Bollywood Vs Hollywood

Conventions of commercial films

The principal difference between American and Indian commercial cinema is that Indian films usually feature periodic song-and-dance routines which, in a good movie, are expected to move the story forward (in mediocre movies, they are poorly integrated into the story). Songs are sung by professional play-back singers and lip-synched by dancing actors and actresses.

Indian commercial films, in whatever regional center they are made, tend to be long; they are usually two to three hours long, with an intermission. They tend to be melodramatic and sentimental, but may also feature romance, comedy, action, suspense, and other generic elements.

Art cinema

In addition to commercial cinema, there is also Indian cinema that aspires to seriousness or art. This is known to film critics as "New Indian Cinema" or sometimes "the Indian New Wave" (see the Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema), but most people in India simply call such films "art films".

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the art film was usually government-subsidised: aspiring directors could get federal or state government grants to produce non-commercial films on Indian themes. Many of these directors were graduates of the government-supported Film and Television Institute of India. Their films were showcased at government film festivals and on the government-run TV station, Doordarshan. These films also had limited runs in art house theatres in India and overseas. Since the 1980s, Indian art cinema has to a great extent lost its government patronage. Today, it must be made as independent films on a shoestring budget by aspiring auteurs, much as in today`s Western film industry.

The art directors of this period owed more to foreign influences, such as Italian neorealism or the French New Wave, than they did to the genre conventions of commercial Indian cinema. The best known New Cinema directors were Bengali: Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Bimal Roy. Some well-known films of this movement include the Apu Trilogy by Ray (Bengali), Meghe Dhaka Tara by Ghatak (Bengali) and Do Bigha Zameen by Roy (Hindi).

Art cinema was also well-supported in the state of Kerala. Malayalam movie makers like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, T. V. Chandran, Shaji N Karun, and M. T. Vasudevan Nair were fairly successful. Starting the 1970s, Kannada film-makers from Karnataka state produced a string of serious, low-budget films. Girish Kasaravalli is one of the few directors from that period who continues to make non-commercial films.

In the film markets of South India, particularly the Tamil film and Telugu film industries, directors such as K. Balachander, Bharathiraja, Balu Mahendra, Bapu and Ramana, Puttanna, Siddalingaiah, Dr.K.Vishwanath, Santhana Bharathi and Mani Ratnam have achieved box-office hits whilst balancing elements of art and popular cinema. Such films include Nayagan, Mouna Raagam, Kannathil Muthamittal, Sindhu Bhairavi and Gunaa.

Satyajit Ray was the most successful of the "art" directors. Many Indians knew his name and took pride in his numerous foreign awards. Prestige, however, did not translate to large-scale commercial success. His films played primarily to art-house audiences (students and intelligentsia) in the larger Indian cities, or to film buffs on the international art-house circuit.

From the 1970s onwards Hindi cinema produced a wave of `art films`. The foremost among the directors who produced such films is Shyam Benegal. Others in this genre include Govind Nihalani, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, M.S. Sathyu.

Many cinematographers, technicians and actors began in art cinema and moved to commercial cinema. The actor Naseeruddin Shah is one notable example; he has never achieved matinee idol status, but has turned out a solid body of work as a supporting actor and a star in independent films such as Mira Nair`s Monsoon Wedding.

Indian cinema meets Hollywood

Contact between Indian and Western cinemas was established in the early days of film in India itself. Dadasaheb Phalke was moved to make Raja Harishchandra after watching Life of Christ at P.B. Mehta`s American-Indian Cinema. Similarly, some other early film directors were inspired by Western movies.

In India at least 80 percent of films shown in the late 1920s were American, even though twenty-one studios manufactured local films, eight or nine of them in regular production. American serials such as Perils of Pauline and Exploits of Elaine, and the spectacular sets of films like Quo Vadis and Cabira were popular and inspiring during the World War I era. Universal Pictures set up an Indian agency in 1916. J. F. Madan`s Elphinstone Bioscope Company at first focussed on distribution of foreign films and organization of their regular screenings Additionally, J.P. Madan, the prolific producer, employed Western directors for many of his films.

A number of Indian films have been accused of plagiarising from Hollwood Movies.[13] Due to the long time taken by courts to decide a case, few cases relating to copyright violations are brought up. One of the reasons Bollywood hesitates in purchasing rights is the assumption that these would run into millions of dollars, though according to some like screenwritor-director Anurag Kashyap, this is incorrect; He argues that while the films may cost millions of dollars in the west, the rights would be less expensive for Hindi remakes because the price would be based on the audience`s buying power, the economy and the number of bidders.[14]In 2003, best-selling fiction writer Barbara Taylor Bradford brought a copyright infringement suit against Sahara Television for allegedly making a television series (Karishma: A miracle of destiny) out of her book, A Woman of Substance.

Today, Indian cinema is becoming increasingly westernized. This trend is most strongly apparent in Bollywood. Newer Bollywood movies sometimes include Western actors (such as Rachel Shelley in Lagaan), try to meet Western production standards, conduct filming overseas, adopt some English in their scripts or incorporate some elements of Western-style plots. Bollywood also produces box-office hit like the films Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Kal Ho Naa Ho, both of which deal with the overseas Indian`s experience.

However, the meeting betwen Hollywood and India is a two-way process: Western audiences are becoming more interested in India, as evidenced by the mild success of Lagaan and Bride and Prejudice. As Western audiences for Indian cinema grow, Western producers are funding maverick Indian filmmakers like Gurinder Chadha (Bride and Prejudice) and Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding). Both Chadha and Nair are of Indian origin but do not live in India, and who made their names in Western independent films; they have now been funded to create films that "interpret" the Indian cinematic tradition for Westerners. A similar filmmaker is Deepa Mehta of Canada, whose films include the trilogy Fire, Earth and Water.

Indian cinema is also influencing the English and American musical; Baz Luhrmann`s Moulin Rouge! (2001) incorporates a Bollywood-style dance sequence; The Guru and The 40-Year-Old Virgin feature Indian-style song-and-dance sequences; A. R. Rahman, India`s star film composer, was recruited for Andrew Lloyd Webber`s Bombay Dreams; and a musical version of Hum Aapke Hain Koun has played in London`s West End.

Some Indians have succeeded in the Western film industry purely on their own terms without showing any Bollywood influence, such as filmmakers Manoj Night Shyamalan and Jay Chandrasekhar. Indian actors like Aishwarya Rai are getting good roles in Western films.

Criticism of Indian Cinema

Indian Cinema, is continiously criticised, for its lack of creativity and its over usage of the same plot line. Movies like Kaho Naa Pyar Hai one of Indian Cinema`s biggest hits, had a storyline which was used for generations. Critics also point out that almost every Drama film in India, is mainly centered around family, and that each of there dramas are extremely similair to those of soap operas.

Indian Cinema, is also very celebrity oriented. It should be noted that Film-makers in Bengal, and Orissa, and Tamil Nadu, which are states of India, have extremely talented Film makers, and have made much better films, than those of Hindi Cinema, which is popularly called Bollywood, but none of these films, are even considered for the Indian entry to the Academy Awards.

