half an hour afterwards. Grandpa passed away at the age of 93. It's been 7 years. I have never been back to his apartment since, and I have never visited him at the cemetery after the funeral either, not because I don't miss him but he is the most haunting one among all my passed-away grandparents (all four of them), I am afraid that the physical presence of anything related to him will discharge all of whatever that's been accumulated for 7 years and destroy me. Just like how I have always stayed away from the yard and little street where I spent my childhood. I had a wonderful time there, but memory alone can be too scary.

I published an essay about grandpa on an art magazine when I was in college working for Beijing Concert Hall. I felt proud when I saw people reading my article. My family was proud too, I think. At a family gathering after the essay was published, my aunt read the article to the whole family. Mom told me that everybody cried, then she said she hopes I can write something like that about her someday. I thought to myself, luckily I was not at the family gathering.

I saw on a famous Chinese cultural critic's blog a list of artists banned by the Ministry of Culture of China. I was shocked at first, because I thought the reason they got banned was the content of their works, and a bunch of names in there are rarely associated with sex or violence or whatever unhealthy. Then I figured, politics is probably the bigger bitch here. Most of them probably have made some sort of statement, or have participated some activities or concerts that advocated for the independence or Tibet, the independence of Taiwan, the freedom of Fa Lun Gong (a group considered cult by Chinese government), or against Beijing Olympics 2008. I don't know how he got access to this list. As he works for one of the biggest commentary magazines in China, he might have got this as part of the policy package from the Ministry of Culture. I am sure this is not the ultimate list of all the artists that will get banned, but on the other hand, I also believe that if some agency wants to include some of the black-listed artist, there's a way to work it.

Here we go:

A Tribe Called Quest
Alanis Morissette
Ben Harper
Beck
Biz Markie
Blur
Bjork
Beastie Boys
Buddy Guy
Buffalo Daughter
Blues Traveler
Blackalicious
Blondie
Celibate Rifles
Cibo Matto
Dadon
De La Soul
Dave Matthews Band
Eskimo Joe
Eddie Vedder & Mike McCready
Foo Fighters
Fugees
Garpa
Gerling
Garbage
Herbie Hancock
Jon Spencer
John Lee Hooker
Jebediah
Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros
KRS-ONE
Kraftwerk
Live
Luscious Jackson
Lee Perry
Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Mad Professor
Michael Stipe & Mike Mills
Mutabaruka
Money Mark
Nawang Khechog
Not From There
Noel Gallagher
Neil Finn
Otis Rush
Pavement
Porno for Pyros
Pearl Jam
Pulp
Patti Smith
R.E.M.
Radiohead
Rage Against The Machine
Richie Havens
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Rancid
Regurgitator
Run DMC
Sonic Youth
Sean Lennon
Spiderbait
Taj Mahal
The Smashing Pumpkins
The Skatalites
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
The Wallflowers
The Cult
Tracy Chapman
The Roots
The Mavis’s
The Avalanches
The Living End
Urban Dance Squad
U2
Wyclef Jean
Wu-Tang Clan
You Am I
Thom Yorke
Trans Am
Yoko Ono
Yungchen Lhamo

The whole thing is stupid.

First, all of these artists, or most of them, need education. Do they really know what the issue at root is of those subjects? They simply can't resist the sexy appeal of the name "protecting the freedom of religion" or something like that.

Second, instead of giving credit for what these artists said, Chinese government could have been smarter and just ignored them. I highly doubt any of these artists would be shouting "Free Tibet!" in their concert in China. Once they're in China, their eyeballs and their mind will be too busy looking around learning and getting their new brain-wash from this country to remember their never-has-been-firm stance on those issues. Plus people in the cities, those that could be possible performing destinations, are educated well enough to hold their always-has-been-firm stance on those issues. The government should have more faith in the people that they won't change their political opinion just because some pop singer says so and so.

Deep down it is the rivalry of two ideologies, which might never be resolved, with many many people like me caught in between.

Recently a friend who is going back to China told me that when she was booking her plane ticket, because it was a single trip, the ticket agent asked whether she's a U.S. citizen. The ticket agent said right now Chinese government does not allow U.S. citizens to buy single-trip tickets to China. Our speculation is that this is partly a job market protection policy. While the unemployment rate in the U.S. has flown up over 8%, China is working on maintaining an economic growth of 8%. If what that ticket agent said was true, basically Chinese government has said no to the U.S. labor export and no to U.S. emigration. Not that either is necessarily going to happen on a large or visible scale, but the translation of power shifting has never manifested faster.

Siren

It takes a little courage to describe the sound/light show of Ray Lee Siren last night.

