The premiere ceremony of Taiwanese film Seediq Bale in September 2011 is celebrated as a national pageant. It was hold at the square of the Presidential Building in Taipei, and two featured political leaders attended this event, Ma Ying-jeou, the president of Republic of China (ROC) and the former chair of Kuomintang (KMT), and Tsai Ing-wen, the chair of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is the largest opposition party well-known for its pro-independence stance. Besides political leaders, 14 representatives from different Taiwanese aborigine groups were also invited to walk on the red carpet in their national costume with film stars. Juxtaposed with the Oscar style red-carpet walking on the premiere event is the aboriginal style …show more content…
Just as the magnificent premiere heralded, Seediq Bale, a film depicting Wushe Incident, an uprising against Japanese colonial rule in 1930s by Seediq people, swept the whole island and won the highest box office revenue for the domestic film in Taiwanese history, making the film a national cultural symbol. Moreover, the film’s success is also seen as a progressive achievement of the national recognition of the aboriginal people’s history and …show more content…
The Presidential Building, where the film was screened, was erected in 1919 by Japanese colonial government as the office building of the governor. In the end of the Second World War, after Taiwan’s handover from defeated Japan to ROC, the building was renovated in 1946 and renamed as “Jieshou Pavilion” (介寿馆) to celebrate the 60th birthday of Chiang Kai-shek. Afterwards, along with the KMT government lost the civil war and fled to Taiwan, this building was turned into the power center of the new coming foreign regime. The inheritance of the building from Japanese colonizer by the KMT regime somewhat symbolically suggests the intactness of colonial power hierarchy in spite of the regime transition. On the other hand, compared to the Presidential Building as a steady power center of Taiwan for around one century, the peripheral space of the building, the square and the road outside, may record and reflect more social transitions of Taiwan. In 1996, Chen Shui-bian, the mayor of Taipei and later the first president from DPP in Taiwanese history, changed the name of the street outside the building from “Jieshou Road” (介寿路) to “Ketagalan Boulevard”, in memorial of an aboriginal ethic group called “Ketagalan” who lived in this area in ancient time. This political recognition of Taiwanese aborigine by the Han Chinese
The film Jindabyne, is a story about death, marriage, and race in an Australian town in New South Wales called Jindabyne. In the film, four men go fishing, and one of them discovers the dead body of a young indigenous girl. Instead of reporting what they found to the police immediately, they decide to stay and continue fishing. They decide that there is nothing they could do for her, so they tie her legs to a tree and continue with their fishing, reporting the death only when they return home. After they are done with their weekend of fishing and report the incident, conflict starts, as the men are criticized for not respecting the dead. Through the story of the town’s reaction to the four fishermen’s response to the dead girl, the movie shows Australia to be fragmented and divided over white-indigenous relations.
Maureen Fan. “‘Kung Fu Panda’ Hit’s A Sore Spot In China”. Washington Post. Published July 12, 2008. Accessed November 10, 2013.
The Bad and The Beautiful (1952) and State and Main (2000) are films within films that unmask Hollywood Cinema as a dream factory and expose the grotesque, veneer hidden by the luxury of stars. The Bad and the Beautiful, directed by Vincent Minnelli, is a black and white film narrated in flashback form. The films theatrical nature requires more close-ups than wide-screen shots to capture the character’s psychological turmoil. For example, Fred and Jonathan’s car ride is captured in a close-up to signify their friendship; however their relationship deteriorates after Jonathan’s deceit. While the camera zooms out, Fred stands alone motionless. Here, Fred is captured from a distance at eye-level and he becomes ostracized by the film industry and
Yang, S. (2011). Cultural Performance and the Reconstruction of Tradition among the Bunun of Taiwan. Oceania, 81(3), pp. 316-330. Retrieved on March 20, 2014
Little Terror with a Dose of Awe Looking at the movie The Village, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, there are four pieces of criteria that I used; audience’s feelings, audience interest, originality and genre to decide if this movie was worth others seeing. When looking at the genre, I wanted to see how well it lined up with the movie’s preview. The feeling of the audience is also important because that is what makes the lasting impression. Feeling the emotions the character faces, anger, sadness, suspense, or shock will ultimately determine if the movie is great enough to leave a lasting mark imprinted in the viewers’ brain. Movies have to be able to capture and hold the audience’s interest by giving plot twists.
