Cineseminar 8 Apr 2018

Cine Seminar 8 Apr 2018 / Dorothy

Agnès Varda - Elsa la rose (1966)
https://vimeo.com/97016643

In 1965, Agnès Varda made a short, intense documentary on the then almost 40-year relationship between the French writers Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet. Her film predominantly and characteristically focuses upon Triolet, and her role as both muse and important artistic and political influence on her partner. Varda’s film, Elsa la rose, titled after the moniker bestowed on Triolet by Aragon, was made between two of Varda’s most controversial, inscrutable and misunderstood features: Le Bonheur (1964) and Les Creatures (1965). All three films focus on the couple and the complex relation it holds to both its immediate environment and circumstances and the realms of individual and collective fantasy. [except from Sense of Cinema: http://sensesofcinema.com/2014/cteq/elsa-la-rose]

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Jia Zhangke – In Public (2001)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkECM0SWT_M
In Public was made and submitted by Jia as part of a program at the 2001 Jeonju International Film Festival, where three directors were asked to produce a short film in digital video. […] Setting up his camera in a train station in Datong, Jia made a film consisting of thirty shots over forty five days.

Lacking in any formal plot, the film instead captures seemingly mundane moments, customers asking for the train schedule, shots inside public buses, etc. The result, according to Chinese film scholar Berenice Reynaud, is a film that captures the "ennui, backwardness, and dreary atmosphere of a small town, and the impatience, hidden desires and private concerns of its inhabitants." For Jia, the film was a chance to focus on the public spaces in a modern provincial city of China: the train stations, discos, and karaokes of Datong. [except from wikipedia]

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Chris Marker – Junkoptia (1981)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ymKAhoXyPA

A short film that shows Boundless, Surreal objects that are juxtaposed with our present World. Cars, Motorways, noise of our modern society; A giant city in the distance - all that shrouds this lonely and forgotten island of Dreams. Filmed at the Emeryville Mudflats near San Francisco.

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Yu Lik-wai - Neon Goddesses (1996)
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av6251085

Drawn by dreams of bright lights, money, success, and fueled by the desire to escape their pasts, three provincial Chinese girls find their aspirations shattered.

Born in Hong Kong in 1966, Yu Lik-wai is a graduate of Belgium's INSAS (Institut National Superieur des Arts de Spectacle). After making the documentary “Neon Goddesses”(1996), Yu established a reputation as an excellent cinematographer. His camera work includes Jia Zhangke’s three features “Xiao Wu”(1997), “Platform”(2000) “Unknown Pleasures”(2002) as well as Ann Hui’s “Ordinary Heroes”(1998).