ASCENDING DRAGON: FILMS OF GREATER CHINA

Apr 1 2008 - May 20 2008

Several years ago we explored films of the “5th generation” of directors in China. With this series we will be looking at a wide array of recent films made by directors of that and subsequent generations in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The 21st century has brought an explosion of Asian cinema and China is an essential player in that burgeoning artistic industry. In this series we will look at the distances between fathers and sons, the changing socio-sexual mores of modern Beijing, the impact of Western culture on the youth of China, the death of an old Taiwanese movie theater specializing in martial arts films, modern enslavement, dangerous working conditions, and thirty years of changes brought upon a family after the Cultural Revolution.--Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society

RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES (Qian li zou dan qi)

UNKNOWN PLEASURES (Ren xiao yao)

This earlier film by the writer/director of THE WORLD looks at teenage slackers who smoke, sit in pool halls, ride a motorcycle, try to talk to girls and even women, watch TV, and generally waste all their time in mindless inactivity.            » read more

GOODBYE, DRAGON INN

A dilapidated Taiwanese movie theater shows its final movie – an old kung-fu classic DRAGON INN by King Hu. The action-packed frenetic camerawork of the martial arts movies strikingly contrasts with the calm mise-en-scene shots of the modernist writer and director Tsai Ming-liang.  » read more

SUNFLOWER

Sunflower is a powerful and touching look at the compelling inner dynamics of one post-Cultural Revolution family in Beijing and their struggle over thirty years to adjust to each other as the fabric, politics, and social mores of Chinese society change ever so rapidly. » read more

SPRINGTIME IN A SMALL TOWN

The eight-year marriage of Dai Liyan and Yuwen has left them both unfulfilled and distant. An unexpected visitor arrives from Shanghai, a smartly-dressed doctor call Zhang Zhichen. Elegantly shot in long takes and drifting tracking shots by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing, this is a tightly controlled tale of thwarted desires. » read more

BLIND MOUNTAIN (Mang shan)

Bai Xuemei is a pretty graduate who is promised a good job working as a salesman for a medical company. Her new employers take her into the mountains, ostensibly to buy medicinal herbs; she is drugged, and wakes up to find that she has been sold to a peasant family as a wife for their truculent son. » read more 

BLIND SHAFT (Mang jing)

In the dark caves of one of the many illegal Chinese coal mines, Song and Tang murder a co-worker whom they have convinced to pose as Tang's brother. By forcing the mine's collapse upon their deceased colleague, and thereby making his death seem accidental, Tang and Song use their colleague's death to extort money from the mine's management. » read more