A documentary that looks at post-colonial identity, in particular Chinese identity and its construction in the international cinema of ethnic Chinese. Canadian filmmaker Kalli Paakspuu and student activists from China’s pro-democracy movement, Kevin Feng Ke, used an hermeneutic approach and double-voice techniques to expand our notions of the Chinese by surveying the 90’s cinema from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, United States and Canada. The filmmakers question the taken-for-granted identity within ethnic communities, weaving a geographic and cultural reality that is uniquely contradictory and inhabited by multiple identities living outside national boundaries.
Filter Films
-
What Wants To Be Spoken, What Remains To Be Said uses an imaginative and lyrical narrative to interweave three stories: The Canadian Legend of Marguerite de Roberval; the daily life of an unknown pioneer woman; and the versions of these histories as presented by a museum tour guide. In representing what has been lost, What Wants To Be Spoken, What Remains To Be Said seeks to affirm a place in history for women and acknowledges the act of the imagination in the mediation of the past. What Wants To Be Spoken, What Remains To Be Said is produced and directed by Su Rynard. The screenplay is written by Helen Humphreys, (Leaving Earth, Afterimage, The Lost Garden). What Wants To Be Spoken, What Remains To Be Said features well know Canadian Actors Nancy Beatty, Andrew Airlie, and Anita LaSelva, and is beautifully photographed by Kim Derko one of Canada’s best cinematographers. Produced with the financial participation of the Canada Council, The Ontario Film Development Corporation and the Ontario Arts Council.
What Wants To Be Spoken, What Remains To Be Said
-
Utilizing human pixillation, Isabelle’s demand to nurture conjures a variety of sensations… perverse, kitsch, sweet witch voodoo?
What Isabelle Wants
-
An industrial psychedelic self-portrait, created with original footage shot in deserted factories on the south side of Chicago, manipulated extensively through optical printing.
What Ignites Me, Extinguishes Me
-
I lost sight due to a blow on the head from slipping on black ice (leading to eye surgery, eventually); and now (because of artificially thinned blood) most steps I take outdoors all winter are made in frightful awareness of black ice. These “meditations” have finally produced this hand-painted, step-printed film. (SB)
Black Ice
-
This is a comedy, though few will know the subject well enough to laugh; for it meticulously represents the whole personal story of Westward Ho and Hoeing Man as one might attempt to remember it while watching a Pittsburgh basketball game.
Western History
-
Yes, German film director Werner Herzog really does eat his shoe to fulfill a vow to fellow filmmaker Errol Morris – boldly exemplifying his belief that people must have the guts to attempt what they dream of. Inspiring.
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
-
The term “The Weir-Falcon Saga” appeared to me, night after night, at the end of a series of dreams: I was “true” to the feeling, tho not the images, of those dreams in the editing of this and the following two films. The three films “go” very directly together, in the order of their making (as listed); yet each seems to be a clear film in itself. At this time, I tend to think they constitute a “Chapter No. 2” of “The Book of Film” I’ve had in mind these last five years (considering SCENES FROM UNDER CHILDHOOD as Chapter No. 1); and yet these “Weir-Falcon” films occur to me as distinct from any filmmaking I have done before. They engender, in me, entirely “new” considerations. I cannot describe them, but there is an excerpt from “The Spoils” by Basil Bunting which raises hair on the back of my neck similarly: “Have you seen a falcon stoop / accurate, unforeseen / and absolute, between / wind-ripples over harvest? Dread / of what’s to be, is and has been – / were we not better dead? / His wings churn air / to flight. / Feathers alight / with sun, he rises where / dazzle rebuts our stare, / wonder our fright.” (Stan Brakhage)
Weir-Falcon Saga, The
-
This film deals with the problems of revealing “the truth” in a film. It explores cinematic traditions regarding the passing of time and the portrayal of history. Since film is in itself a temporal medium, the questions regarding its manipulation to achieve this end are revealed. The film demands an examination of film as a narrative medium versus film as a physical entity responding to a given technology.
Wednesday, January 17, 1979
