Asian Cinema wk 2 Notes

 

“CHUNGKING EXPRESS ”

While watching this film for the first time, I just started to cry…I cried a lot… every time I watch this film I break into a sobbing mess. Iʼm just happy to love a movie this much.

—Quentin Taratino

Rolling Thunder Pictures

• created in 1995, but closed in 1998
• set up under Miramax Films
• distributed independent, cult, or foreign films to theatres.
• ‘uncovers the missing pieces  of film story, past and present’ –Tarantino

(The Beyond, Chungking Express, Detroit 9000, Mighty Peking Man, Sonatine, Switchblade Sisters)

 

The Miramax Problem 

–Delaying release (Shaolin Soccer–shelved for 3 years)

–Re-editing the films (Princess Mononoke)

–Baring retailers from ‘legally’ exporting authentic DVD’s of the films

—Commonly dubs the films to avoid subtitles (Anime films mostly)

 

Asian in Hollywood

–Production companies are combating this revolt, and export issues, by producing their own ‘asian films’

–Shifting production of ‘Asian’ away from the geographical site of Asia

–At most-Asia is a shooting location

–We must look beyond onscreen representation to undertand a film’s true identity

 

Different between Columbia Pictures filmProduction Asia and Dream works 

Asian films can be made outside of Asia
– This is important for Asiaʼs cross-pollination (and place in the global world)
• But Asia is still tied to Asian regional identity
• Asian hubs are created inside the domestic home or places (Chinatown)
– This remains the key to reading Asia around the world
• Kung Fu Panda is about recognisable Asian symbols
– not regional identity

Two Transitional directors

—Wayne Wang 

—Clara Law

 

 

CHUNGKING EXPRESS

Fascinating transnational film
• Transnational in vision and sentiment
• Christopher Doyle (cinematographer)
– Australian
– Migrated to Hong Kong in the 1970s
– Shoots Western and Eastern films
– ʻA visionaryʼ – Wong Kar Wai

“A film is about wanting something more” -WongKar Wai

–through the movie “california dream” characters dream about another bigger world.

–seem like the Asia film. film projects its ASIAN OUTWARDLY

 

 

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My Identity

In this week, we talked about our own identity.

 HERE IS A GREAT POINT I AM TOTALLY AGREE WITH

“Media now is much more like the production of an experience, which includes people as participants, as content contributors and  members of a broader discourse community around the works.”

Actually the purpose of why we taking the subject in media study is that we are all social maker, nowadays, there are so many people can be the social maker in terms of making videos and posting blog who have never been studied media before. Thats the information age, we cannot deny that.

For our professional media maker, we need to have awareness of what can we do for this media age. we cannot just to be a ordinary person who is making the videos or posting blogs for their own purpose, probably just for fun among different types of friends. WE ARE DIFFERENT!!!! we have to bulid up a platform that are able to identify our professional identity and have a grant reputation among the publicity.

As the lecture mentioned, building up a online professional identity,  it makes you stand out to employers and others in the media community. The second is that a definite identity is essential when you are trying to attract others to work with you in a participatory project, such as the one you’ll design for this course.

building up my identity, HERE IS MY ACTIONS

• updating my student blog twice a week
• checking my social networking sites (FB, TWITTER, CHINESE SOCIAL SITES, INSTGRAM, PINTEREST) and always update it
• create my own professional platform that receive different useful media info and also giving my own personal idea more. (ABC POOL)

START OT THINK ABOUT IT

Assessment task # 1. Social media profile 25%  [5min x 15 slides slideshare presentation
Task description
1. Generate a your own dynamic social media professional profile
• Describe who you are and how you present yourself currently and compare with other professional identities and how they project their identity
• Identify how you will modify your profile to establish a social media presence
• Describe and analyse this through documentation of your social media activities such as Twitter feeds and conversations, profile descriptions, comments, work shared, projects engaged in, and so on

2. Document the findings from the expedition into My Tribe
• Describe the identities and activities of the people you find
• Consider these people as an audience group (users) for the development of your prototype
• How are these people connected through the media works they post andcomment on and the activities they engage in?

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Who Am I ?

