The Council on East Asian
Studies at Yale University
2003 SPRING FILM SERIES
Family in Film: Cinematic Explorationsfrom
Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan
ALL FILMS SHOWN AT 7:00 P.M.
Luce Hall Auditorium
34 Hillhouse Avenue
ADMISSION IS FREE
(For more information, please contact 203-432-3426)
Family (Jia)
Directed by Chen Xihe and Ye Ming, China, 1957 (111 minutes - VHS)
Based on the famous novel of the same name by well-known author Ba Jin, this movie traces the decline of a large, wealthy family in the early part of the twentieth century. The story focuses on three brothers and how they respond to the expectation that they will each marry women whom their grandfather has selected for them. The lure of family money on the one hand and modern individualism on the other plays out differently among the young men. Critics consider this movie an indictment against feudal ideas. (www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~smodel/soc332h_filmlist.htm and www.shme.com/culture/film/movie6.htm)
A One and a Two (Yi
Yi)
Directed by Edward Yang, Taiwan, 2000
(173 minutes - DVD)
Focusing on a typical family--parents, two children, and an elderly grandmother--living in a small apartment in Taipei, A One and a Two (Yi Yi) is about daily life. It includes a wedding, a funeral, a first date, a last date, a birth, and a death. The film follows each member of the Jian family carefully, giving each one equal time, and completely developing each character. NJ, the father of the family, struggles with a dead end job at a technology firm, and reexamines his marriage when he sees his high school sweetheart, Sherry, after 30 years. NJ's teenage daughter, Ting-Ting, has a selfless demeanor and a naive interest in everything, which diffuses the complexity of her high school life. Her little brother, Yang-Yang, is an adorable five-year-old troublemaker who's in love with a pesky girl in his class. And Yang-Yang's mother, Min-Min, grieves for her dying mother, while coping with her own middle age in a rapidly maturing family. Winner of Best Foreign Film, 2001 French Union of Film Critics; Best Director, 2000 Cannes Film Festival; Best Foreign Film, 2000 New York Film Critics Circle; Best Foreign Film, 2000 Los Angeles Film Critics Association; Best Picture, 2001 National Society of Film Critics. (www.movies.yahoo.com)
Shower (Xizao)
Directed by Zhang Yang, China, 2000 (92
minutes - DVD)
Shower is the story of a father and his two sons. The eldest son (Da Ming) has left home in search of fortune in the business world of Shenzhen while his father remains in Beijing raising his mentally-challenged brother (Er Ming) and clinging to his chosen profession as the master of a bath-house. Mistakenly believing that his father has passed away, Da Ming returns to Beijing to discover the magic of the bath-house and its importance to the surrounding community. Da Ming is caught between worlds: the decaying district of his childhood and the booming south where he now lives with a wife, who has never met his family. When Da Ming realizes his father's health is failing and the district is slated for razing, he must take stock of family and future. He is forced to face up to the reality that the life he remembers in China is being slowly wiped away from memory by the machinations of modernity. Winner of International Critics' Award, 1999 Toronto International Film Festival; Golden Space Needle (Best Picture), Best Director, 2000 Seattle International Film Festival. (www.imdb.org, www.sonypictures.com/classics, and www.movies.yahoo.com )
The Day the Sun Turned
Cold (Tianguo Niezi)
Directed by Yim Ho, Hong Kong, 1994 (99
minutes - VHS)
Shot
in a wintry palette of violet, green and blue, The Day the Sun Turned Cold
is an atmospheric portrait of the harsh beauty of life in northern China,
as well as a brilliant exploration of oedipal love and betrayal. Director
Yim Ho raises Chinese cinema to new heights of sophistication and diversity
with this intense and emotional film noir.
Based on an actual Chinese criminal case, The Day the Sun Turned
Cold is a rich and complex mystery story, where a son comes to terms with
the implications of informing the authorities that his mother may have murdered
his father ten years ago, a crime that will undoubtedly carry the death sentence.
A series of flashbacks slowly reveals the shattering truth behind a
lifetime of love and lies. Winner
of Best Film and Best
Ermo
Directed by Zhou Xiaowen, China, 1994
(98 minutes - VHS)
In the course of cinematic history, there have been many great quests: searches for the Holy Grail, the true nature of Humankind, the essence of God, and, during the film Ermo, a 29-inch television! This film follows the obsessive struggle of one woman to earn the money needed to buy the biggest television in the county. Ermo plunges headlong into her quest for the “electronic grail,” laboring day and night, eventually moving to town and selling her blood to earn more cash. She unexpectedly succumbs to an extra-marital affair, but even that will not distract this strong-willed woman from getting her television. In Ermo, Director Zhou Xiaowen takes a tragic-comic spin on China's current rush to embrace capitalism. The film yields sharp insights into the present perplexities of China's drive to "modernize and reform," namely the uneasy mix of the old order with the new. Zhou embodies the societal contradictions in his wryly-empathetic portrait of Ermo. The overall theme of the film echoes a simple truism: it is often better wanting than having. Ermo's entire life is focused on getting the television; what happens when she actually accumulates the money to buy it? (http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/e/ermo.html and www.usc.edu/isd/archives/asianfilm/china/ermo.html)
Eat Drink Man Woman
(Yin Shi Nan Nu)
Directed by Ang Lee, Taiwan, 1994 (123
minutes - DVD)
A
delicious comedy about food, fatherhood and family ties, Eat Drink Man Woman depicts the foibles of a contemporary Taiwanese
family while movingly capturing the complexities of modern life, the
inevitability of change, and the necessity for finding balance in life. Every Sunday, venerable Master Chef Chu
prepares an elaborate dinner for his three lovely daughters. Despite Chu's exotic dishes, the family
barely nibbles at the food. The
listless mealtime ritual mirrors the foursome's general lack of appetite for
life: Chu has lost his sense of taste
and his daughters just want to go on with their separate, lonely lives. But something new is cooking that is about
to spice up everyone's existence, and three marriages and a funeral later, the
Chu family will learn to embrace life's unpredictability. (www.mgm.com and www.movies.yahoo.com)
The Road Home (Wode
Fuqin Muqin)
Directed by Zhang Yimou, China, 1999
(89 minutes - DVD)
The Road Home is narrated by Luo
Yusheng, a businessman who returns from the city to his village of Sanheutun in
North China upon the sudden death of his father
and village teacher, Luo Changyu. Yusheng
arrives to find his mother grief-stricken but adamant that Changyu’s funeral
follow traditional local customs and the body be
carried on foot by local residents the considerable distance from the hospital
back to the village. As Yusheng
watches his mother weave the funeral cloth, he reflects on the village tales
about his parents' courtship and realizes that his mother's wishes for his
father’s funeral must be respected. On
the day of the funeral, more than one hundred of Changyu’s former pupils turn
up to carry the coffin. Before returning
to the city, Yusheng symbolically honors his father's dearest wish - he spends
one day teaching in the village school. (www.imdb.org
and www.sonyclassics.com/theroadhome/)