48th San Francisco International Film Festival Part 2

Although mainland director Tian Zhuang Zhuang is most famous for Blue Kite, one of the best films ever made in China that summed up the tragic years of political movements under communism, he first gained international recognition in late eighties for two earlier films, “On the Hunting Ground” and “Horse Thief”. Tian seems to have deep interest in China’s ethnic groups and the ways they survived in some of the harshest environments on this earth, and these two films used Mongolia and Tibet as the backgrounds where he applied many wide angle shots and slow pacing to bring out the bleak landscape and its human stories. It came as no surprise when he decided to make a documentary (Delamu) about the Tea Horse Trail, the highest caravan route that cuts through the edge of Tibetan plateau and down to the north India. Regardless of the spectacular scenes of snow peaks and rivers that run deep down in the gorges, the film really focused on the human stories that Tian uncovered along the road. Here he offered an ensemble of local characters of various ages and religions, which included a 104-year-old woman who recalled how she outlived two husbands and all the hardships, an aged pastor telling stories of missionaries and his own imprisonment, a Tibetan young man who shared a wife with his brother, and many more. In the end we realized that these people who seemed to be living so remotely also have to deal with the same problems as we do, struggling through love and loss and pain. And the larger history, such as the civil war between the nationalists and the communists, the religious cleansing after the republic, the Dalai Lama’s escape to India, and China’s rapid modernization, did not spare these common people either and is still constantly changing their lives.

Interesting enough, another film legend, Wener Herzog who was once one of the representatives for German New cinema, also made a new documentary (White Diamond) on an equally remote area, the Amazon jungle in Guyana. Herzog apparently also has some attachment to jungles. Aguirre, the wrath of the God, the film that brought him to the world fame, was shot entirely in jungles. But once again, even with all those breath-taking shots of canopy, waterfall, reptiles and flying swifts, the new film is really about humankind, about how human dreams and conquers the nature but nature forever holds its mystery. Herzog is drawn to human stories much as a scientist drawn to unsolved puzzles. He shows them in a specific setting and studies them as an anthropologist. In this film he followed a British aeronautic scientist named Dr. Dorrington who built small airship to fly through the jungles. Funny, self-deprecating, idealistic, sentimental, mistake-prone, Dr. Dorrinton by default became the perfect central character much of the film is based on.

There has been a lot of hype for Jia ZhangKe’s new film The World. It was hailed as the first “above-ground” film that was made by him through official channel in China after he already made three other underground films, all of which were critically-acclaimed festival favorites and firmly positioned him as one of the youngest film masters. But the film opened to box office disappointment in China. I personally think this is his best film. Using a world miniature theme park as the setting, the film slowly unfolds the story of two main characters, both of whom came to Beijing to look for opportunities from a provincial town. The fantasy and falsehood of the locale contrasts absurdly with the real struggles these small people face. Jia avoids quick sentimentality and tells the story with restrains only until the very end. His meticulous attention to details made these characters so real. Jia’s favorite actress Zhao Tao deserved an acting award for he excellent performance too!

I chose the Moroccan film “In Casablanca Angels don’t Fly” partly due to my own fond memory of Marrakech. How often do we ever see a Moroccan film anyway? It also tells the plights of migrant workers, and in this case, they are the Berbers who left their native villages to make money in Casablanca. The film followed three waiters who all worked in the same restaurant, although the three stories don’t quite fit together. One subplot that really stands out is a tear-jerker, but a good one. I only wished that the director could have focused on this single thread and elaborate more on the few characters, but in the end we only got a glimpse of them.

48th San Francisco Film Festival Part 1

It was exactly ten years since I first attended the San Francisco International Film Festival. Thanks to an old school acquaintance at the time, not only did I get a chance to chat with Jiang Wen on the back of my friend’s car (he was showing his directorial debut “In the Days of Sun”), I also happened to crush Joan Chen’s dinner party in her beautiful Pacific Heights house. I no longer remember any details of these encounters other than the arrogance of both celebrities. I could not blame them anyway. What would possibly make them curious about me?! I was then a Stanford geek who goofed away a lot of time in front of my VCR watching tapes after tapes of foreign films (checked out from our media library). I thought I would be able to talk about films with them, but little did I know what a stupid brat I was.