This is the first video I have done in IM2, how to identify myself? actually I only can identify myself as a daughter, a granddaughter, a older sister, a student, a friend, and a life lover. hahaha. I am not that kind of person that willing to show myself off in the public, in regardless of being defined as a CRAZY girl in the eye of my friends.

this video is not able to define myself enough, I think it is just a part of me in a superficial mind, for the deep side, I REALLY HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO EXPRESS AND I AM ALWAYS KEEP IN MY OWN MIND.

 

IM 2 exercise1 from vickiedeng on Vimeo.

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Documentary: True Lies

In this sem, we are going to focus on the documentary, which can be easily handled in terms of the knowledge came from the documentary in last sem. we have analyzed the  Bill Nichols’s sic modes of documentary and also the against idea of documentary cannot constructed by those modes. Actually, As a participant in the film, I partly understand that all the movies are all created and not real. The most important point that the ambition of making documentary is to persuade the spectators and let them know this is real story, and then get the purpose of attaching their internal feeling. For most of the filmmakers, they always want to get more excited challenge in making documentary, in terms of real story based, framing, unplanned lines, all those sort of things can make a documentary that deeply persuasive in spectator’s mind. This is only my personal understanding, and still have a long way to understand and put in our documentary film.

this is one of the documentary that loved and impressed mostly: Touching the Void

• it actually based on a story written by Joe Simpson 1988
• In 2003, the book was turned into a documentary, directed by Kevin MacDonald.
• it presents the challenge of truthful, and in its dramatic way
• it actually against the way of what Nichol’s argument for the normal style of the documentary. it only can defines as doc drama (the social actors)
• I am wondering that what makes a documentary a documentary? a clear constructed text, assuming the real world?
• the most important thing i have learned in this movie is that in the idea of preserving the spectator what the doc is, it successfully shapes by the viewer what the situation in and still wondering whether it is true or not, it claims the activity of the viewer and they actually get involved in the situation.
• Feel like present the truth, in terms of the social actors are telling the story (voice over) in accordance with  the clips. the social actors’ acting is really like the people who experienced and make it more convinced.

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What makes a good blog reflection?

 

1. deep reflection rather than simple description of actions
2. asking yourself questions and then thinking through the answers in writing–how should i approach this taks, or this idea? Did my approach work? Why or why not? What if we/I has thought about it or done it differently? what can i learn from the approaches of other people? How does this relate to Bill Nichols’s six mode of documentary?
3. Personal voice and honesty.
4. making connections with and between ideas and practises.-from classes, other blogs, texts, projects
5. focus on and insight into your own learning: what did i learn? what can i learn?
6. good expression and grammar

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IM 2

Here I Come!!

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A new understanding of Asian cinema markets

How the broder-crossing feeding loop is not only expanding the exhibition of “chinese elements” but also shifting the production of ‘chinese elements’ away from the geographical site of China

 

DreamWork’s Kung Fu Panda 

 

–successfully to America’s computer animation tech and prototypical Hollywood narrative, the “chinese elements’ borrowed from the martial arts cinema in Hongkong.

–conjoined with the Hollywood narrative of the self-made hero (panda), perpetuate the myth of the “american dream” making it universally appealing,

–it presents a interesting phenomenon: American film-makers ‘paying tribute to ‘Chinese Kungfu’

–a manger from animation studio says ‘ Chinese film industries must undergo full-scale marketization follow Hollywood’s commercial strategy as produces like Kungfu Panda.

–‘China-born, American-raised.’–a new understanding of Chinese cinema

–the line btw the chinese and the un-chinese becomes de-essentialized. both are now used for labelling and transnational marketing purposes.

 

 

Commercial interaction : Chinese elements & American film culture 

mutual benefits via three issues 

–management of ‘difference ‘under economic and cultural globalziation

–the issue of authorship or agency in the structural power geometry and transnational mediascape

–the definition of Chinese cinema in the accelerated transnational feeding loop of production,exhibition and reception/consumption.

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Quentin Taratino’s Authorship

 

Tarantino actively introduce Asian films to the US via Miramax. 

