Post by NZBC on Jul 15, 2010 21:19:37 GMT 12
NZIFF: Daily Reel
07 July 2010
Like a swooning teenager in his first slow dance, Simon Zhou will be at the 2010 New Zealand International Film Festival with clammy-palmed criticism and reviews that share his love for the movies.
Follow his updates here.y 14: I Wish I Knew
Although I immigrated with my family to New Zealand before my faculties of memory had taken the form of a solid edifice, its metal beams and concrete bulwarks still sticking out like distended bone and limb - even, tottering underneath my mother’s polka-dotted skirts - I have always been conscious of my being Chinese.
As an orphan of the Chinese Disapora then, my experience of watching I Wish I Knew by Jia Zhang-ke today was like examining the construction of my memory, seeing all the cracks and leaks, the patches where it has been torn down and built up again. I have no way of adequately expressing what the experience of watching I Wish I Knew, by Jia Zhang-ke meant to me in terms that would not seem exaggeratedly soporific or insufferably flowery; it is to me, like the blossoming wallpaper to an elderly woman. Even then, it would take me far more time, and words than I am allowed in this column; the reflections perhaps too personal for me to share.
It is a film about contemporary China, yes, and nominally a documentary too. But more so than that, it is a poem, constantly fluctuating; it is the poetry of a collapsed bridge, of old women playing mah-jong. It is words, memories, whole lives. It is the speaking of these words that prove that these people existed, that they matter. It is life.
Cinema is an intensely subjective experience. There is a moment, when the film moves to Hong Kong, that Jia overlays the image of an abandoned theatre, the familiar lightbulbs turned on, with the audio of a radio programme in Cantonese. Hearing the language - for though my Cantonese is still at the level of that tottering three year old, it was my first – made me want to cry.
I grew up in Inglewood, a tiny rural town in Taranaki with a population of just over two thousand, mostly generous farmers and quaint shop-keepers. We were the only Chinese family. The most lucid thing I can say of watching this film, is that it reminded me what it means for me to be Chinese, in an absolute way. Like everyone else, I am a product of history and of politics, of those inescapable, minute memories that shape who we are. I cannot escape the Cultural Revolution, because of the experience of my parents. Because my parents made me who I am. Because my grandparents made them who they are. Because the Cultural Revolution, that cruel upheaval of history, changed them irrevocably. I am Chinese, and that means everything.
(Addendum: Jia Zhang-Ke has variously been described as ‘the most important film-maker working in the world today’ (NPR) and was voted by Film Comment as ‘the best filmmaker of the decade’. If you’d like to know more about him or his work,s there is an excellent profile here.
07 July 2010
Like a swooning teenager in his first slow dance, Simon Zhou will be at the 2010 New Zealand International Film Festival with clammy-palmed criticism and reviews that share his love for the movies.
Follow his updates here.y 14: I Wish I Knew
Although I immigrated with my family to New Zealand before my faculties of memory had taken the form of a solid edifice, its metal beams and concrete bulwarks still sticking out like distended bone and limb - even, tottering underneath my mother’s polka-dotted skirts - I have always been conscious of my being Chinese.
As an orphan of the Chinese Disapora then, my experience of watching I Wish I Knew by Jia Zhang-ke today was like examining the construction of my memory, seeing all the cracks and leaks, the patches where it has been torn down and built up again. I have no way of adequately expressing what the experience of watching I Wish I Knew, by Jia Zhang-ke meant to me in terms that would not seem exaggeratedly soporific or insufferably flowery; it is to me, like the blossoming wallpaper to an elderly woman. Even then, it would take me far more time, and words than I am allowed in this column; the reflections perhaps too personal for me to share.
It is a film about contemporary China, yes, and nominally a documentary too. But more so than that, it is a poem, constantly fluctuating; it is the poetry of a collapsed bridge, of old women playing mah-jong. It is words, memories, whole lives. It is the speaking of these words that prove that these people existed, that they matter. It is life.
Cinema is an intensely subjective experience. There is a moment, when the film moves to Hong Kong, that Jia overlays the image of an abandoned theatre, the familiar lightbulbs turned on, with the audio of a radio programme in Cantonese. Hearing the language - for though my Cantonese is still at the level of that tottering three year old, it was my first – made me want to cry.
I grew up in Inglewood, a tiny rural town in Taranaki with a population of just over two thousand, mostly generous farmers and quaint shop-keepers. We were the only Chinese family. The most lucid thing I can say of watching this film, is that it reminded me what it means for me to be Chinese, in an absolute way. Like everyone else, I am a product of history and of politics, of those inescapable, minute memories that shape who we are. I cannot escape the Cultural Revolution, because of the experience of my parents. Because my parents made me who I am. Because my grandparents made them who they are. Because the Cultural Revolution, that cruel upheaval of history, changed them irrevocably. I am Chinese, and that means everything.
(Addendum: Jia Zhang-Ke has variously been described as ‘the most important film-maker working in the world today’ (NPR) and was voted by Film Comment as ‘the best filmmaker of the decade’. If you’d like to know more about him or his work,s there is an excellent profile here.