Since then I have been a loyal patron of this festival, devoting some of best sunny days in Kabuki within those two weeks. On weekends I could watch three in a day. Voyeuristic by nature, I enjoy escaping into these alien cultures and faraway landscapes. But I also tended to select films from directors I had heard about, or films that were in competition in Cannes or Berlin film festival, just to reduce the “miss” rate in these hit-and-miss gambles. Over the years, the ticket price also crept up, outpacing the inflation rate, but the number of films I watched did not decrease accordingly. As a film buff/snob, film festival is a ritual I need to hold on to.

By accident or by trend, my favorite three films from this festival are all from female directors. Clair Dennis, who always surprises audience with her unconventional styles, pulled another interesting film (The Intruder) together by constructing suspense, fragmentary scenes, and conflicting story lines. It leapt from French mountains to Pusan and ended up in Tahiti, following an old man with secret identities who went through some heart surgery and had some issue with his son (first we thought we saw the son, but in the later part he was looking for the son who was left in Tahiti). Clair seemed to have cut and paste the plot and deliberately made it inconsistent and baffling, but this freedom at will opens up all kinds of possibilities to create very atmospheric and spectacular scenes, with mysteries lurking behind. Like David Lynch’s “Moholland Drive”, the film can be interpreted in many ways, while the real theme remains elusive, or Claire may never have a clear one except for a set of ideas and moods and visual impressions. The film was not made to entertain. It aims to take you through a meandering global journey, through gorgeous landscapes, through tropical storms and winter blizzard, through uncommon events, through solitude and memory and pain and loss, through what is called life.

I watched Argentinean director Lurecia Martel’s first film “La Cienaga” in Castro Theatre a couple of years ago and still remember the opening scene vividly. She has the uncanny ability to frame the most ordinary scenes with full tension and suspense, and her characters tread through daily life as if they could step on landmines anytime. Once again she pulled the same tricks in her latest film “The Holy Girl”, and instead of using a rundown swimming pool, she put the characters in a hotel and around a thermal pool, where sounds echo and dilapidated interior harbors forbidden desires and wakening sexuality of girlhood. Lots of close-up shots and unsymmetrical camera angles are used effectively to observe all the nuances of the psychological changes. But the new film can’t measure up to her last one. The directing is flawless, but the story is narrowly-focused and too intimate study of the girlhood struggles. It lacks the broader appeal of her previous film, which gives more context and sense of places and time. 

Ever since Central Station and City of God came out, Brazil immediately brings to mind images of Samba and gangster fight and poverty of children to people’s mind. The new filmAlmost Brothers from another female director Luica Muratplays into these clichés but it is nevertheless another impressive endeavor to tap into the same fertile story ground of racial polarization, violence and political repressions. Film makers in Brazil, more than anywhere else in the world, feel obligated to portrait a society in chaos, either to fight injustice or to reveal the root of their alarming social problems. Murat herself has spent time in prison during the 70s and this film, although spanning through 50 years, really centered on the prison period. The two protagonists, one white and one black, grew up together from two different backgrounds and reunited briefly in the prison but eventually drifted apart. One would wonder how a female director can make a film about male prison, where machismo is on its ultimate extreme. But Murat proved that she could just do this job as well, with a toughness and cool-headedness that can rival a man.

Morning Sun

Cultural Revolution is probably one of the most misunderstood periods of Modern Chinese history that has been greatly simplified in Western eyes when it was frequently used as proof of brutality and failure of communism. Thanks to a handful films that made into the international scene (To name a few, Farewell My Concubine, Red Violin, Blue Kite and Xiu-Xiu), popular images of Cultural Revolution are often about red guards smashing cultural heritages or denouncing and torturing innocent elders. Within China itself although much have been written and said, few dared to break the party lines and give more thorough unbiased studies. As early as mid-eighties, Ba Jing, the most prominent literary figure in China, proposed to build a Culture Revolution museum to commemorate lost lives and lost innocence. Not surprisingly, the government never took it seriously.