HERO 

• directed by Zhangyimou
• zhang’s new move was facilitated by Taratino.(commercial type)
• The Miramax DVD cover again like ( chunking express) creates the illusion of Taratino’s authorship by tiering the verbal info
•  Line 1 -Quentin Tarantino, Line 2 -presents, Line 3-Jet Li, Line 4- Hero
• Zhangyimou’s name is completely missing on the cover, replaced by the Tarantino-Jet Li duo

 

Tarantino’s “usurpation’ of authorship is so effective that any illusion of Tarantino being involved. 

 

ZHANGYIMOU’s commercial strategy

–combining martial arts

–pan-chinese mega-stars

–Tan Dun’s music

–Christopher Doyle’ s cinematography.

–his own reputation as a Chinese trailblazing director.

 

We have to consider the complicated interactions between the original authorship and Taratino’s symbolic authorship, especially in terms of how such symbolic authorship reshapes Chinese cinema in the transitional theatre. 

–“viewing the compromise as necessary for accessing the US commercial market. The outstanding box office performance seemed to have vindicated Zhang’s sacrifice. (Miramax requested a 20 mind reduction to tighten the rhythm for the sake of the US commercial market. )

–All parties(including Zhang) confirmed Taratino’s “surrogate parent’ role as crucial for the film’s American release and commercial success.

–Zhang yimou, despite compromise, similarly expressed satisfaction.

 

–>the film needed a Tarantino-like figure to be successfully introduced to the American mass audience &Zhang was fully aware of the necessity of collaboration, despite its predication on power inequity. 

 

 

 

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WEEK 2 Chungking Express

Week2 Reading : Made in China, sold in United States and vive versa- transitional “Chinese” cinema between media capitals. 

• “Chinese” cinema as cinema made with “Chinese elements’ that are dissociated from a geographical location or national identity, and are consequently extracted, appropriated and produced by international media capital.

 

What make CHUNGKING EXPRESS to be famous in the western?

1.  Media capital distributes (Quentin Taratino: Miramax).

 

• Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express release on 1996, and was the first film distributed by Quentin Tarantino’s company, Rolling Thunder, associated with Miramax.

 

• Quentin Taratino as “surrogate parent” his company , rolling Thunder Picture is ” a film buff’s dream to give the theatrical experience to films that might never seen in this country” he encourages America’s film-buff community to embrace.

 

• His Actions: 

–> create a new style of titling “Chuncking express” by the eye-catching bold yellow font, such graphic design creates a hierarchy in ordering the US audience’s cognition of a foreign-language film. (Quentin Tarantino–> foreign film title–> foreign director)

–>He detected the film trailers, there are two different version of the trailer.

Hongkong trailer (2.5 mins) emphasis the Hong Kong mega-star cast, the directo, the mean-street atmosphere and the postmodern aesthetic style. it strives to deliver an impression of pure mood and rhythm.

 

The US trailer (1.5mins) offers the narrative and the context, with the voice over, showing the “mystery and romance”  it highlights Miramax and Rolling Thunder Pictures as the presenting companies, before showing the director Wong Kai Wai.

 

• Hongkong Film trailer: the stellar cast, the director and his distinctive style. while striving to transcend geopolitical specificity an d narrative homogeneity.

The US trailer: begins with the Hongkongess or foreignness, then seeks to make it universal (legible, digestible and desirable for US audience)

 

    2. Domestication and Foreignisation ( Wong Kai War)  

What makes the ambiguous is whether the film is subtitled, dubbled or in original english. The Solution is REMOVING ALL DIALOGUES  ( it gives the impression that the film is in english and also faster cutting and the establishment of the music culture in 1990s ) Wong’s MTV style (fragmented visuality, collage of international pop music, flashy stylisation and intense affectively) as demonstrated in Chungking Express, made it an ideal sample that both represented the Hongkong exotica and would potentially resonate with the America audience.

 

Management of domestication and foreignization ————–“surrogate Parent” figure of Quentin Tarantino (Thunder Rolling Picture) –>the film was placed in a lineage akin to the Euro-American connoisseur taste, independent of Hollywood commercial cinema, and at the same time commensurate with contemporary American cult culture.

 

 

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