Ratings also show that the young Indian Audiences are slowly moving away from the conventional Films, and are looking for variety, which proves the Commercial successes of movies like Black, Iqbal, Rang De Basanthi, and other comparatively well-made films. Another aspect to be noted is that during the IIFA, the International Indian Film Awards, not one film from any other language other than Hindi, was nominated for any award. Which proves to show that the glamour of Indian Cinema, only rests with the Bollywood, and no one ese. Movies which were big critical failures, like Aitraaz, No Entry, Mission Kashmir, but huge box-office hits, due to their use of absurd, and voyueristic humour, have been nominated for Best Picture awards in almost every major Film Award Ceremonies. It is to be noted that most out-of-the-mainstream movies do resort to extreme publicity gimmicks and rather blatant orchestration to get the point across.

The major criticism however is that Indian CInema, gives no leverage to new directors, or actors. Most who are given the chance, have to mould out of their conventional styles, and have to transform to the thoughts of the producers, who don`t care for the artistic aspect of films, but more for the commercial aspect of it, hence the introduction of Item Numbers, and skimpily clad women. Indian Cinema is at its lowest level at the moment, and even though a few are trying to lift it up, it will take the entire consesus of both the Audiences and the producers, to make Indian Cinema on par with those like the American, Vritish, French, Chinese or Iranian films, which are widely credited to be the best in both art as well as in commercialism.

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Iranian film version of Jesus: Jesus was never crucified

A film about Jesus that script the script based on the Islamic perspective recently released in Iran. The film will cause a reaction from the Christian community, because Jesus told not die on the cross, but was replaced by Judas Iscariot. The film is titled "The Messiah, The Spirit of God", written, produced and directed by the producer from Iran, Nader Talebzadeh. The film was made in Iran and Jesus was played by an actor in Iran. This film is based on the teachings of Al Quran about Jesus and based on the contents of the Gospel of Barnabas, a book which is not included in the canon of Scripture. Making the film was funded by an Iranian state-owned TV channel.

Dr. Emir Caner, a dean of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary recommend to Christians watching this film, because in it reveal a lot of new things, like when Jesus was being replaced, why the mother and the disciples did not recognize that the person they were following was exchanged before being on the cross, and what is the purpose of God 'blinding the crowd included all the disciples of Jesus and Mary the mother of Jesus, so they still think that Jesus was being crucified. (Watch trailer & The Muslim Jesus)

Caner, who is also a professor of history, said he believes that ultimately this way, we watch as he asked on that point of view, we can accept this film.

"Maybe the Muslims and Christians will realize through this film that the Koran only offers a possible story that might occur at the time, even though the Bible was clearly written a detailed history of reliable and has proved even to this day." Similarly Caner write a statement.

Almost as a whole "The Messiah," the appearance of Jesus in the film version of Jesus is similar to that made by the western world. Blonde hair and perform miracles. Only thing different is how Judas arrived - arrived miraculously changed resemble Jesus and replace Jesus was crucified.

"He (Jesus) is not the Son of God and never be the Son of God. He only prophet and he was never crucified, it is another person who was crucified to replace him," Talebzadeh told CNN.

One motive of making this film, according to Talebzadeh, is in response to films about Jesus that made the Western producers, like the movie "The Passion of the Christ" starring actor Mel Gibson in 2004. According to him, this film presents the story wrong about Jesus from the teachings of Islam.

Phenomenal movie that involves almost more than 1000 people this is the greatest movie ever made in Iran. The film will also be aired in 20 episodes on TV channels owned by the government of Iran [syarif / eng / www.suara-islam.com]

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Rewriting Hollywood History in Julie Dash’s Illusions

“Now I am an illusion, just like the films. They see me but they can’t recognize me.” So states the protagonist of Julie Dash’s 1982 film, Illusions. The film is a critique of Hollywood history and an attempt to subvert that very history by calling attention to the lack of an African-American presence in Hollywood during the era of World War II and even today, for that matter.
Illusions

The film begins with a rotating Oscar with a voice-over that states:

“To direct an attack upon Hollywood would indeed be to confuse portrayal with action, image with reality. In the beginning was not the shadow, but the act, and the province of Hollywood is not action, but illusion.”

These illusions that Dash discusses in her short film attempt to call attention to the illusion that African-Americans were not a part of Hollywood history and seek to end the illusion, to finally make things right, by re-writing history. This illusory element is at its peak in the dubbing sequence of Illusions.



The scene begins with a pan across a sound booth that Mignon (Lonetta McKee) and her boss (Ned Bellamy) enter while two sound engineers attempt to finish the dubbing and post-synchronous sound for their Christmas holiday-season release, but there is a problem: the dubbing does not match and their star is away helping with the war effort. To fix the problem, they have hired Esther (Rosanne Katon), a young African-American girl, to replace the voice of Leila Grant, the star. We then see a musical scene from the film.

Leila Grant is the object of desire: ‘the true woman of the discourse of feminity,’ an object of the gaze and the editor’s cut. She does not have desire; she is desire. She does not have voice; she embodies it. Stranded on the Dark Continent, Esther looks at Leila and desires to be desired. (1)
Illusions

Throughout this scene, the film clips we see of Leila Grant all position her as the object of desire through several close-ups of her various body parts - her face, legs, etc. - which objectify this idealized woman of the screen.

As the group in the sound booth watches the debacle, on the back wall we can see a Mae West poster. This image is important on many levels. First, West seems to be the real world counterpart to the Leila Grant character. Both are white, beautiful, blonde screen queens who are objectified by the male gaze. On the other hand, this poster of Mae West can be seen as doing something different. In her heyday, West was famous for her on screen bawdy double entendres, her most famous being the quip: “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
Illusions

During the 1930s, when the Production Code was taking over the morality of Hollywood, West, who co-wrote many of the screenplays for which she was to star, was forced to edit out the “racy” content. It seems that Dash is making a statement with the West poster on the wall for the fact that not only were African-American women subjected to the white patriarchal Hollywood system, but white women were as well. If they were seen to be strong, independent, sexual beings, they were forced by either the studio heads or the Production Code to tone down their acts, in essence erasing many of their dreams and talents from history and forcing them to be mere illusions of what they desired to be.

Like West, Esther, the young African-American girl who is selected to replace the voice of Leila Grant, is also a mere illusion, forced into non-existence by the studio system.

Like the seamless continuity style that conceals its work (e.g., editing, processing, discontinuity), Hollywood cinema has concealed or erased and prohibited the work of people of color, on and off screen. (2)

Esther begins to sing and, at this point, Dash has done something very interesting with the composition of the frame. In the upper-left-hand corner, Esther is singing; in the upper-right-hand corner is a screen with the Leila Grant film playing; and in the bottom part of the frame is a doubled image of one of the sound engineers watching this take place. Esther’s voice literally “looming in dark space asserts the power of cinema to produce images and illusions” (3).

