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Interviews

Asia Society's La Frances Hui On Docs, Film & Filmmakers

la frances hui

Assistant Director of Cultural Programs La Frances Hui of the Asia Society is also its film curator. In that role she has produces many fascinating series including the recent Extreme Private Ethos: Japanese Documentaries -- which runs from March 10 to 31.

Along with her role as curator, Hui has conducted many interviews with important figures in Asian cinema, including Tsai Ming-LiangSharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and John Woo.  

Recently I spoke with her about this new film series as well as film trends in Asia, the subtleties of documentaires, and the ins-and-outs of interviewing film makers.

Q: Could you tell us a little about yourself?

LH: I’m the film curator at the Asia Society. I don’t think I've been interviewed much. Most of the time I interview people. And there’s something liberating about interviewing people. 

Recently I interviewed Tsai Ming-liang. He made Face, Rebels of the Neon God, and I Don’t Want To Live Alone. His films are very personal, about people living lonely lives, about feeling alienated, and I was really scared before I interviewed him. I thought, "How could you talk about these things on a stage?"

I didn’t want to come off like I was asking about his personal life, even though sometimes with artists and film makers it’s part of who they are you want to talk about. These things are so dark, that it’s not something you want to pry. But then we got on stage and had a really nice conversation. Then I spent some time with him off the stage and...I could not ask [those questions] off stage, but on stage I was fine. It was like I had some sort of protection.

Q: What is your mission at the Asia Society?

LH: The mission of the Asia Society is to promote the understanding of Asia, and we are a rather unique organization. Depending on who you are you know the Asia Society as just one thing and you miss the other parts. But it’s an interesting place because we have a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding Asia.

In terms of my film program here, I want to bring really fantastic works from Asia and as much as possible bring film makers here to talk with the audience.


Q: Do you have an attraction to very personal or documentary type films?

LH: Of course, being the curator, whatever I pick reflects a little bit of myself. But I don’t think I have a preference towards documentaries, even though they just came up ... I just realized that most audiences, even cinephiles, they know fiction films from Japan much more than documentaries. 

So when you think of Japanese cinema you think of directors like Akira Kurosawa, or contemporary ones like Takashi Miike. People are not very exposed to Japanese documentaries even though it has a very long tradition and some of the film makers have influenced many other, even outside of Japan. 

For example, Shinsuke Ogawa, some people don’t know that a lot of contemporary Chinese independent film makers name him as an influence. But of course I did not program Ogawa in this series.  

I like both fiction films and documentaries, but for me, when I show documentaries, I particularly like documentaries that are interesting because of filmmaking. They’re not interesting just because it is about bombing in Afghanistan or earthquakes somewhere.

But I particularly like documentary film makers when they think about the form itself, how they should approach documenting something. So this series is particularly interesting because it takes a personal approach and they address some very important issues of documentary film making, like authority, who can tell that story and authenticity.

The Emperors Naked Army Marches resizeFor example, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On and Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, the subjects in these films, they’re performers. So how do you approach performers in a documentary? Is it non-fiction anymore?  And then they raise questions, like responsibility. 


The film maker of Dear Pyongyang (Yang Yonghi) talks about a family separated, half in North Korea and half in Osaka, and after making the film she’s banned from entering North Korea even though her brothers still live in Pyongyang. What does it mean for them to have that part of the family’s history exposed?  The debut film of the festival, Death of a Japanese Salesman is very interesting. 

The director (Sunada Mami) is very young, it’s her debut documentary and she worked for Hirokazu Kore-eda (Nobody Knows), the acclaimed Japanese director. She decided to make this film three months after the passing of her father. She had been making home videos since the age of 15 abd she’s putting those videos together to make this film documenting the last months of her father’s life. Interestingly she speaks over the film as her father.

Obviously there’s something fictional if you’re speaking as your own father... In the film you only see the film maker for about 20 seconds, and the rest of the film is her family. So having the voice of this filmmaker is so important because she participates, the audience can hear her, so in a way she’s there as well.

Q: Why are there so many female directors in this program?

LH: To tell you the truth, I am a woman, but I was not looking for female film directors or films about women. I wanted to include these films and I didn’t even think about it until last week. Oh! It turns out my film series is heavily about women! I didn’t know that!

Q: You were just picking what was interesting.

LH: Absolutely. Death of a Japanese Salesman and Dear Pyongyang are both film about fathers, Embracing is also about a missing father, but it’s the female sensibilities shining through these films. But seriously it was so unconscious of me.