Thirty years have passed and Cultural Revolution seems such a distant memory. China is already an entirely different country from what it used to be. Even if little research has been done, do we still need to bring back the old ghosts and all those painful memories when the country is currently rushing through a major capitalistic boom? If history does repeat itself, would something like Cultural Revolution ever happen again in China, or in any other countries? What lessons can we learn from such a large-scale manmade catastrophe? Morning Sun, a new film from Long Bow Group and funded partly by PBS, is an ambitious project aiming to answer some of these questions. In fact there is no better time to embark on a project about Cultural Revolution when enough time have passed so that we can discuss it more objectively and when some main witnesses and participants are still alive.

Carma Hinton, one of the three directors, was born to American parents in 1949 and grew up in Beijing. She left for America in 1971 and at one point studied history in Harvard. As so-called "the new generation born with the republic" and a member of "old three classes" (referring to the high school students graduating from 1965-1968, who made up for the majority of red guards and were sent down to countryside without college education), she witnessed all the twists and turns of the mass movement in the early phases. Her intimate knowledge and wide connection network made the film both informative and thought-provoking. Rare cameo interviews of major historical figures from that period, such as Luo XiaoHai (founder of Red Guards), Song BingBing, Mao’s secretary Li Rui and his daughter, Chairman Liu Shao Qi's widow and daughter, plus other thinkers and writers from that generation, were pieced together by propaganda film clips and documentary footages. Its attempt to dissect this movement from personal angles proved to be very rewarding to audience, giving the film an emotional charge when these characters seemed to have suffered, grieved and grown out with dignities.

I watched the film at Roxie two weeks ago. It made me cringe and cry and laugh. Although born in the end of Cultural Revolution and bearing little memory of its actual events, I am familiar with many of the propaganda film clips, songs and Mao’s quotations. The specific Mao’s paragraph where the film took its title from, was in my second grade textbook, and I probably have seen East is Red a million times. What struck me the most is the feverish passion and self-righteous attitude of the Red Guards. The rebellious spirit of the youth is universal, but it can be both destructive and constructive. Under the manipulation of the higher orders, the selfless dedication to a cause bettering the society could easily be derailed towards something sinister. Yet in the current time of extreme commercialism, we also feel nostalgic of the sanitized society and revolutionary spirits.

Mao was the central character of Cultural Revolution, during which a God-like worshipping of him reached the highest order. The film did not paint Mao as neither evil nor God. By the end of the film he came across as a very complex character, a brilliant political schemer who could ruthlessly destroy his foes while remaining a romanticist and peasant poet in his heart. That also explains why he was never so hated in China, and up to this day, he remains a symbol of good earthly omens. The movie suggested that Mao launched Cultural Revolution to purge people who were against him. But he did not stop there. His essential goal was a single-sighted social re-engineering, mobilizing millions and creating a senseless Utopian vision in this biggest country of the world. It proved to be more devastating and more dangerous than any power struggles.

Peacock: Gu Chang Wei

Growing up at the outskirt of a provincial capital in 70’s China is not such a unique experience among Chinese of my generation. Mao died right before we hit the school age. The ensuing changes, gradual but radical, were confusing at times but were never questioned by us. The old way of life, a very austere existence based on universal poverty and inflated ideology, slowly disappeared, until one day we find ourselves living in modern high-rises and driving Japanese-made cars but somehow nostalgic of such a recent and prudent past that was forever gone.

Peacock, the debut film from renowned cinematographer Gu ChangWei, presented this bygone era with meticulous details and a infectious glumness. However, its somber tone and repressive theme did not stop it from becoming the highest gross art film in China after it won the Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival. Its very success in the domestic market indicated that watching film is not just an escape to a fantasy world. It is also an experience to reflect on where we come from, to be connected with a powerful and collective past, and to identify oneself through the suffering and dilemmas of the others.

Told in three separate segments, Peacock narrated through stories of three siblings. The sister, a dreamer who was never satisfied with her job, struggled and married out to change her situation but only ended up in ultimate disillusion. The older brother, slightly mentally retarded and constantly abused by his peels, accepted everything with stubborn optimism and naiveté. The youngest brother, seemingly shy and absent-minded, became a runway kid but returned year later with a wife and a kid, a missing finger, and a withdrawn attitude towards everything.Both Gu and Li Qiang (who wrote the screen play) repeatedly told the critics that the three characters represented three types of life philosophies: romanticism, pragmatism, and escapism. But the film seems far from being contrived, and the characters were so real that we really fall for them, and eventually see part of ourselves or our own families in each of them. It can be argued that the obstacles these siblings faced in life were specific to late seventies and early eighties when opportunities were scarce and hopes were dim, but on a closer look, their struggles and their tragic fates are much more universal since life itself can be cruel regardless of time and places. And in the end, people do survive, even if their dreams are shattered, their hopes are lost and misfortune does not necessarily spare them.

