China
TIFF 2023 | The Breaking Ice (Anthony Chen, China) — Centrepiece
By Michael Sicinski | | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2023
The Breaking Ice is as aimless as its characters, whose outer orbital of disaffection keeps them hovering around one another, wandering around and smoking and staring at the dazzling neon lights with more attitude than purpose. In other words, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been assayed much more poignantly years ago by Hou Hsiao-hsien or Jia Zhangke.
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The Calming (Song Fang, China)
By Courtney Duckworth | | CS85, Fall Festival Spotlight, Festivals, From Cinema Scope Magazine
By Courtney Duckworth Inertia implies stillness, but more precisely it means that without intervention any body resists change. The word conjures ceaseless motion as much as it does stasis—someone who cannot go on, or someone who can do nothing else. Something of this semantic tension imbues The Calming, writer-director Song Fang’s ascetic second feature. Lin…
Read More Shamans · Animals: A Report from the 8th Annual China Independent Film Festival
By Shelly Kraicer | | Cinema Scope Online, Festivals
By Shelly Kraicer Independent film festivals in China have become rather exciting lately. And I’m not just talking about the films. If they’re not being raided by the authorities (see my account of the 2011 Beijing Independent Film Festival at dGeneratefilms.com), then they’re platforms for furious and impassioned debate between filmmakers, curators, critics, and theoreticians.…
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