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Asia Pacific Film Festival Online
Most Asia and Pacific Island feature films are not picked up for wide or even limited distribution because of factors such as a competitive marketplace, limited ownership of screens and broadcast systems, government censorship, and scarce financial resources. This means that there are thousands of outstanding feature films from Asia and the Pacific made by dedicated, talented, and often courageous filmmakers whose visual stories are never seen outside their countries.
iFilm Connections: Asia & Pacific will break this pattern, creating a window so that you can stream on your computer many overlooked feature films from Asia and the Pacific any time you want. The Asia Pacific Film Festival on-line will allow you to discover little gems whose stories shed light on what life is like inside distinctive Asian and Pacific Island cultures.
This site's private film festival will offer feature films made by Asian and Pacific Island storytellers whose work illuminates issues about the impact of globalization on the everyday life of people of Asia and the Pacific.
We will start with a small selection with four rarely seen award winning
feature films – from Vietnam, China, and Fiji. As subscribers increase,
so will the number of feature films we will stream.
Featuring a tribute to master filmmakers:
Prasanna Vithanage (Sri Lanka)
Featured IntroThe first Sri Lankan feature film, Kadavunu Poronduva (Broken Promise) was made in 1947, just one year before Sri Lanka obtained independence from British rule. During the past six decades, Sri Lankan cinema has made steady progress, winning international awards, while facing numerous formidable social, political, and economic challenges. The ethnic conflict that has engulfed the island for the past 25 years has certainly not helped matters. In 1956, Lester James Peries, who was to put Sri Lankan cinema on the international map, directed the path breaking film Rekava (Line of Destiny); this inaugurated the artistic tradition of filmmaking in Sri Lanka. The focus of this short essay is on one of the most important film directors of Sri Lanka, who has chosen to follow the artistic tradition of filmmaking opened up by Lester James Peries: Prasanna Vithanage. He has earned a wide reputation, both nationally and internationally, as a distinguished filmmaker from Sri Lanka...
XIE Fei (China)
Featured IntroThe Exquisite Sadness of Life: Random Thoughts on Xie Fei’s Films
As I was re-watching the films of Xie Fei made in the past two decades, two openings came to my mind: a hand-held camera in Black Snow (Ben ming nian, 1990) tracking the walking steps of a Beijing youngster through a subway tunnel in the dark, and a panning shot in A Girl From Hunan (Xiang nu xiao xiao, 1986) smoothly revealing the undulating landscape of Hunan, a province in Central China. The former is slightly edgy and restless, and the latter is exquisitely quiet and lyrical. The two films also differ greatly in subject matter: One follows the after-prison life of a Beijing youth and records the sound bites of the big city at the juncture of an earthshaking rebellion (the 1989 student movement); and the other tells the story of a child bride and her futile struggle with predetermined fate in a mountainous village far removed from the hustle and bustle of the big city. These two openings, when juxtaposed, are certainly of an unequivocal demonstration of the director’s versatility, but as we review the entire oeuvre of Xie Fei, it becomes clear that lyricism and a gentle sense of life’s sorrowfulness speak more truth about this largely undervalued cinematic master...
FILM CRITICISM
Featured IntroGender and Cinema: Speaking Through Images of Women
What is the relationship between gender and cinema? And how can we explore this question productively so that new meanings emerge to enrich our viewing experience and general knowledge about the world? My questions are inspired by Denise Riley's provocative book Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History (1988). Most will immediately recognize the reference to the famous dialogue in Othello between Desdemona and Iago where the former asks the latter: "Am I that Name, Iago?" However, Desdemona's gesture here is foremost rhetorical, for her response to Iago's follow-up question shows that the fair lady harbors some misgivings: "Such as she says my lord did say I was." (Shakespeare, Act IV, Scene II, 1622). Riley actually quotes the dialogue at the beginning of her first chapter to indicate that she shares Desdemona's distrust: Can one name adequately capture the multiplicity, complexity, and subtle nuances of female subjectivity? In the context of Riley's study, that name is "woman," a historical category that is "discursively constructed" and thus "a volatile collectivity in which female persons can be very differently positioned" (1988: 2). Given that categories of gender, and by extension our understanding of sexuality, have shifted or broadened in meanings over the centuries, what are the implications of Riley's claim for cinema? How do images of women, especially, speak to the spectator? Is the spectator positioned as masculine /feminine or male/female? Last, but not least, is femininity presented in a particular way through the cinematic lenses?