I could not quite sleep after the film and had to phone my own siblings and parents just to talk about it. The film brings back much of my own memories living through that period, and it also makes me appreciate my own family. There are many understated but touching moments in the film that haunted me. It made me think how much sacrifice parents would give to help their kids, but more than often their efforts only lead to their own frustration and more misery for the children.

Gu rose to international fame after making Red Sorghum in late eighties. He became the leading cameraman for some of the most prestigious film in 90s such as Farewell my Concubine, In the Days of Sun, Devil on the Door Steps, etc. For a while he lived in Hollywood and shot a few bigger-budget films but the commercial studio system eventually drove him back to China so that he could make his own films. Peacock is a very impressive debut that could redefine his place in the Chinese film history when art films are on the verge of extinction due to the box office pressure. Gu used neither special effects nor big stars. He proved that humanistic stories with profound messages can draw audience back to theatres, especially when it is done with observed eyes and a nonjudgemental attitude towards our own common history.

The Gates, New York MOMA, and Chelsea Art Galleries

Much has been said about Cristo’s Gates project since it inaugurated this Saturday. No matter what people think, it has already been stipulated into the art history as a success due to all that publicity and the buzz it generated, and thus the huge crowd, numerous conversations about public art, and enormous economic benefits gained by the city. It seems for a project of this scale and right in the middle of Manhattan, most of the success lies in the Cristo’s ability to pull this off. How good it is does not quite matter, and the more controversial it is, the more impact it has. I personally think choosing Central Park Manhattan was a brilliant idea due to its maximum exposure. There are other larger environmental art projects in history, such as the Walter DeMaria’s Lightning Fields in New Mexico or Michael Heizer’s monuments in Nevada. But how many people would travel to those remote places and actually see them?

Thanks to our friend Jonathan’s parents, we stayed right along 59th street and had the first chance to witness the unfurling of the saffron ribbons in the early morning. Through Saturday and Sunday, we walked back to Central Park for a couple of times and observed the Gates under different light conditions and on alternative paths. The varied topography of Central Park and the ever-changing winter light give infinite possibilities to see the project. Sometimes it wiggles and marches along on the opposite side of a wide meadow; sometimes it jumps out from behind the hill like orange flames; and at other times it sits quietly along a pond. The orange color invigorates an otherwise dreary winter landscape, but it can be a bit too intrusive or garish, depending on what your aesthetics is. The very point of environment art is to impose an altered reality that challenges the conventional perspectives on existing landscape. The Cristo couple certainly hope that everyone would think this is beautiful, but they could care less if half of the people think the other way.

NY MOMA opened in the end of last year in a cacophonic praise for its Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi. I am a skeptic on flashy museum architecture since the spotlight on the building can dangerously override its exhibitions, although it can be argued that good buildings can draw more people to the museums. Without Frank Gehry, who would even think about going to Bilbao? Anyway, when I fought through the crowd and finally got into the new MOMA building last Friday, I felt the media ravings were justified. Tanguchi’s new MOMA building is understated but beautiful. It tucks itself comfortably in the urban landscape and offers the museum goers both chances to look back into art history as well as look out to the city. Centered around the atrium, it has a very easy-to-follow layout and a focus point. The atrium, with Barnett Newman’s obelisk in the center and Monet’s lily pond spanning across an entire wall, is always gorgeous to look at from any of the floors. My only complaints are the narrow escalators and small waiting room for the coat check.

As the art critic Michael Kimmerman (from New York Times) pointed out, the NY MOMA exhibitions on the 3rd and 4th floors are well organized and confident, while the contemporary art on the 2nd floor seems a bit chaotic and less assured. It is probably not quite MOMA’s fault. New art has much less time to test out, and MOMA can only select one piece each from all the prominent names, while it ends up canceling out each other without telling any coherent story. On the contrary, art before 70s had a clear evolutionary progression. From Cubism to Pop to minimalism, MOMA picked up the most important works with highlights of a few real masters. It simply could not go wrong.