Q: What about the chronological progression in these films?  It seems each film is from a different era, from post-war, to today.

LH: The films are ordered in reverse chronological ordering of the years they were made, but really that’s just one side of this ordering. The other side is that it’s a progression of madness and obsession. If you look at Death of a Japanese Salesman, I was telling people at the opening of the series that this film is very, very sad, but it’s actually the sweetest film in the series. Death of a Japanese Salesman resize

As the series progresses, you will see that the films get darker, the subjects get more personal, and the film makers get more obsessed. So you watch the first two as preparation to see the later films. I tell people that Extreme Private Eros is a film that would leave them trembling for several days. 

Both of his [Hara Kazuo] films are very interesting because it’s like he’s staging those events. For example, in The Emperor’s Naked Army, in the film, Kenzo [Okuzaki], finds out about cannibalism during the Second World War in New Guinea in his own army unit. And he gets increasingly mad and crazy and violent. And before shooting, Hara Kazuo went to visit his former unit of soldiers and Kazuo found about the cannibalism before shooting and he thought “it’s going to be so great to capture the moment when Kenzo finds out about that.” And there’s so much staging, he’s anticipating moments of confrontation.

Q: How do these films reflect the era they were made in?

LH: Hara Kazuo is from a time where he experienced more political radicalism, so he’s probably more influenced by that. These film makers, Sunada Mami and Yang Yonghi, are sort of from the same [current] time. I think Hara Kazuo is probably more influenced by the social-political context he is from than the other ones. The other ones are more personal in a way that is their direct experiences with their families.


Q: What was it like getting the film prints?

LH: It really wasn’t that hard.  Some of the films have distribution and the distributor have the prints. Extreme Private and Embracing are two 16mm prints from the Japan Foundation Archive in Tokyo.

Death of a Japanese Salesman was a digital film done on HD cam, so it was not too complicated. Though I must say it’s such a pity that all the 16mm prints are not in great condition. These are all really important films, they need to be restored.  But of course for me, whenever the prints are available and we can show it on film, I want to show prints.  It’s a very, very different experience for me and hopefully the audience.  I know there are some people that can’t distinguish.

Q: Were the films selected before or after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami?

LH: It was after.

Q: Did it play a role in the decisions?

L: Not necessarily.  I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to do a documentary series simply because I think the audience should know more about Japanese documentaries and I didn’t want to restrict myself to the past decade, because I wanted to show a variety and bring some classics.  It’s not an extensive series, it’s a small package, but there’s coherence and a beauty about them. 

Tarachime resizeThe earthquake and tsunami didn’t really play a role.  I did try to bring a documentary about that, but I didn’t come across anything suitable.  And then for the time I had to confirm everything, I mean some of these films were probably still being made.  And also I’m not going to tell you what I don’t have that were considered.

Q: That was my next question!

LF: I cannot tell you that [laughs]! There were some really great films, but due to financial resources and the availability of those films, there were issues with the availability of those films, and we couldn’t get them.  But I’m happy with these.

Q: What directors would you like to have at the Asia Society or think deserve attention?

LH: Someone like Naomi Kawase deserves a retrospective where she comes here. That would be more proper.  She’s somebody who has such a rich repertoire of both documentaries and fiction films, I don’t understand why her films don’t really have distribution in this country.  I don’t know whether it’s some problem with female sensibilities [or] something that it’s not biting enough. She’s the most under-recognized among Japanese filmmakers.

Q: What other countries do you look at while selecting films?

LH: I like interesting films, so it’s not so much about the countries.  There are certain countries that are doing interesting work right now, there are certain countries that used to do really exciting works.  Last year I did a Thai film series because I think Thai cinema is extremely exciting right now.  And I was glad to be featuring the sort of Thai new-wave that started in late 1990’s to around 2000, a new crop of film makers made things very exciting. People usually know Thai cinema as Apichatpong [Weerasethakul]’s films, but there’s a lot more people doing really creative work. 

Nowadays, Chinese independent cinema is doing really well.  I’m not talking about commercial Chinese cinema, which is not particularly exciting, because they do all these big-budget films and they’re very generic looking, with big film stars, and it is very market driven.  The independent Chinese film makers are doing really exciting works.  And the Iranian film makers are similar.  And I think there are some interesting films coming out of other parts of South-East Asia, like Indonesia and Malaysia, as well.  I keep looking.

Q: Did the earthquake change how Japanese documentaries will be made or what the political attitudes in the documentaries will be?