Siren is a sound installation, and it is a light installation too but only after all the lights in the room go out. The whole installation is composed of 22 machines powered by electric motors. For each machine, there is a metal tripod on the bottom with a metal stick on top spinning like two arms. There is one siren and one small red spot light attached on each end of every arm. While the two sirens on one arm are same, each machine is attached with different sirens.

I was the first to arrive in the theatre. An usher explained to me that all the audience would be taken onto stage behind the curtain, so it didn't matter where to sit for the moment, and I was warned in advance that nobody would be allowed to enter or leave throughout the 45 minutes of performance, so I should take care of all my personal business before the performance. Before the performance started, an usher read a statement from the artist, in which it says please don't touch the installation because it's very dangerous. Then we were directed onto the stage. After all the audience had entered the room on stage behind the curtain, Ray Lee and his partner started all the machines one by one. The arms started spinning at different speed and sirens started singing different tones.

I was intrigued by those tripod machines as well as Ray Lee and his partner. They wore dark gray suits in very thick and raw fabric, looking like cavement playing with technology. The technology is really not high, but very basic physics. They have little expression on their face. They walk around those tripod machines gracefully, like well-choreographed dance (I'm sure it's because they've practiced many many times), having their hands in the front of back so that they wouldn't hit the machines. The somewhat rusty machines had their own rawness too.

Like everybody else, I walked around the whole installation setting to listen and observe the difference. The sirens on one side tend to be lower-pitched than the other. The very first siren Ray Lee started sounded like Scottish Highland bagpipe. After listening to 44 sirens for a little while, I started having a minor headache. Just as I wonder where the performance was going, all the lights in the room were out, leaving the red spot lights creating beautiful red circles in the air as they were spinning.

I didn't know the red light has such exciting mission. I had thought they were just signal lights to show whether the sirens were on. I was immediately intrigued by the fascinating spectacle. Ray Lee and his partner adjusted something and all the arms started spinning faster.

The performance came to an end as everything was slowly turned down. One great thing about the performance is that you get to see the whole process of opening and ending.

It is one of those shows that make you wonder does one have to be a scientist before s/he becomes an artist nowadays. I left the performance feeling like an earth woman whose mind had been intervened by aliens. it's quite an interesting delight.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Last night Jennifer and I went to Wexner for Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. It's the screening of a new 35mm print. Jennifer invited me earlier this week. I got really excited when I saw that the film was 201-min long. When it comes to films, I am a sadist. I like really long films and I like challenging my own limit. So far my record stays 4 hours for a single film and 24 hours for a film marathon.

The film was magnificent. It is one of those master pieces that make me want to write a big fat paper on it. As a big film nerd, even the idea of watching a film like this for many times, taking notes and elaborating on the greatness of the picture turns me on.

-film spoiler alert-

The film tells the story of 3 days in a woman's life. Jeanne is a widow living with her son who is a student in school She prostitutes herself at home everyday to make a living and leaves her son in the dark. The first day, she lives as the machine she's always lived. (In my opinion) because of the short yet intense conversation between Jeanne and her son about whether one can and/or should make love with someone they're not in love with, her life starts to change. The machine that runs her body is out of order, starting with her overcooking potatos. Jeanne keeps screwing up more and more things in her life. On the second night, her son had another short yet intense conversation with her about his growing knowledge of sex intercourse and his earlier sexual fantasies over Jeanne. Jeanne's third day is aggravated by an out-of-stock condom vending machine. Later on the day, she experiences a sexual awakening during sex and kills the man-to-fuck of the day afterwards. Then she sits in front of her dinning table. At this point, I'm sure every audience is wondering how the film is going to conclude. Is her son coming home? Is she going to kill herself?...I looked at my watch. There were 5 minutes left till the time the film's supposed to end. For an over-3-hour film that tells a 3-day story, I knew that was it. The film ended with her sitting in front of the dinning table, her hands and shirt having blood on them, and a slight smile of relief appearing on her never-had-an-expression face.

It sounds like a very long and boring film, except for the ending which probably woke up many half-asleep audience. Three hours of a woman who and whose life are even more boring than bare bricks. There's barely any dialogue, or for that matter sound, in the film. However, we were all very absorbed by the extremely well-crafted details. The film is like a big puzzle. Like Hitckcockian suspense, the film intrigues us with an over peaceful face. You know there's more beneath it. You know something is going to happen, so you wait, with great patience and interest. Even though things begin to change from half way, but only in a very subtle fashion. So when Jeanne stabs her scissors into the man, everyone is shocked. Imagine an orgasm after a 3-hour foreplay. That's how mind-blowing the ending is.