On the 5th floor the new MOMA hosted temporary exhibitions and this time it turned out to be a private UBS collection. With a roster including Gerhart Richter, Andy Walhol, Chuck Glose, and Andreas Gursky, the UBS collection share a lot in common with Gap’s collection, and one wonders whether they actually hired the same art consultant. After all, corporations buy art as investments and as status symbols. They target the most well-known names who have already established their market values. They also can’t really focus on one genre or one art movement, although there is often a time line to be followed.

On Sunday we strolled to Chelsea and checked a few galleries along 22nd street and 24th street. Compared to San Francisco, Chelsea’s galleries are full of more established names. Within two blocks, I spotted Sara Lucas, Joseph Bueys, Leonardo Drew, Calder, Mark Quinn and Robert Doisneau, a list of art-world who-and-who’s that include both old maters and the new darlings. For lesser known artists, they probably have better chance in Brooklyn. 

My Top Ten Films of 2004

It is a year that critics hailed as a strong year for movies, but opening Art Forum or San Francisco Guardian all you find are these obscure entries whose names won’t ever register in your mind. After all, top ten is the manifesto of taste, and luckily film makers around the world continue to create and innovate regardless of how Hollywood or Bollywood dictate the industry.


2046 (China): After four years in production, the much anticipated and star-studded film from Wong Kar Wai was finally released in China last September. Loosely connected with In the Mood for Love, plotwise it is much less coherent but visually it is even more composed and color-saturated. Future and past alternated and added both mystery and fantasy to an otherwise rather tedious story. It transcended over layers of metaphors and became a rhapsody for lost love and memories.

The Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind (US): Charlie Kauffman and Michael Condry were a perfect team to make a movie that could be both intellectually challenging and visually stimulating. Surrealism is at its full play here in the dream sequence, where Condry paid his homage to Brunel without confusing audiences with absurdity or symbolism. Kate Winslet rules!

Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Matson, Colombia): When I got searched at least times in the Bogota airport last summer, I heard stories of drug smuggling and how women would swallow to carry them. After I came back I found this film in theatre just in time and it made me cringe in tears.

I am not Scared (Gabriele Salvatores, Italy): This small gem won some critic's award earlier in the year but quickly disappeared without a trace due to lack of marketing. Adapted from a bestseller in Italy, the film depicted a strange world from a nine year old boy’s eyes, where menace, wonders, boredom makes everyday life both a thrilling and tedious existence. The opening shot where a group of kids cycled through a sun-drenched wheat field deserves to be seen by all the cinematographers-want-to-be.

Memories of Murder (Jong Ho-Bo, South Korea): Korea continues to churn out high quality films which are both entertaining (this one is a thriller) and politically relevant. There is another anti-Hollywood ending --The serial killer was never found, which would leave most audience walking out of theatre in chills. Life is never what it seems to be.

Proteus (John Greyson, Canada): Greyson returned to the gay theme after making Law of Enclosure, and his new project retained his political outrage but followed a more straightforward plot line, about an interracial affair in the 18th century South Africa that led to execution under the sodomy law.

Trilogy: On the Run, An Amazing Couple, After Life. (Lucas Belvaux, France/Belgum) These three films, one thriller, one comedy, one melodrama, have to be seen together. Delvaux played both the game of genre and the game of perspectives. The side characters in one film became main characters in another, and all three films can share the same scenes although from different narrative points of views.

Corporation (Mark Achbar, Canada): I am a leftist. I am not a fan of globalization. I am against multi-nationals, big business interest, and extreme capitalism. I am an environmentalist looking for alternative resources and sustainable growth…therefore I vote for this film!

Cell Phone (Feng Xiao Gang, China): Usually only a few types of Chinese films get released in US: Martial arts, underground films, stories set in distant past. Since Cell Phone was a major box office hit and was about how cell phones changed people’s life in contemporary Beijing, it probably would never see the Western audiences. Feng is a great satirist, revealing the absurdity of modern life with subtle sense of humor. After the film, many of the couples checked each other’s cell phones and ended up breaking up, and many of the dialogues became popular phrases in the everyday Chinese.