What is interesting about this shot is the way in which it utilizes the multiple gazes found in the cinema. First, we have Esther, the object of the gaze of the sound engineer. Second, we have Esther looking at Leila Grant on the screen trying to lip-synch her words to her mouth movements. Then, we have the literal “doubling” of the sound engineer to which the audience is sutured with, as we are placed inside of the sound booth with him watching all of this happen inside the studio.
Illusions

Dash’s Illusions calls attention to the ways in which the Hollywood studio system created the illusions that forced African-American women to the wayside of film history only to be forgotten. In her films, Dash makes these illusions visible by critiquing that very system and showing how the Leila Grants of the world in effect were not the real star of the picture, but the Esthers who had the real talent à la Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952).

Yet, Illusions’ own operation remains transparent. Ironically, in the projection scene, the diegetic and extradiegetic levels collapse; all the female voices in this sequence are post-dubbed. Both Ester and Leila lip-sync Ella Fitzgerald. The narrative’s focus on synchronization- the corporealization of the female voice- shifts attention away from the film’s orchestration of image and sound so that Leila’s voice, in fact, is no more or less true than Esther’s. (4)

According to Mellencamp, “Dash reverses the blond standard of the star system that defined conventions of female beauty within a regimented, standardized uniformity.” (5)
Illusions

To put it briefly, Dash’s film, namely the dubbing sequence, attempts to subvert the history of Hollywood that all but disintegrated the presence of African-American women. She revises this

by synching their off-screen voices to onscreen white women. Women of color were heard, but not recognized. When women of color were on the soundtrack or passing on screen, they were not remembered or recognized. Illusions inscribes the point of view missing from U.S. film history: African-American women (both onscreen and in the audience) granting visibility and audibility by synching image to off-screen voice. Illusions also charges Hollywood, which did not make films about people of color even during World War II, and the nation with hypocrisy and racism. (6)

Illusions calls attention to this travesty and tries to rewrite history and reclaim what was lost: “Illusions explores questions of race, representation, and gender in Hollywood cinema-in particular, the absence of ‘meaningful’ and ‘realistic’ images of our lives.” [source]

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There's only one great Mafia film, capice?

IN the crime annals of popular culture, The Godfather remains capo di tutti capi.

Many have imitated the 1972 film but few have come close to matching Francis Ford Coppola's Academy award-winning masterwork - no matter what contemporary critics contend, says Gianni Russo.

"The Sopranos to me was so low-class it's ridiculous," said the man who played Carol Rizzi in The Godfather. "To be operating a family out of the Bada Bing strip club, I mean, come on."

Goodfellas came close and Donnie Brasco was brilliant but one Mafia film tops them all, he argued with some confidence. And Russo is more than happy about that. "It's amazing, it's been a 37-year career on one film, even though I made 43 others," he said.

The Godfather's status will be reassessed tonight at Sydney's State Theatre at the world premiere screening of a newly re-mastered and restored print. If that weren't an enticing enough prospect, the film will be accompanied by a 65-piece orchestra, primarily made up of members of the Western Australia Philharmonic and conducted by expat composer Ashley Irwin.

"It sounds terrific and the theatre's glorious of course," said the Sydneysider, now one of Hollywood's most prolific arrangers.

He spent 18 months orchestrating The Godfather videogame in 2004 with additional music written to add to that famous score. He was the obvious choice to lead the live performances of what will be a number of global black tie premieres ahead of the remastered trilogy's release on DVD in September.

His work includes arranging the Academy Awards, American Idol and many films. But none in his homeland. "No, it's really sad Australian films don't use orchestrations because it adds great gloss to a production," Irwin said. "And synthesisers always sound like synthesisers.

"For me to come home and do it means there's more pressure than a New York or London premiere. I care about it more than if I was doing it in LA."

Russo, who will attend tonight's premiere with his on-screen partner, Talia Shire, said Coppola had not made any changes to the film other than visually, although he hoped a "horrendous miss I reacted to" in the fight scene had been amended. But he's content if the restoration doesn't change a thing.

"It would be like changing the Mona Lisa's smile," he said. "It's been a privilege and it continues to go on."

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www.theaustralian.news.com.au

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Batman vs. the lavender genius of crime!

Tatsuya Nakadai and Michiyo Aratama in Masaki Kobayashi's "The Human Condition"

I'm probably preaching to the born-again when addressing readers of this column, but I wanted to chime in briefly on the inevitable topic of the week, that being Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight." It's the most anticipated movie of the summer and all that, it cost a bajillion bucks to make and it plans to make 2 bajillion back. It's got some mighty impressive special effects and it's got an actor who's now dead, eating that fake-o, pixillated scenery for lunch. And no matter how many people proclaim its awesomeness, it's also an incoherent, bloated bore from a director capable of doing much more interesting work.

My colleague Stephanie Zacharek is taking all kinds of abuse in the letters section for saying that, and, hey, she's a big girl. There are plenty of times I disagree with Stephanie's take on movies; I disagree with some things in this review too. But she's one of the first critics to look past the techno-wizardry and sophomoric darkness and see how labored and awkward this movie is. It's a pileup of incidents and episodes that never congeal into a story, a succession of striking murky-but-clean images that never create a convincing temporal and spatial universe. On the one hand, it's too pretentious to be a successful comic-book flick, but it's not pretentious enough, if you want to put it that way, for any genuine moral griminess to come through. Personally, I'd love to see a Batman film set in the universe of, I don't know, "The French Connection" or "Mystic River." Nobody in Hollywood would make such a movie these days, and I recognize that it certainly isn't what Nolan tries to deliver.

It's a cliché to say that "Dark Knight" is a teenage boy's idea of a serious film, but of course that's the source of its immense appeal. (One could call the source material, Frank Miller's revisionist Batman comics, a teenage boy's idea of literature.) I'd go a step or two further: It's either a teenage boy's poorly executed idea, or the teenage boy in question has a "Memento"-scale case of ADD, and maybe all the fogeyish, clueless protestations about how video games are ruining the youth of today are actually true.

Much of the audience for "Dark Knight" will be actual teenage boys, and they're entitled to like what they like and repent at leisure. (I can clearly remember telling friends that "Diamonds Are Forever" was the best film ever made.) But the arrested-development adult critics who just want to ride along, sort of like that guy in "Dazed and Confused" who's too old to hang out with high-school kids but does it anyway -- now that's kind of depressing.

Once upon a time, midsummer was slowdown time for the indie-film biz, but this week has been batshit-crazy with counter-Batman programming, and I can't keep up with it all. I've cherry-picked four excellent little movies to catch -- OK, one of them is almost 10 hours long! -- that are worlds away from Gotham City, or anywhere else in summer-blockbuster-land. There are at least two other noteworthy films opening this week -- Julian Schnabel's über-hipster concert film Lou Reed's Berlin and Brad Anderson's claustrophobic train-to-nowhere thriller Transsiberian -- and I'll post something on those as soon as I can, promise.