LH: It’s hard to generalize because film makers, each one is a creative individual, but I feel that Japanese documentary film makers will continue to do very personal works.  It’s something they do really well...  It is hard to speak of a trend.  It’s too much responsibility to say something about that.

Dear Pyongyang has a political dimension, but it is primarily a personal film.  For some people it is very interesting because it has this North Korean aspect to it.  North Korea is very mysterious and this film brings them to that world, but it is really a film about family.  Maybe the Emperor’s Naked Army has a political dimension, but all the other ones are very personal. 

Q: Are films from Thailand more about social crusading than the ones from Pakistan and Iran or are they more personal? 

LH: The Pakistani film, Saving Face, involves activism and the film maker is like a film journalist.  And Thai films, what is very interesting about them, what I called the Thai New-Wave earlier, 1990’s to the present, is that it goes hand in hand with commercial sides and artistic sides. 

You have people like Apichatpong making art films, and then you have people making commercial works that are very interesting as well.  For example, The Iron Ladies (Youngyooth Thongkonthun) can seem crazy, but it was a big box-office success. 

Then you have people like Pen-ek Ratanaruang who seem to be somewhere in between. So I’m excited by Thai cinema because of the variety all over.  People doing very different things, very different artistic approaches, but together they contribute to a very vibrant industry.

Q: Is there any guiding figure among Japanese documentary film makers?

L: Well obviously Hara is not a household name, but people really look up to him. Even Michael Moore is a fan of Hara.  It is not like too many people know about his work, but he is truly admired.  I’m sure he has a cult following.  And even fewer people have seen Kawase’s work, but hopefully they’ll be showing more in the United States. These are masters to follow. 

Hara is not very productive; he’s not making too many films.  The last time he made a film was a few years ago (Mata no Hi no Chika, 2005) and he has long stretches when he’s not making films.  But how could he?  After making Dear Pyongyang resizesomething like Extreme Private Eros or Emperor’s Naked Army, you would need a seven -ear break.

I would watch Sunada Mami’s work. She has a babyface, but she’s actually 30 years old. I want to see what she has coming up.  And I heard that Yang Yonghi’s new film (Kazoku no Kuni) is really nice.

Q: How do you feel about film right now?

L: We have really interesting films here, and some of them are hard to find, some you can get on DVD or online, but there’s something really, really beautiful about watching films on a big screen.  And it is very painful for me, how the young generation likes to watch things on a tiny little screen. It frustrates me greatly and I don’t get much pleasure out of doing that myself.

There are a lot of venues in the city, not just the Asia Society, that allow them to have a real cinematic experience.  They should be bold and try to expose them to those experiences.It’s a great time for cinema. More than any other art form, it excites me and it still does.

I feel so exhilarated when I watch a really well made film, and it happens far more than when I consume other forms of art.

It is a good time for people in New York who watch films too, because I remember when I was in school, I went to cinema studies, and you’d read about these films being shown at major film festivals in Europe or wherever, and those films never came to New York, not to mention the other places in the United States. If they didn’t come to New York they wouldn’t go anywhere else. 

In the past few years, there’s a proliferation of cinematic events in this city.  It drives you crazy, because you cannot cover everything. You give up eventually, and it doesn’t help that some of those things can be found online and so people are not really encouraged to go out. 

But it is a good time. Whatever happens elsewhere in the world, you can see them in New York.  But the only problem is that that particular film you are dying to see might play once, and then it will be five years before it might show up again. So at the Asia Society we want to participate in making those films available.

To see Hui's interviews with Tsai Ming-Liang and other filmmakers, go to: http://www.youtube.com/user/asiasociety

For more info about The Asia Society, the Extreme Private Ethos film series and more, go to http://asiasociety.org/


Actress Adepero Oduye Is No Pariah but An Indie Spirit Nominee

Adepero Oduye-bbThough Pariah is this little film telling a simple, classic tale seen and heard before, the charm of its actors and the need to have this coming-of-age story told again and again until it no longer needs to resonate makes the film a powerful and award-worthy statement.

Relative newcomer Adepero Oduye portrays Alike (pronounced ah-LEE-kay), a 17-year-old African-American woman who lives with parents Audrey and Arthur (Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell), and younger sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse) in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene. With a flair for poetry and good grades, Alike quietly but firmly embraces her lesbianism with the sometimes boisterous support of her best friend and out lesbian Laura (Pernell Walker).