Sexual Dependency (Rodrigo Bellot, Bolivia): First time director, two continents, five interrelated stories, and split screen for more than two hours…this sounds a formula for disaster but Bellot miraculously pulled them together into a very coherent and viewable movie that touched upon all that tensions caused by race, social economic class, geopolitics and sexuality

An Architect and a Photographer

Daniel Liebskind and Eugene Richard would not have shared much in common if there were no 9/11. One is an architect who has been a theorist for all his life but suddenly found himself in spotlight and great demands after winning the master plan on World Trade Center; and the other one has long established himself as one of the most respected photojournalists who worked most of his life among the poor, the sick and the neglected. But they both came up with something to remember an event that fundamentally changed the America yet quickly faded into people’s memory. The two recent lectures I attended once again brought those days back to focus: Liebskind inevitably had to talk about his design for WTC and his fight with David Childs, while Eugene Richards spared his own words and showed his eulogy that combined projection of slides and live recording of interviews and funerals. Liebskind’s speech was fast-paced, upbeat and optimistic; Eugene Richards remained somber and mellow through his talk. The two artists could not be more different, but they both relied on sentimentality to move their audiences, reflecting two different ways to confront with losses and tragedies.

It is no accident that both artists ended up making these works. Liebskind first became well-known due to Berlin Jewish museum, and Richards’s most famous early works documented his wife dying of breast cancer. Life seemed to have dealt something very tragic to them from early on and they were destined to spend their whole life to deal with it with art, not just in different mediums but also in styles and motifs.

Making something or anything artistic out of September 11th is a tricky thing in this politically confusing environment. Just as Liebskind’s soaring freedom tower has won both hearts and detractors, Eugene Richards’s new works also gave him a sensationalist reputation (other than some early criticism on his exploiting the un-privileged). Liebskind insisted that the terrorists aimed to attack our freedom and wanted to use his design to manifest the American spirit of freedom (which can also be interpreted as a symbol of imperialism, depending on who you talk to), while Richards avoided the whole politics and focused on grieving, providing no clue why this happened and where we should go from here. Their works are perfect examples in which art can’t please everyone and can not escape politics entirely. It can inspire one group and help them heal, but it can appear trite, cliché or even vulgar for another group.

Two Talented Young Film Makers from Small Countries

American film schools must have done something right, even if American films themselves seemed ultimately iterative and dull these days. The path to success is to come from some small obscure countries without any baggage and learn the required theory and techniques and then go home and make films. Two films I saw this weekend convinced me of this. But of course, other than the ability for cross-culture exchange, the key is the talent. Without that, even the richness of unexplored heritage would go wasted. What also could help is, hm, some dose of gayness. I don’t know whether these two directors are gay or not, but I have reasons to believe so. They tend to think beyond conventions and take their liberty to dive in the complexity of sexualities. And the end result is usually refreshing and thought-provoking.

As a graduate of Chicago Art Institute and from Thailand, Weerasethakul (shortened as Joe) became more widely known when he won a special Jury prize at Cannes for his new film Tropical Malady. But his works have had enough followers through words of mouth way before that. His name becomes equivalent to New Thai Cinema. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which always pays special attention to Asian art, put together a three-day program to feed the converted and the curious. Unfortunately, I only got chance to catch the last show which was also his debut feature film called Mysterious Object at Noon. I walked in the theatre knowing nothing about the film. After first 20 minutes of confusion, I suddenly got the idea and the rest was an exciting and engaging ride. Using unrelated real storytellers from school kids to village elders, the movie slips in and out of the narrated story and blends both reality and fiction into one coherent flow. You can read the film as a deconstructive means to analyze narrative and its social-economical or psychological roots. You can also use it to experience Thailand as a country with lively and diverse culture heritage. Regardless of what you walk away with, the film does not give straight answer about what it is about. Maybe that is also the reason why his films could be so controversial. People either hate them or love them, and there don’t seem to be anyone in between. (Interesting enough, I found out that my friend Mike also blogged on this film and he absolutely hated it. See this link).

Apichatpong showed up after the screening and answered a few of my questions (plus others) with his usual modesty and economy of words. He did not want to explain why and how he made his films and insisted on following his own instinct in all his works. As his films are getting more and more budget and more polished technically, let’s hope he would never get corrupted by studio systems in Thailand or in Hollywood. After all, he is a true avant-garde visual artist in his heart.