"The Human Condition" This is the nine-and-a-half-hour antiwar epic by Masaki Kobayashi, made between 1959 and 1961, that closes Film Forum's tribute to the amazing Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai. Relax, nobody has to sit through all of it at once, and if you think of "Human Condition" as three separate movies (which is how it screens), or maybe as a black-and-white, foreign-language equivalent of a TV miniseries, it won't seem so daunting. One film critic I know has dubbed "The Human Condition" the Japanese "Gone With the Wind," and while I think he meant that as a dis, if you consider that that phrase in all its ramifications -- as in, "Gone With the Wind" would be a massively different movie if it were Japanese -- actually does capture something.

Nakadai plays a young bureaucrat who works for the imperial Japanese war machine, an educated man with left-wing sympathies who personally opposes the war but sees it as a chance to work for good ends through a flawed system. In the first third of the film he runs a POW forced-labor camp in occupied Manchuria, seeing it as a chance to treat the prisoners humanely. In the second third (after his spectacular failure in the camp), he's a private in the undermanned Japanese army as the war winds down on the western front, attempting to preserve some shreds of dignity while waiting to be overrun by the Soviets. In the final third, he comes full circle, finding himself a cruelly abused POW in a remote and frozen Russian camp, where the Marxism he has admired from afar seems no more than a cruel joke.

As that summary suggests, we're not talking about an uplifting view of the Japanese nation, recent history or for that matter the human being. Once viewed as one of Japan's greatest directors, Kobayashi has faded into the background a little partly because his movies are relentlessly individualist in focus and pessimistic in theme, two things that (to say the least) run against the dominant currents in that nation's culture. But even if "Human Condition" now seems too creaky and melodramatic to be considered the greatest achievement in cinematic history (as critic David Shipman once dubbed it) it's a richly rewarding visual and human experience in all its bleakness.

Nakadai's performance as a man of Christlike forbearance, who travels to the edge of human endurance in a doomed and lonely struggle against an evil society, is both moving and charismatic. That comparison is not frivolous, by the way; Kobayashi was profoundly influenced by Western philosophy, cinema and religion, to the point of being called "anti-Japanese" by some of his countrymen. (I feel virtually certain that this movie was an influence on Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima.") Kobayashi's wide-screen landscapes (shot by Yoshio Miyajima), depicting the lonely human figure against a natural world that knows and cares nothing about him, combine wonder and mortal terror.

In all honesty, there were moments in the middle film, a familiar if well-played drama of the brutality of army life, when I felt impatient to move on. Kobayashi views his characters with tremendous compassion and a grand, overall sense of historical irony, but the picture isn't leavened with much lightness or humor. By the unutterably tragic conclusion of Part III, in which the story of one man's inevitable destruction seems to embody the demolition of all the 20th century's most noble dreams, I was profoundly grateful (if profoundly saddened) to have stuck with "The Human Condition" to the end. Until now, it's long been available only in an almost unwatchable VHS edition, but this theatrical run (in a pristine 35mm print with new subtitles) will surely be followed by a deluxe DVD release.

"The Human Condition: No Greater Love" (part I) is now playing at Film Forum in New York, with screenings of "Road to Eternity" (part II) beginning July 24 and "A Soldier's Prayer" (part III) beginning July 27. Other cities, and DVD release, should follow.

"Wonderful Town" This delicate, delightful and nearly note-perfect debut feature from young Thai director Aditya Assarad offers more evidence of the tremendous film renaissance underway in East Asia. Set in a southern coastal town struggling to recover from the devastation of the 2004 tsunami (although the event itself is barely discussed), "Wonderful Town" follows the tentative and then smoldering passion that develops between a visiting Bangkok architect (Supphasit Kansen) and a local woman (Anchalee Saisoontorn) who runs the modest hotel where he's staying. Assarad is both a patient and a surprising director, alive to the most intimate details of everyday life -- folding laundry, changing sheets, drinking coffee -- and also to the dreams people hold closest to their hearts, the ones they can barely admit to themselves, let alone their lovers.

While the plot in "Wonderful Town" is fairly minimal, it's got plenty of suspense. Will the hard-working hotel proprietor let down her hair? Will the architect disappear to the big city? Will the ghosts in the haunted, tsunami-destroyed hotels be appeased, and can a town that lost 8,000 people in a single day be healed? Assarad doesn't address all these questions directly, let alone answer them, but this irresistible picture, engaging from its first shot to its last, kind of sidles up and gracefully embraces them. (Now playing at Anthology Film Archives in New York, with more cities to follow.) "A Man Named Pearl" Frankly, this odd and enjoyable voyage into Americana -- a documentary about a South Carolina man who has turned the practice of trimming his hedges into a recognized fine art -- has a title problem. If it were called "The Topiary King" or "Yard of the Month," for instance, you might have some clue what it's about. Mind you, it is about a man with an unusual first name, but whether Pearl Hyams owes any of his drive, ambition, remarkable physical prowess and peculiar artistic gift to that fact is debatable.

Motivated by a racist comment that African-Americans don't maintain their yards, Hyams set out to win "Yard of the Month" from Bishopville, S.C.'s leading garden club. He became the first black person to do so, and along the way conceived a passion for abstract topiary, a craft in which he had no formal training. In fact, Hyams is a self-taught abstract sculptor whose medium is discarded boxwoods and other hedge shrubbery, trained lovingly into microbial blobs, galactic swirls, soaring fishbone structures and other organic forms. His three-acre yard is pretty much the only reason anybody ever visits Bishopville, and much of the fascination in Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson's documentary emerges from how this still-segregated Southern town is dealing with (and endeavoring to exploit) its homegrown genius. (Now playing at the Angelika Film Center in New York. Opens July 25 in Los Angeles, with more cities to follow.)

"A Very British Gangster" Investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre's film is fairly standard British TV product, closer to a glorified "60 Minutes" segment then to cinematic art. But never mind -- its subject is, as he might say, feckin' amazing. Manchester gangland legend Dominic Noonan is a plump, bespectacled, bald fellow, appealing in an unfocused way, who wouldn't look out of place behind a bank manager's desk. But consider Noonan's newly legal last name -- Lattlay Fottfoy, which stands for "Look after those that look after you, fuck off those who fuck off you" -- and you begin to get the measure of the man.

"A Very British Gangster" will translate oddly to American viewers. Wisely, the distributors have subtitled much of the dense Mancunian dialect, and let's just say that as crime lords' lifestyles go, Noonan is several rungs below Tony Soprano. He appears to live in a dismal little English suburban slum house, half-furnished and appallingly carpeted, surrounded by a pasty-faced crew of teenage underlings. But he's believed to be one of Britain's greatest heist-men, and responsible (along with his wisecracking and since-deceased brother Desmond) responsible for upwards of 20 gangland murders. And just wait -- just you wait -- for the response when MacIntyre asks him: "I detect a hint of lavender about you, Dominic. Are you gay?" (Now playing at Cinema Village in New York and the Culver Plaza in Los Angeles, with more cities to follow.)

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― Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

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Is Slovenia the film world's new Romania?

Iva Krajnc as Simona in "Guardian of the Frontier."

