
Tony Rayns presents the work of the 'Fifth Generation' and other innovative filmmakers who emerged during the 1980s in China.


Tony Rayns presents the work of the 'Fifth Generation' and other innovative filmmakers who emerged during the 1980s in China.
1989-04-09
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0.0In the life of Mr. Lai Man-wai, he had seen the most turbulent times of recent Chinese history. From the fall of the Qing Dynasty to the founding of the Republic, from the Sino-Japanese War to the founding of the People’s Republic. With a patriotic spirit, he joined the revolution and used the theatre to promote the revolutionary course. For a ‘stronger China’, and ‘education for all’, he chose film as his life long goal and career. Lai was more than the father of Hong Kong cinema was; he was also one of the pioneers of the Chinese cinema. He made Hong Kong’s first short fiction film ‘Zhuangzi Tests His Wife’. He opened the first Chinese owned cinema, the New World Cinema, in Hong Kong…. In the several decades, Lai had devoted his life and fortune in writing this glorious inaugural chapter in early Chinese film history. The technical enhancement, the introduction of foreign techniques and equipment were all part of his contribution to the Chinese cinema.
4.9An exploration of Chinese cinema and its relationships with gender and sexuality, which the film argues has been more frankly and provocatively explored than in any other national cinema. Utilizing both film excerpts and interviews with many leading directors and academics, the film examines topics such as male bonding in kung fu movies, depictions of same-sex bonding and physical intimacy, the emphasis on women's grievances in melodramas, and the career of Yam Kim-Fai, a Hong Kong actress who spent her life portraying men on and off the screen.
6.0A police sniper teams up with a hot-headed rookie to take down his former friend and teammate, who is exacting revenge on the police force.
8.0Part two of A comedy film set on Shanghai film studio. The background events frequently involve the shooting of other films being made at Mingxing Film Company at the time. This includes a sequence of the 17th episode of the silent wuxia film series Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, which is the only known footage from this historic series to exist.
0.0Based on the beloved children's book, elementary schooler Wang Bao discovers a wish-granting gourd that gives him the ability to make his dreams come true. Due to the gourd's erratic nature, Wang Bao confronts his own dishonesty amongst his peers and family, and realizes that you might not get everything you wish for.
0.0Su Jin meets Li'er. As their bond grows, the weight of Su Jin being the crowned prince and Li'er as a cat spirit grows heavy.
0.0Yamel, a Mexican cinema student in Cuba, is randomly filming a stormy afternoon in Havana when Jans, an 18-year-old fisherman, walks across her frame and captures her attention.
In this nostalgic documentary, restaurant critic Giles Coren challenges Heston Blumenthal to take his restaurant The Fat Duck back to 2001 for a magical feast.
8.0Two journalists born in the mid '80s decide to take a look back at how their country changed in the last 30 years since the fall of communism. The end product is a documentary containing footage of political events and historical milestones significant to Romania accompanied by a narrator's voice walking the viewer through the events, and also interviews with Romanian politicians and other influential public figures sharing their thoughts and their different views on those events.
0.0A reflection about the urgent necessity of a Universal Jurisdiction enabled to act where other initiatives fail. We are resolved to give voice to the forgotten victims of the Spanish Franco regime and determined to become an agent of change for the dissemination of some events which have left a mark on the Spanish society and which are still unknown nowadays by most of the population, who thinks to know them, but actually got a manipulated version in the best-case scenario.
6.5Tension has long simmered between Turkish soldiers and Kurdish separatists in southeastern Anatolia and, in 2015, the conflict escalated into a military lockdown. Given the lack of media coverage, locals began filming the empty streets in single-take, one-hour clips which were posted to the internet and then vanished. Coinciding with this event is the falling of the Leonids, a spectacular meteor shower which emblazons the black skies with impermanent light.
5.7Tesa Arranz, a key figure in the 1980s Madrid scene and the lead singer of the Zombies, has painted over 500 portraits of outer-space creatures. Confronting the singer’s paintings with the memories of her youth, her poems and diaries, ALIENS depicts an emotional landscape in Spanish history where happiness, nightmarish experimentations and alienation walked hand in hand.
7.0A feelgood documentary about Nothing, in which Nothing, tired of being misunderstood, tries to defend its cause. Filmed worldwide by 100+ complementary DoPs, scored by cabaret grandmasters Pascal Comelade & The Tiger Lillies, narrated - in simple childish verse - by Iggy Pop.
5.8A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.
8.0A film about everything changing while remaining the same. Or rather – everything remaining the same while changing. We observed this (and wanted to share) while standing (standing regularly and for a long time) on a road rather close to the Eastern border of Latvia, because we followed the suggestion of the locals who asked to shoot “that horrible road”.
7.2A fresh and revealing insight into Princess Diana through the personal and intimate reflections of her two sons and her friends and family.
8.0Artist David Choe has led a life of high risk, from hedonistic excesses to being imprisoned at a maximum security facility in a foreign country, and yet has been dramatically rewarded for his exploits. Life didn't change much when he traded a $60k fee in favor of stock in a start-up called The Facebook, but now he is estimated to be worth over $250 million, highlighting a colorful career filled with giant street art installations, porn star affairs and investigative reporting for companies like Vice and CNN. Director and childhood friend Harry Kim guides us through the fantastically surreal life of Choe featuring interviews and appearances by Kevin Smith, Eli Roth, Sasha Grey, Sean Parker, and Shepard Fairey.