Read more: Actress Adepero Oduye Is No...

Ken Russell & Vanessa Redgrave Recognize The Genius of The Devils

While every publication, news site and television program celebrated those who passed ken-russell-Devils-coveraway at the end of this year, one incredible talent, the British director Ken Russell, was overlooked by much of the media in those look-backs since his death on November 27, 2011, at 84.

When Russell came to NYC in June 2010 for his Film Society of Lincoln Center retrospective, Russellmania, which took place from July 30 to August 5, 2011, he was exuberant about developing new projects and possibilities. It was as if this reassessment re-invigorated him for the future, even though he had this fragility about him.

Born on July 3, 1927, Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell was known for a flamboyant and controversial style. During his peak years, the English film director attracted criticism because of his obsessions with sexuality and the church. Best known for his Oscar-winning film Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), The Who's Tommy (1975), and the science fiction film Altered States (1980), he directed lots of feature films independently and for studios.

Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. His pioneering work in television and film often dealt with the lives of famous composers or were based on other works of art which he loosely adapted. held in high regard by many classical musicians and conductors for his story-driven biopics of various composers, most famously Elgar, Delius, Liszt, Mahler and Tchaikovsky.

He’s also produced and directed theater including a play starring Keith Carradine in NYC. Finally a new Blu-ray release of Russell's The Devils came out further highlighting his work on the influential film.

Q: Of all of your films, which one do you feel is most perfect and why?

KR: The Devils because the characters are so excellent in it. It had the best cast I ever got together.

Q: Of all the actors you have worked with, who would you would cast again?

KR: I certainly liked Oliver Reed because he was always a challenge. Even with The Devils, he rose to the challenge and often transcended the possibilities of what he could do and couldn’t do.

Q: What did you think of it?

VR: I was astonished by the film the first time I saw it. I’m even more astonished now, because in everything -- the concepts, the text -- it’s like you took cinema into another world.ken-russell-Russell-Redgrave

I personally haven’t seen anything like this for years, and I mean that in the sense of profound homage. That’s extraordinary images of the kind of brutal chaos that certainly happened at that time, and has happened and is happening at other times.

KR: That’s why I wanted to make it. It was a tale that needed retelling every few years because nothing changes and there’s still a lot of evil in the world. This is just a reminder of the evil that surrounds us.

Q: You were a Roman Catholic at one time in your life. Were you no longer a Roman Catholic by the time you made this film?

KR: I’m a devout Catholic; always have been, always will be.

Q: It's not the most flattering portrait of the Catholic Church.

KR: You were proud of this film, weren’t you darling?

VR: Yes. Very proud of it. Very proud of you, of Derek Jarman, very proud of the decisions you made to not go for the general run -- medieval, tired, semi-reconstituted -- but to go for this fantastic… I can’t put a name to it, because it’s beyond putting a name to. The conception of Loudun and the white tiles of Loudun, which sort of encompass this world, and when they crumble, reveal a bleakness both within and without.

There’s so much to take on board in the film, but in cinema terms and spiritual terms it’s extraordinary. I feel very inadequate even attempting to put one word after another. I’m very proud of it.

Q: Ken, you mentioned that Aldous Huxley had said that the exorcism of Sister Jeanne was like a rape in a public lavatory, and that informed your instruction of Derek Jarman.

KR: Yes. He went for it. He wanted to achieve this monumental horror story in terms Aldous Huxley would have appreciated, and that’s what we got, I think.

VR: That’s fantastic to hear it was Aldous Huxley.

Q: This film speaks to war and atrocity. Do you find in the world at this point that cinema can play a role in creating hope, because some people in charge continue to pollute and destroy this planet.

KR: You have to look for it and you need a magnifying glass to find it. That’s about all I have to say on it. It speaks for itself.

VR: I was at a conference [at the RFK Center] -- I won’t go into the whole conference -- but apart from attending, listening very carefully and being extremely encouraged, I joined Mandy Patinkin and Gloria Reuben in reading some testimonies by a few -- only nine -- of some hundreds of people who were photographed by [Eddie Adams] and interviewed by and for Kerry Kennedy.

There was an exhibitioken-russell-Redgraven, and a school program for the curriculum called "Speak Truth to Power."

From my point of view, it's extremely important. The stories that Mandy, Gloria and I read, just brief excerpts, are by women and men from many different countries -- Russia, Chad, Ghana, and India -- who have [had] horrible violence done to them personally and around them, and turned it into defending human lives and human rights in a most extraordinary way.