Let's move on from all these lists to the journalist's second-best friend: a quiz of dubious value! What former socialist-bloc nation is becoming the next international cinematic surprise, à la Romania? Since I've already given you the answer, let's admit that it's a trick question. As a former republic of Yugoslavia, Slovenia -- which borders Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia -- was only briefly part of the Soviet bloc, before Marshal Tito broke away to pursue his own brand of communism. (Which, whatever you think of it, was vastly preferable to the nightmare of tribalism and civil war that followed its collapse.)

Also, Slovenian cinema isn't new, it's just getting a brief moment in the sun right now because New York's Lincoln Center is hosting a six-day retrospective called "At the Crossroads: Slovenian Cinema," which runs through July 22. Although it's one of the smallest and poorest of the European Union nations (as well as the one hardly anybody could identify on a map), Slovenia contributed many films and directors to the exciting Yugoslav scene of the '60s and '70s, beginning with films like Frantisek Cap's 1953 college comedy "Vesna" and France Stiglic's World War II drama "Valley of Peace," made in 1956 and starring African-American actor John Kitzmiller (an ex-G.I. who stayed in Europe to work as an actor).

This week's mini-fest will also include rarely-seen classics like Bostjan Hladnik's 1961 "Dance in the Rain," perhaps the first film of Yugoslavia's '60s-modernist new wave, Matjaz Klopcic's delicate 1967 relationship drama "Paper Planes," and "Raft of the Medusa," a 1980 parable of aesthetic revolution directed by acclaimed cinematographer Karpo Godina. One can hope that some of those titles will finally reach DVD after this exposure, and that goes double for Slovenia's post-independence films, most virtually unseen in the West.

I've been able to sample a few of the more contemporary films in this selection, and there are several worth seeking out (or pestering your favored DVD source about). Andrej Kosak's 1996 drama "Outsider" is set in the '70s punk scene in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, and yes, there was one. Janez Burger's 1999 "Idle Running" is a Jarmusch/Linklater-flavored slacker comedy, and the brand new Slovenian-Croatian hit "Rooster's Breakfast," from director Marko Nabersnik, is a loopy and slightly dark rural comedy with overtones of thriller. I haven't seen Maja Weiss' 2002 "Guardian of the Frontier," a yarn about a trio of college-age women who embark on a canoe trip near the Croatian border and wind up somewhere between a monster movie and a Balkan version of "Deliverance," but it's reportedly amazing.


― Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

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Sweet Movie: The Gentle Side of “Destructive Art”

by Dušan Makavejev

How did I get Otto Muehl (1) and the AA Kommune (Actions-Analytic Kommune) into Sweet Movie? The shooting of Sweet Movie was planned for October 1974. In the earlier version of the script, the leading female character ends up catatonic in a mental hospital. She comes back to life by being treated with the highly perceptive non-action of a nonverbal doctor whom I imagined as my variation of Ronnie Laing. (2) I had never met Laing, but he fascinated me with his intelligence, risk-taking, playfulness, radical insight and genuine respect for life. He was a healer by just being around.

Then, a batch of films from Vienna that screened in a tiny ‘underground’ cinema in Munich moved me into an unexpected experience of a difficult–to-explain mix of charm, disgust and fear. I oscillated between surprise, fascination and revulsion. The films were baroque, even rococo – a cascade of prolonged “blood, shit and tears” scenes, agony, dirt, “sadism” – as if someone was inviting my stupidity to step forward. The authors of the films, obviously, wanted me scared or furious. The public was leaving the cinema in a panic. I had never before faced the anarchy of life cleansed of humour. However, the orchestrated chaos on the screen contained a lot of daring and a genuine indefinable “something”. And, also, the blood was more often ketchup, and the chaos was mostly an excess of flour being spilled around.

What I’d seen on the screen made me acutely aware that instead of staging some clumsy half-fantasy of mine with hired actors I could, and should, place my leading actress into a sort of living anti-psychiatry collective. I decided to get in touch with Otto Muehl.

At the time, the Commune was rejecting visitors but I managed to find about two dozen of them living in a large apartment on the Praterstrasse in Vienna. They lived without reading newspapers or watching television, in a sort of very lively and communicative family life. Only later, I realised that they were strongly connected also through a group marriage. Luckily, the only film they had seen the year before was my WR: Mysteries of the Organism [W.R. ­– Mistirije organizima, 1971], so they let me in for a short visit.

They were kind and nice to each other, and with me, but about being in my next film they said no. Their ‘no’ was not a refusal; they were simply not interested. However, I managed to get their permission to visit them once again the following week on their farm in Burgenland, a half-barren land near the border with Hungary. They were neither interested in the glamour of being in a film and its connected publicity, nor in the chance to earn some money. It was a collective of non-aggressive outsiders. (Moving through their space, I was tested, watched by everyone, not knowing that my unstated task was to seduce them.)

After protracted negotiations, we managed to get eight of them to join our cast and be with us for a week in an abandoned old factory in a Paris suburb. (With the money earned from the film, they bought a cow or two, to have milk for their kids.)

So, there I was the following week, at the end of the world, in sparsely populated region. Otto Muehl, a little older than the others, was fun, easy, tolerant and exercised no authority at all. I was told that, if I wanted eight of them to participate in the scene in my film, the whole commune would have to hear my story and approve of it.

I was in a cold sweat. I sat with all of them ‘a la turca’ in a big circle. I started telling my story to neutral faces that let me feel the stupidity of my film and the futility of my endeavour. As I went on describing scene by scene the story of Sweet Movie, a baby girl of about a year and half who was playing with a dog climbed into my lap. Busy with my storytelling, I had no time to look for the child’s mother, so I accommodated the girl in my lap and continued quite desperately with my story. The child fell asleep. It seems this was a vote of approval.

The “Commune” in the film consisted of the eight members from Vienna and another eight young actors from Paris selected through some interesting exercises. The Commune scenes changed a lot from the original script. I kept only the idea that the catatonic girl gets into the commune and, at a certain point, starts coming back to life. We decided to shoot for several days, one ‘theme’ a day, whatever happens. First day was the ‘Day of Nest and Milk’, next was ‘Day of Food’, next the ‘Day Re-birth’ and the last one was to be the ‘Day of Blood’.

Day after day, we shot for just a few hours. Every single shot was good and usable. The Commune members were collaborative and enthusiastic, and the Paris actors melted in. Most of the creative crew was inspired and positive. Part of the professional crew followed half-heartedly. It seems we were not “following the script”. I knew that some people were afraid of the chaos. I tried to explain that we were getting much better film images than planned. The real strain was on actress Carole Laure. She brilliantly and bravely participated and inter-acted, especially in the wild lunch scene. The scene was improvised and all shot in less then two hours. The actual ‘lunch’ was shot without rehearsals, continuously with the hand-held camera circling around the table twice. At the end, the whole table and the food were destroyed and we finished the shoot. When Otmar Bauer started pissing on Herbert Strumpfel, his partner, it was so joyous and hilarious. (Otmar Bauer was introduced to me as the commune’s accountant, and Herbert Strunmfel was just around. They both made a number of their own films as Vienna Aktionists.)