While the Apichatpong retrospective was taking place in SOMA, Castro Theater was taken over by the annual Latino Film festival. One of the great things about San Francisco is its all-year-round film festivals where you can find films you won’t see anywhere else. More reasons not to move to the red states! The only flick I caught turned out to be the very outstanding piece from a very young Bolivian film maker named Rodrigo Bellot, who studied films in Cornell and broke into the international scene with this very debut. Presented entirely in split screen, I was slightly annoyed in the first 10 minutes but quickly got over the nuance of constant focus shifts and started to really enjoy the double perspectives. The film did not stop there. The split evolves and becomes a style device which moves freely between contrasting tones and rhythms, between mirrored and echoed images and voices, and between converged and diverged view points. In the end, it becomes a true work of art.

But what I found most interesting are the plots: Five interconnected stories that moved from both high and low classes of Bolivia to Cornell. The backgrounds of the characters could not be more different, but they share things in common: prejudice, global consumerism, identity confusion, and sex driven by something less pure. Bellot presented a panoramic view of a problematic world, where tensions of race, class and sexuality are so palpable and intense while they have to find strange and dangerous outlets in sex acts. This theme is not entirely new due to widely-practiced postmodernism in art, but a fusion of this theme with both South and North America under one critical lens is definitely new.

Both Weerasethakul and Rodrigo were born in 70s and still in the early stage of their careers. Their rising reputation and growing body of works indicate that film-making, as an art form of one hundred year old, is taking new directions in many geographic fronts although there is a uniting philosophical ground underneath. While Apichatpong’s film turns narratives inside out, Rodrigo focuses on manipulation of media images and reveals what is behind. The deconstruction is in full gear and Derrida must be smiling in his new grave.

Two Exhibitions in September: Beyond Geometry and Ed Ruscha

LA county museum of Art is an unpretentious gem hidden at Wilshire Boulevard. Under the glow of Getty it does not get much attention from the public although it has one of the best art collections in the country and frequently mounts impressive special exhibitions. Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1949s-70s, was an ambitious thematic project that sets out to examine the role of simplified form in art from a global point of view. It lumps many post-world war II art movements into one compact space, giving special attention to non-American artists whom have not been widely exhibited in this country, encouraging the audience to find the links and evolutions in such an expansive intercontinental discourse. Starting from early geometric art to concrete and neo-concrete art (some put all these three under post-painterly abstraction as opposed to abstract expressionism), the show becomes the most lively at the op art, kinetic art and American minimalism phases and then somehow ends up confusingly with all the diverse styles of “conceptual art”. With all the unusual forms, sounds, colors and lights and pieces all over the places, the exhibition hall feels like an Exploratorium for an untrained layman. The experience is further discounted due to the cramped space. Since most of these pieces work on the senses and perceptions, a spacious and well-lighted environment is much more preferred (as in Dia Becon). The other problem is the inclusion of the conceptual art. It seems to me that any of the new movements after kinetic art, no matter it is installation, performances or environmental art, as long as it dealt with forms or used serializations, they can all be included here (which they did). They do fit under the theme “Beyond Geometry” here, but somehow the connection with geometry could be quite a stretch. On the positive side, I really enjoyed works from a few South Americans: Lygia Pape, Helio Oiticica, and Jesus Rafael Soto. They may not be as spiritually ground-breaking as minimalism, but they were quite skilled and experimental and left wonderful works that aged better with time.

Ed Ruscha has always been lionized as the icon of pop art from LA. But instead of seeing his works in LA, I caught the large retrospective at New York Whitney one day before the show was closed. Actually the exhibition was divided into two parts. The photographs were shown at the first floor, and the drawings and larger pieces took the entire third floor. However, I found the photography session much more memorable than his more well-known word paintings. Some of his photos, such as all the buildings on Sunset Boulevard or the aerial view of parking lots, were already famous enough to end up in art history books. But it was the more obscure photo books and early photos taken in his Europe trip that caught my eyes. In the photo books Ed Ruscha demonstrated his deadpan humor that was both hilarious and thought-provoking, while in the European photos we could already detect many of the ideas and aesthetics he would develop much further in his future paintings. Even among the word paintings, the works from 60s and 70s, although often in much smaller canvases, give away much more subtlety and tenderness his later and larger paintings don’t have. Their small sizes draw the viewer in so that all the details and shades are observed, yet the linguistic meaning of the word remains mystic and indecipherable since there is not much background to interpret it other than the word’s own meaning. This ambivalence is exactly the trick. In 80s and 90s, Ed Rusha’s paintings got bigger and more colorful and start to resemble the posters more and more. On the first sight they almost look computer-generated by some graphic designers with slick surfaces and block letters of varying sizes. The earlier charm is unfortunately lost.