This work tends to get drowned out by the very real violence and cruelty that is in the world. But it’s very important that these programs are being taken to schools.

Kids need to know that there are so many really decent people, some of whom have been wronged horribly, and dealt with very cruelly, that have not gone mad, and survived and have turned all the pain that they felt and the misery they felt into defending lives and human rights.

There are so many of these people, but they don’t hit the media. So I’m glad that I was there and I’m glad that I’ve been able to meet some extraordinary people.

I’m very glad to have met the families and some of the guys who have finally returned from Guantanamo. They’ve been through hell -- a hell that in my mind resembles that hell that we saw in the film. These are such remarkable people, and their families are very remarkable too, and so are the communities that came forward to help them and the children and wives.

School teachers, schools that opened their doors for public meetings to raise the issue that these are British citizens, British residents, they’ve been charged with no crime, they must be returned to Britain.

And because of prolonged campaign and a profound repugnance in all the legal circles for the profound illegality and cruelty, they are home -- with one exception of one man, one British resident with a British family, who’s still there.

Now I wouldn’t have gone into this except to say that in my experience -- and I can only say from my experience -- I have seen as much decency in human beings and protection and will to defend humanity as I have of cruelty.

KR: I’m sure Vanessa’s sentiments are quite profound and need no continuity or thought to continue. So I would just like to thank her once again for her profound words. Thank you.

VR: Well, I’d like to thank you for this wonderful, iconoclastic, philosophically iconoclastic [film], which went with a profound faith. Because I think people who have a profound faith are the people prepared to break all the barriers for that faith to become and be what it could be but isn’t, so often.

KR: Yes, thank you very much. I can’t add any more to that.

Q: The Devils to you is what Paths of Glory was for Stanley Kubrick. I consider them the same area.

VR: He considers your film The Devils to be in the same area as Stanley Kubrick’s.

Q: Yes, because of the corruption and politics.

KR: It’s the destruction. Everything we hold ken-russell-Devils-shootgood and right. The film really sort of confirms what we all feel about situations like Loudun, situations which went on and have gone on for centuries and with little sign of ceasing. So that’s what it’s about.

Q: You recorded audio commentary for a DVD that has yet to materialize. The Devils became available on iTunes. It looked beautiful, but in 72 hours was pulled with no explanation from iTunes or Warner Brothers -- like they’re afraid to let people see this film. It’s still incendiary and censored. There’s a sequence, the rape of Christ, that's not in this film. It was shown in England but not here in the States.

KR: That was Warner Brothers just putting the boot in. They’ve never liked the film from the day it was first seen. They’re afraid of it.

Q: It has been reported that someone went into the vaults at Warner Brothers, unearthed the canister print and there was a note in there that said, "This film shall never see the light of day." At least we proved them wrong tonight.

KR: The only way it will see the light of day is if you all write to Warner Brothers. I gather it’s just opened in Spain in a version yet to be seen.

Q: What was it like working with Oliver Reed?

KR: It was very interesting. He’s not the most forthright person to have conversations with. But we devised a method of communication, which I will pass on. He’s dead now, so it won’t do any harm.

My method of working with him was quite simple once I worked it out. We worked out moods. He would ask me what mood I wanted particularly for a scene. Did I want it moody one, moody two, or moody three? And depending on the horror I wanted, or lack of it, I would say "Let’s try moody one," and that would be it. Mostly it was moody two.

Q: Vanessa, you didn’t really have many scenes with him.

VR: I was in a scene in which I couldn’t even see him, so we weren’t acting…as you can see; we didn’t have any scenes together. I think he’s very, very good in the film. Whether that’s Ken’s choice of moody one or moody two [I can't say], but I think he’s very, very good.

KR: I have nothing to say except to congratulate you on a wonderful performance. It really is extraordinary.

Fire-Breathing "Bellflower" -- Director Glodell's Auspicious Sundance Debut

Evan GlodellWhat is Bellflower, the latest buzz movie of the moment? It's a road movie, a mumblecore/relationship film, even a weird buddy pic with some bitchy girls and that flamethrower.

Or to sum it up, best friends Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) toil endlessly over Mad Max-inspired devices and vehicles to prepare for the impending apocalypse.

Yeah, right. Until Woodrow meets a girl, falls in love, gets a gang and journeys into shifting patterns of love, hate, betrayal, infidelity and a bit of violence -- basically everyday fantasy life in post-millennial America.

Read more: Fire-Breathing "Bellflower" --...

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