I was sure that the ‘provocative content’ could overcome the censorial impulses waiting at the end of our work if the excess normally considered dangerous is wrapped up in infantility, happiness and pure ‘joy of life’. It ended, paradoxically, both ways. The film played in many countries; however, it is still banned in Canada and the United Kingdom.

I think I’ve interpreted correctly the Commune’s ‘destructivity’ as respect for life in all its wilderness, unpredictability, freedom, pleasure. Celebration. It was clear to me that all their actions, ugly or shocking, were pure play and performance, innocently offered to both themselves and to the camera eye, and politically more than correct.

I could not know then that I was experimenting, twenty years before the time, with what was to be named ‘A Reality Show’. I just felt that I should not interfere. This Ali-Baba’s Cave of Horrors that was offered to us, and brilliantly recorded by Jan Lemasson’s perceptive hand-held lens, was a genuine gift of unpleasant poetry. I just told Vincent Malle, the producer, that we were getting some incredible material, that I could not censor. I asked him to let me make, without extra costs, an independent documentary of twenty to forty minutes. In the feature film, I would use maybe seven to ten minutes integrated in the rest of the film, stylistically interlaced with humour, colour and the general spirit of the film. He said no way. I could not believe that he was not aware that we would get some sort of monstrous ‘blob’ of uneasy images towards the end of the film.

In retrospect, I find curious that thinking of my own film, whose production was near its start, I was not intimidated by the fact that the screening in Munich ended with an empty cinema. At a screening in Taormina, within a minute or two of the Commune scene a few dozen people stood up and ran out of the screening room. And minutes later another three, five and a dozen people left. They were ugly moments. When I went out to hear what they were saying, I found them all watching the film through the exit doors. When the Commune scene ended, they all went back to their seats.

The last day with the Commune ended without any filming. A highly poetic and frightening scene conceived only by the actresses for the ‘Day of Blood’ was not shot. I owe readers an account of this scene scripted by Carole Laure and the other actresses, as well as an account of the French crews rebellion, and Bojana’s (3) thoughts on the matter. But I’ll leave that for another day ...

------------
about the writer
Dušan Makavejev is a Yugoslav born filmmaker who resides in Paris and Belgrave and whose extensive and distinguished career includes such titles as Innocence Unprotected, The Tragedy of a Switchboard Operator and Manifesto.

source: www.sensesofcinema.com

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If Batman had a shrink

Christian Bale as Batman in The Dark Knight

The idea of the superhero shrink is ripe for comedy, yet the inner workings of the Dark Knight's mind would be no laughing matter

For all pop culture's shamelessness, one comic opportunity has yet to be exploited. I could see it as a Saturday Night Live sketch, or an entire Jack Black film: a psychiatric service for superheroes.

Catwoman could celebrate her liberation from dowdy secretary to latex black nightwalker, then prank call Halle Berry and upbraid her for having wrecked her mythos. The X-Men would arrive together, saying how lonely they felt before discovering their commonality. Superman could debate the conundrum of being a virtually indestructible alien.

But the toughest nut to crack would be Batman.

All superheroes experience pain as they suffer the initiations that the genre demands. They have to be brought low before rising up again through sheer will. They also need a chip on the shoulder big enough to sustain a multi-film production, comic books, novels, video games and intense cultural analysis.

But Batman's the only constant self-hater. Wealth, worldliness and acclaim as Bruce Wayne do nothing for him: his own pain is his fetish. He reminds himself of his trauma every time he dons his wetsuit, because he's chosen as his emblem not something which provides strength and inspiration, but the sign of his misery. The black bat looms like a fascist stamp over everything he does, a constantly reinforced link between the grieving kid and the angry man.

Batman doesn't want to get over it. Bruce Wayne's money enables Batman to indulge his own chagrin and vindicate his desire for confrontation. His vast wealth could easily be rerouted into the institutions of the great and the good. That would improve the world. But what Batman really wants is to get off on his own grudge.

Unlike many other superheroes he doesn't have extraordinary gifts, not even (like Cassandra) those of prophecy and intuition. He didn't become super by accident (like Spider-Man) or force (like Nikita), and he's no Potterish Chosen One either. Batman's suit and vehicles are weapons loaded with gadgets. They let him pick and win fights. Like actual medieval knighthood, the chivalric ideal is an excuse to satiate the desire for violence.

And yet for all his angst, Batman has only one real foe: himself. It was the young Wayne whose fear of bats, brought on by a childhood tumble into a cave, caused his parents to leave an opera performance early and fall victim to a random street thug (at least in Christopher Nolan's version). While the Dark Knight's vigilantism is focused upon a vain effort to retrospectively right that wrong, the fact that he dresses in the guise of the creature that brought on his own moment of greatest failure suggests the larger part of his anger is directed inwards. The bat represents everything Wayne hates, regrets and fears - and he's in love with it.

Nolan's Batman Begins was a return to Bob Kane's original invention in 1939, and it utilised another heroic reworking: Mary Harron's reinvention of Christian Bale in American Psycho. American Psycho is one of the most impressive, coldly seductive films of the last decade. It showed the previously nondescript, now rebuilt Bale as an Aryan uber-paragon, his perfect form taut with contempt. It was this identity which Bale carried into the rebooted Batman.

In The Dark Knight, out next week, Batman confronts The Joker, a peculiar self-hater just like himself. The faceoff will be a tortured duel between two pathologies but in true Nietzschean form, Batman's pain is our pleasure - and his own. [blogs.guardian.co.uk]

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Movie Revolutionaries Wanted

Reading Mark Harris' potent provocation of a book, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, got me thinking of what's needed to kick Hollywood in the ass. The book focuses on 1967 and the five films Oscar nominated for Best Picture: Two groundbreakers (Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate) versus a tired old Hollywood musical (Dr. Dolittle) and a pair of films about race relations (Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, In the Heat of the Night). Harris uses those films, and the process to develop them that stretched back to 1963, to show us Hollywood at a crossroads. It was a time of rule breaking—you can feel director Mike Nichols cracking through youth formula in The Graduate and director Arthur Penn and producer Warren Beatty reinventing the gangster genre by investing techniques of the New Wave into Bonnie and Clyde. The eventual Oscar winner, In the Heat of the Night, was a safer choice, but the change in the air was undeniable and you can feel it whipping through the pages of this witty, wizardly book.

Harris, a columnist at Entertainment Weekly, brings a reporter's rigor and an advovate's passion to the possibilities of film. He blows the dust off film history, leaving us with a living portrait of a rebel generation. There's a scrappy dare in his words that speaks to the right now and makes Pictures that rare book on film that deserves to be called indispensable.

Pictures at a Revolution offers all of us a challenge. Change was everywhere in 1967—it was the year Rolling Stone first published and dedicated itself not just to music but the things and attitudes that the music embraces. For a generation raised on rock, rebel movies have the same juice: youth, defiance, danger, fun and the promise of rule-busting experimentation that might just point the way ahead. Which leads to my question: Who've we got now? Let's jump ahead 40 years, and identify the new revolutionaries, who are changing the way films are made, seen and discussed. I'll let it rip with my top three. Feel free to shout me down and start your own list.