Motorcycle Diaries

Few books affected me more than Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries in my younger years. The book inspired both wanderlust and an everlasting adoration for Che. It also helped form my own ideology and political judgment when I was still ultimately apolitical. Years passed and the book has been staying on my shelf collecting dust, while I traveled much of South and Central America and felt strangely home in all these remote countries I would never have imagined to set my feet on. I could only say that all these adventures, all these affinities to a vast continent so different from my own, probably started from this small magic book.So when I heard the book was adapted into a movie by Brazilian director Walter Sallers, it became the most waited film of the year for me. I was afraid the movie would destroy all those imaginations built through the years (with backdrop landscapes culled from my own traveling), but a visualization of that enchanting and strenuous journey is also very appealing and exciting (especially with Gael Garcia Bernal in it).

I finally watched the movie with a large group of friends, many of whom with Latin heritages. I walked out of the theatre with mixed feelings. The movie is almost just as good as I expected, yet I found it unsatisfying. Maybe the fault is the medium itself. In order to make a coherent movie, Sallers spent much of the time building up the plot and the characters and even ended the movie with a Hollywood-like triumphant crossing of the Amazon, many of which were not even mentioned in the original book. Sallers also took the liberty to cut and paste the diaries and rearrange the small anecdotes to make the story flow better. I don’t see this as a bad practice, but it certainly altered the existing pace and rhythm of the book. The voice-over is the best Saller can do to convey the tone of the book. Gone are the poetry and the cerebral reflections. But as visual medium, a film can also do what the book can’t do. Unfortunately Salles could only provide some breathtaking landscape without personal feelings. The movie sees what a usual traveler sees. It is not necessarily what Che had seen.

The problem could be that Salles may not be the best person to adapt a road story like this. It is too easy for him to trap us in the same sentimentality he was so good at in his earlier films (Central Stations). Just as the book, the movie has a light and comical air in the beginning but eventually took a somber turn once the protagonists got to Andes, but this turn was rather sudden and the witnessed miseries did not point well to the wakening of Che’s political conscience. The tears were simply too cheaply won. As a book, Motorcycle Diaries was much more than a tour of places or tour of hearts. Even if the movie tried hard to go beyond that, it did not succeed.

As a reference, I went back to reread the chapters in one of the best biography book “Che Guevara: A Revolutional Life”, written by Jon Lee Anderson. Salles clearly took some notes from the same pages since much of the highlights in the movie were all here (but not in the diaries). Two more observations: The final close-up of real-life Alberto (who is well into his 80s) reminds me of “Rabbit Proof Fence”, and the back-and-white stills of the workers and peasants and Indians seemed to come straight from end of “Mango Yellow”, another Brazilian film on working-class people in Recife.

Incidentally, as I am also finishing reading Garcia Marquez’s General in Labyrinth, I can not help but compare Che to Simon Bolivar. Both were ferocious fighters, poets, avid readers, and rigorous intellectuals. Both grew up in privileged families and traveled widely. Both died young and fought the whole life for a united America but failed miserably in the end, and both became martyrs to inspire millions to follow. Heroic and tragic, Che and Bolivar are unique to South America, to its tumultuous history and continuous struggling, to its melodramatic culture sensibilities and sentimentality, to its need for hopes, dreams, and optimism. As today’s extreme capitalism continues to divide the world into rich and poor and exhaust the world’s natural resources, we have more reasons to challenge the status quo and seek alternative solutions for a better and fairer society. Che would always to be the symbol of this idealism and this selfless search of the truth. The violence he resorted to has proved to be futile and unwise, but his high spirit and combatant energy would live on. As I stood outside the theatre and looked around and saw all those young inquisitive faces, I felt I was one of them.