Historians, political scientists, and journalists hungry for reliable information about Chinese politics have to rely on official publications, and on the semiofficial and nonofficial accounts that bubble up in Hong Kong. These are the same methods of tracking and analyzing China's political movements that outsiders have used for decades. It is in this Byzantine context that Bruce Gilley has written Tiger on the Brink, a biography of Jiang Zemin and a highly readable account of modern Chinese politics. Unfortunately, Gilley is sharply limited by the same lack of access as every other student of Zhongnanhai. A correspondent for The Far Eastern Economic Review who covered China out of Hong Kong, Gilley has done an admirable job of scouring Chinese-language publications for tidbits about Jiang's personal background. But hamstrung by lack of information, this story of Jiang's decade at the top of China's Communist Party only partly satisfies.
Many early films made were based on religious contexts and have evolved from romanticism to thrillers, telling different stories (Fang, 1997). There have always been different national cultures being expressed in film. This is seen both in a deliberate and an unconscious fashion until the rise of Hitler in 1933 who stressed that the film should be seen as an art form (Briggs & Burke, 2009). Used by Hitler, the United States, and other world leaders during World War II, the film was seen as a force of with considerable impact onto discourse and culture. Realizing film was not only an entertainment apparatus, but also a tool to disseminate propaganda to the masses. During the Cold War with the red scare running rampant across the U.S., many actors, writers, and directors were black listed from working on films if they were suspected of communist leaning and denied
Against the background that Chinese films have been taking part in multi-level international cooperation, many researchers and scholars, or even normal audience get a sense that we must be increasingly unable to interpret the Chinese films as we did before. But how to find a new and proper perspective? The book China on screen may give some illuminations. Famous professors of film studies, Chris Berry and his wife Mary Farquhar, use this scholarly work to illustrate two arguments: first, how a different Chinese cinematic tradition have taken function in annotating assorted depictions of national and national identity; second, instead of using the old national cinematic approach which took the national for granted, we should seek for a new framework
Brown, M. J. (2004). Is Taiwan Chinese?: The impact of culture, power, and migration on changing identities. Berkeley [u.a.: Univ. of California Press.
Marchetti, Gina, and Tan Kam. Hong Kong film, Hollywood and the new global cinema no film is an island. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.
What does it mean to give yourself completely to your vocation or life? We find in a fictional story from Wes Anderson, his eighth feature presentation, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” What it means to be completely giving of oneself. Even though Wes’s movie is fictional, we find many deep and underlying themes, tones, and values. these are values are applications that anyone male or female that one can implicate in ones life to any situation. The main values we can find in the movie are simple, but can improve life ten-fold. Three easy steps to improving ones life are as stated: gratitude, positivity, and you must contribute yourself 100% of the time no matter how hard the road in front of you is going to
‘’The Executioner’’ is a drama film, directed by Choi Jin-ho and written by Kim Young-ok and features excellent actors, namely, Cho Jae-hyun, Yoon Kye-sang and Cho Seong-ha. This film won the AQCC Prize (Honorable Mention) at 2010 (14th) Fantasia Film Festival.
The film I watched in class is called "Black is Black ain 't" by Marton Riggs -a homosexual man dying of aids. Through various clips Riggs demonstrates different themes about what it "really" means to be black. During the video famous activists and ordinary African Americans spoke about how they felt on certain issues faced by the black community. These individuals clarify certain myths that are sought to portray African Americans as incompetent, aggressive people. Due to this, many African Americans have been excluded from their community for reasons such as race, color, physical feature, masculinity, sexuality, gender, culture, and speech.
Seeds of Death was created by Gary Null and Richard Polonetsky in 2012. The film goes in depth about Genetically Modified Organisms and its effects on the environment. The film mainly talks about Monsanto, which produces majority of the GMOs in the United States. Monsanto is chemical company that produce herbicides, insecticides, and GMOs. In addition, the film also talks about how GMOs are produce and what’s the reason for GMOs. This film dismantles the myths about GMOs and expose it for what it really is. Seeds of Death reveals to the public that GMOs are not only destroy our health, but also destroy the environment.
Tsotsi, a movie that won best foreign film Oscar in 2006. A movie that shows hope and portrays a story where a bad, rebellious teenage boy undergoes a change to a good, responsible, peaceful, obedient citizen. The movie is based in South Africa. What goes through your mind when you see the word south Africa? Is it the apartheid; the racial segregation where the contact between white and colored were limited or Nelson Mandela; who was part of the process of removing this partitioning in south Africa or maybe the 2010 FIFA world cup, or the unique mix of culture, wildlife and the appealing, beautiful landscapes.