Paul Thomas Anderson

Anderson's There Will Be Blood occupied the Bonnie and Clyde slot in the 2007 Oscar contest for Best Picture. It changed the way we look at movies. Anderson, 37, is the maverick incarnate. His films, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, follow no formula. And Anderson himself cares little for who he might piss off on the road to creating his own forms.

Joel and Ethan Coen

No Country for Old Men brought them their first Best Picture and Best Directing Oscars. But if you've watched from Blood Simple through the brilliant likes of The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink and Fargo, you know they could start their own revolution double-handed.

Julien Schnabel

The painter and conceptual artist showed how he could do the impossible in film as well with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, about a man who learned to communicate by blinking his left eyelid. In only his third feature, after Basquiat and Before Night Falls, Schnabel brings a fresh vision to cinema and makes you eager for his next move. [source: rollingstone.com]

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Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, Politics

For the non-Korean speaking Korean film fanatic, our primary text resources are slim. There is The History Of Korean Cinema by LEE Young-Il and CHOE Young-Chol (Jimoondang Publishing Company, 1988), which, unless you know how to order it, (you have to correspond with the Korean Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society), can be difficult to come by. Another book you have to know about is Seoul Stirring: 5 Korean Directors (Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1996) written by the infamous Asian Film critic Tony Rayns for a Korean Film Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Although chock-full of many films we love, more books are needed. As for Lee Server's Asian Pop Cinema: Bombay to Tokyo (Chronicle Books, 1999) it appears he only made a change of planes in Seoul as evidenced by his almost pointless chapter on Korean Film.

In enters Hyangjin Lee's book Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, Politics (Manchester University Press, 2001). Lee, a Lecturer in the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield brings us 200 pages on not only South Korean film, but North Korean film too, with a nice filmography of major films at the end. Will this satisfy our fix for information and musings on our particular geographical variation of cinephilia?

As is the answer to most Yes or No questions, it depends. Lee's book is meant for the academic, thus it is full of the jargon and theoretical references expected of people pursuing tenure, that is, if tenure is a pursuit of British lecturers. That said, some of us might find the language dry and less entertaining than what one finds in Premiere magazine. Personally, I like dissertations and academic texts so I'm fine with the meanderings about race and gender and allusions to dead philosophers I have never heard of. And, when discussions of such amazing films as YU Hyonmok's A Stray Bullet are included, I can't help but be caught up in the magnificence of such films, regardless of the prose style.

For those of you who share my interest in the academic, Lee's book offers meaty discussions of important South Korean films and provides interesting comparisons with their North Korean counterparts. Lee's particular interests are the "ideological messages that the film conveys about present society through its images of the past. By examining the ways in which previous experiences are reinvented on the screen, we can discern the subtle and complex operations of contemporary ideologies in everyday life" (page 3). Lee does not see films about the past as windows to the past, but as rearview mirrors to the present. Taking a recent film as an example, Peppermint Candy by LEE Chang-dong (pictured below left), Hyangjin Lee is not interested as much in what the film conveys about Korea's past, but in how present-day Korea filtered this film's depiction of Korea's past. In other words, Lee continues to ask, "Why this Then now?"

Peppermint Candy The first chapter surveys the history of Korean cinema within the context of the history of the two Koreas. Of particular interest in this section is the debate around what was the "first" Korean film. "First" is debatable depending on what you consider "film" and "Korean." (For example, is a film funded by the Japanese but directed and acted by Koreans a "Korean" film?) Lee offers The Righteous Revenge (1919) by KIM Tosan, part film/part stage drama, as the film most Korean film scholars argue was the first, but she provides equal time for those who argue The Plighted Love Under the Moon (1923) by YUN Paengnam was first. Yun's film doesn't even make the cut for some purists who note that the Japanese colonial government produced this film. Lee also brings in recent arguments that KIM Tosan's The National Borders actually completed production, contrary to previous reports, and was shown prior to The Plighted Love...

The three principles of film-making required by North Korean film-makers are addressed in this chapter: "seed theory" (the "proper" revolutionary themes that should be presented), "modeling" (the "proper" portrayal of working class struggles to achieve class liberation), and "speed campaign" (the quick production of films to meet The Party's needs).

Major genres of Korean film are discussed as well. This chapter also explores the effect of the American movie industry on South Korean production. Lee labels the present South Korean film industry as being in a depressed state, although, from information gathered from Darcy Paquet's www.koreanfilm.org website regarding the box office hits Shiri (KANG Jae-Kyu, 1999), JSA (PARK Chan-Wook, 2000) and Chingu (KWAK Kyung-Taek, 2001), new information appears to contradict what Lee has argued here. Lee primarily stops collecting data at 1999, so we can't fault her for not seeing what we're seeing now. (And, in terms of social analytic procedure, does a three-year peak demonstrate a trend or merely a blip?)

Chapter 2 is all Chunhyang all the time. Lee looks at the portrayal of the Chunhyang myth in two North Korean films (YU Wonjun and YUN Ryonggyu's The Tale of Ch'unhyang (1980) and SHIN Sangok's musical Love, Love, My Love (1985)) and three South Korean films (SHIN Sangok's Song Ch'unhyang (1961), PAK Tae-Won's The Tale of Song Ch'unhyang (1976), and HAN Sanghun's Song Ch'unhyang (1987). (Sorry, no IM Kwon-Taek, since it wasn't released until 2000, again, after this book was in final production.)

Gender and class are the main focus of Lee's analysis. Lee argues that Shin's Song Ch'unhyang is "aligned with the male gaze, [because] the camera dwarfs Ch'unhyang's status, visually evoking her powerlessness and inferiority, which are equated with her femininity" (p. 75). The three South Korean films are said to


...constitute different facets of an ideal female constructed in a male fantasy: a virtuous and yet sexually attractive woman with childlike vulnerability. This composite Ch'unhyang figure is wife, lover, sister and many others at the same time, who appeals to the male's erotic desire as well as his ego as provider and protector. This figure can turn contradictory attributes into complementary and compatible ones and embrace them all. The character Ch'unhyang is thus, remarkably adaptable to the male-centred gender dynamics. In this sense, the three films do not place it in the larger context of gender issues. In fact, they all tend to appropriate feminist concerns for their immediate commercial profits. Moreover, they avoid the subject of social class all together (p. 83).


Lee finds that both South and North Korean Chunhyang films, in their portrayal of gender, are "rooted in traditional Confucian ethics, which succour differential treatments of men and women" (p. 90). Yes, we've entered a Women's Studies class here. Personally, I eat this stuff up. I really miss college.

As for class analysis, Lee sees the North Korean films as finding Chunhyang and Mongnyong's predicament dictated by class conflicts, whereas South Korean films show the problem residing in individual character traits. After reading this chapter, one is provided new lenses with which to view IM Kwon-Taek's take on this tale. Keeping within Lee's frame, we can ponder what Im is saying about Korea now in his portrayal about Korea then.

Missing from this chapter, however, is a comparative analysis of SHIN Sang-ok's separate South and North productions of the Chunhyang myth. This almost begs discussion, but Lee avoids explicitly noting the similarities and differences with the exception of one brief reference.