The cinematography of the film is pristine. On the first day and a half, when everything is ''normal", every shot is an established shot, very well framed and very patient. Once things start going wrong, shots become cutting-edge and anxious. Shots are still long, the change is not dramatic, but as subtle as the change in Jeanne's body. Jeanne's face is never clear before and after her sex deal with different men, either in the dark or cut out of the frame. Only on the third day can we see her face while she's having sex. It's a high-angle shot which clearly shows all her facial expressions and body movement. This is the moment her body and mind awake and come into light.

Chantal Akerman is a female director, and Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is obviously a feminist film. The awakening of identity (or whatever) of women has been part of French cinema history forever. This film slowly and thoroughly digests its feminism theme through several motives: clock, room(closure/space), machine, processing, cleansing...all of which are very connected yet strong on their own.

After the screening, Jennifer, Catherine, me and another girl whose name I don't quite remember, went to a cafe for some chitchat. This is why I love Jennifer. She left her husband, her one-year old son and her 4 cats home and hung out with 3 single girls at a cafe after midnight. It was a Friday night. Party people were everywhere. We were probably the nerdiest bunch. At the cafe, we talked about the film and joked about it too: how retarded Jeanne's son looks; how Jeanne and her son look like a sexless old married couple; how the baby cried like an old wild cat, blah blah blah. It was so much fun! Master pieces like this, you have to take it with a grain of salt.

Two Dreams of Lewis Klahr

When I was in New York, I complained to Chris about how I missed James Benning's Landscape Suicide because of work and how I was going to miss Saul Levin's show at Anthology and Bruce McClure's Only in Darkness Is Your Shadow Clear at Light Industry. As a consolation award for the successful survival of my nightmare job in NYC , after I came back to Cbus he gave me two new films by Lewis Klahr and Landscape Suicide by James Benning. I watched them last night.

Lewis Klahr's two films:

The Diptherians Episode Two: The Rhythm That Forgets Itself

Fake Aging

Both films were made in 2008 and haven't received much publicity yet. Diptherians was recently screened as part of a short film program Cracking The Surface at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in late Jan 2009. As a west-coast based filmmaker, Lewis Klahr's films are screened in L.A. a lot more than the east coast. Googling two films, I found that two films are only on the screening schedule of Rotterdam. Hopefully Rotterdam is just a kickoff not the end of their screening journey.

In Diptherians, Lewis Klahr uses the cut-out of photos of Wooster Group members like Willem Dafoe and Kate Valk. According to Lewis Klahr, he and those Wooster actors improvised their way "through a series of photo shoots trying to determine exactly what a 'Diptherian' is. Here's the first definition-- an elliptical narrative of what could become an ongoing serial of feature length duration".

Quote Chris from the website of CalArts:
The video-based Episode Two: The Rhythm that Forgets Itself is an elliptical narrative that presents a group of sartorially gifted demigods or super-villains (played by Wooster Group all-stars Kate Valk and Willem Dafoe, among others) as they go through their extra-temporal paces. The arcane mythology that surrounds them indicates that they exist outside of the laws of physics and man but, despite that, are trapped in their own patterns of asymmetrically cyclical behavior, somnambulistic decadence, and cosmically petty intrigues. And, similarly, the fumetti-like use of photographs gives a verisimilitude to the characters that almost grants them a sense of individual agency but the flatness of the cutouts squelches any sense of free will. That even the flattest of objects casts a shadow is one of the many paradoxes and mysteries that is hidden within The Diptherians.

Quote Tom Gunning (Chair of Film Studies Committee at Univ. of Chicago) on Lewis Klahr:
Miming the processes of memory, Klahr pulls together 'the discards of contemporary life into scenarios that seem like Hollywood films dimly remembered after a night of serious drinking.

I watched both films for three times. They are both under 15 minutes, so it's quite affordable timewise. At the second round, I finally found my best way to watch and understand his film. Instead of watching and thinking, I started living the films like my own dreams. Suddenly all the seemingly illogic fragments started to make sense. I don't know how Slavoj Zizek or any psychoanalyzist might put my case into theory, but I do believe if I could understand my memory, me dreams, and why and how my brain selected and invented them, if I could reach my unconsciousness and manipulate it consciously, I would be able to read Lewis Klahr like riding a bike.

It is really difficult to describe what Lewis Klahr's films are like. Every film is like a mystic episode of a superhero movie. He's a collagist and his films are collages. The material he uses is very nostalgic. Cut-out from old comic stripes, photos, stamps...I don't know if he really cut them out somewhere or he actually made them and made them vintage-looking. There always seems to be a narrative, but never easy to decipher. Fragmented aesthetics and narratives. One word, delirious.


A big part of Diptherians is uploaded on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OpIMf8N0hM