In Chapter 3, Lee discusses how the ideological perspectives of North and South Korea impact their films. In North Korea, anti-imperialism defines nationhood while the three principles of film-making allow for great control over what is produced. O Pyongch'o's CHOE Hakchin's Family (1966), CH'OE Ikkyu's The Sea of Blood (1969), and CHO Kyongsun's Wolmi Island (1982) are used to underscore this point.

The available freedoms in South Korea make it more difficult to pinpoint an overall ideological perspective. However, Lee uses anti-communism as a base for her analysis. IM Kwon-Taek's didactic The Banner Bearer Without a Flag (1979) best illustrates this perspective, whereas YU Hyonmok's classic A Stray Bullet (1960), and CHONG Chiyong's Southern Guerrilla Forces (1990) are utilized to show the subtler, more nuanced effects an anti-communism stance has had on South Korean film. Lee's analysis of A Stray Bullet continues to fuel my desire to one day see this film translated.

Although Lee sees common ground concerning gender and family issues, seeing North and South based on Confucian ideals of harmony, unity, and loyalty, as well as respect for the educated, North and South filmic portrayals are seen most in conflict regarding class. North Korean film attempts to defend their social structure through all those shiny, happy, comrades. O Pyongch'o's The Untrodden Path (1980), CH'AE P'unggi's The Brigade Commander's Former Superior (1983), and CHO Kyongsun's Bellflower (1987) are used by Lee to show how North Korea's films betray the "classless society" it claims to be through their portrayal of characters seeing the errors in their discontent with the system. If it were so great, why would they be discontent in the first place? And why do they need to be convinced of their role in North Korean society through the fables of these films?

Black Republic A number of South Korean films, on the other hand, challenge their social structure, its economic miracle, focusing on those left in the tugboats as the chaebol liners dock to shore. The South Korean films, YI Changho's A Nice Windy Day (1980), PAK Chongwon's Kuro Arirang (1989) and PAK Kwangsu's Black Republic (1990, pictured left), illuminate South Korea by showing "the suffering masses behind the bright slogans of the rapidly developing country" (p. 165). Yi's film portrays the experience of rural working class men dreaming to Seoul, whereas the two Paks represent the tradition of college students entering the ranks of the working class to test and prove their ideas on social reform. In the United States, condescending portrayals of privileged (read White) characters who enter ghetto slums to guide the poor (read Black or Latino) to the promised land (of Whiteness) has always been an emotional trope. Lee feels PAK Chongwon's Kuro Arirang is not a condescending depiction because "instead of portraying the poor, undereducated factory girls as innocent victims who need paternalistic protection and leadership, the film emphasizes their inner strength and self-respect" (p. 176).

Lee concludes her book by reiterating the differences in portrayal of class between the two Koreas and how the similarity in referencing Confucian values is a starting point for future relations. Although not the most accessible of books, Lee provides a valuable resource for those of us whose fingers ache following posts to Darcy's page analyzing every little taste of Peppermint Candy or flickering detail of Shiri.

However, I must admit, it's difficult for me to critique her points regarding these films since I have not had the privilege to see ANY of them. I want to see them, but the provincialism of the United States film industry and the Korean film industry's unwillingness to take more risks into the U.S. market, or insistence in holding out on selling U.S. marketing rights, results in their not being available presently.

All I'm left with is what I can apply from Lee's book regarding films I have been able to see. Taking Lee's lessons, two interesting items arise.

First, IM Kwon-Taek's portrayal of the Chunhyang myth is provided with a new layer. As David James and Kyung Hyun Kim's soon to be published book IM Kwon-Taak: The Making of a Korean National Cinema (Wayne State University Press, 2002) states in its title, Im has always been conscious of creating a national cinema for Korea since the chains of totalitarianism were loosened. Im's choice to direct yet ANOTHER Chunhyang film in 2001 was not only a nod to Korea's most well-known myth, but Im may also have been giving props to his peeps who came before him in Korea's film history.

See, with all that controversy regarding which film constitutes Korea's "first" film, one thing is clear: YI Myongu's The Tale of Ch'unhyang was the first sound film directed and produced by Koreans. In remaking Chunhyang, Im is, by default, alluding to Korea's first sound film. And Im's choice to have a pansori singer narrate the film for us, a clear reference to Korean culture and history on its own, and his choice to go back and forth from filming the pansori singer's performance to filming the Chunhyang myth, this all could be argued to represent an allusion to The Righteous Revenge, the film most film historians argue was the first Korean film. I argue this because The Righteous Revenge was part stage drama/part film. Im's filmic Chunhyang was part pansori performance/part film within a film. In their essay "The Simpsons and Allusions: Worst Essay Ever" (The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh of Homer, edited by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble, Open Court Publishing Co., 2001), William Irwin and J.R. Lombardo argue that unintended allusions should be referred to as "accidental associations" if they cannot definitively be credited to the auteur. I agree, however, I feel further delineations are needed, such as "default allusions" that reference remakes and "accidental allusions" rather than "associations" that refer to what Im has done here. Im may have not intended this allusion, but the allusion is so tight that it goes beyond a mere "accidental association." Oftentimes, great artists are so attune with their subjects, the allusions emerge without intent. Such is what I feel has happened in Im's Chunhyang. I will never know for sure until I have a chance to speak with Im myself. Until then, the evidence for this accidental allusion appears strong after reading Lee's history of Korean film.

Second, Lee provides evidence that the Shiri/JSA pairing was not an aberration in Korean film. What I mean by this is that Shiri was a film along the lines of U.S. blockbusters that relied on black-and-whiting the North/South Korean conflict. Immediately, JSA followed this film the next year providing a more complex view of the conflict with less reliance on caricatures and good-vs-evil clichés. Lee presents this back and forth-ing of Modern and PostModern portrayals, either/or-ing vs. and-ing, when talking about The Banner Bearer Without a Flag and Southern Guerrilla Forces, although these films are separated in their release by over ten years. Lee argues Southern Guerrilla Forces was really the first Korean film to challenge the need for definite good and evils regarding the conflict between the two Koreas. What Lee's analysis shows is that such is a recurring event within South Korean cinema. Shiri and JSA, separated by only one year, both breaking box office records, show that this ebb and flow has come to the point where films will immediately counter one another, a Modern portrayal followed by a PostModern followed by a Modern, ad infinitum.

Along with providing information about the history of Korean film, Hyangjin Lee's Contemporary Korean Cinema has fashioned my intellectual tools with which to fiddle my personal horizontal hold when watching Korean film. She has encouraged me to test my ideas above by watching The Banner Bearer... and Shiri together, as well as Southern Guerrilla Forces and JSA when the chance is afforded me. She has given me ideas surrounding how to relook at Im's Chunhyang when I finally purchase the DVD. She has further fueled my desire to see such films as A Stray Bullet and Black Republic. And she has reminded me that what I have to say about all these Korean films may tell you more about my America now than their Korea then.

This article written by by Adam Hartzell, published at http://koreanfilm.org

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