Daily Archives: October 25, 2023

Recommended Reading: A lovely text by Jonas Mekas

R.I.P. Jonas Mekas, Patron-Saint of Cinema, 1922-2019. — J.R.

(from http://www.incite-online.net/jonasmekas.html)

jonas-mekas

Anti-100 Years of Cinema Manifesto
By Jonas Mekas

 

As you well know it was God who created this Earth and everything on it.  And he thought it was all great.  All painters and poets and musicians sang and celebrated the creation and that was all OK.  But not for real.  Something was missing.  So about 100 years ago God decided to create the motion picture camera.  And he did so.  And then he created a filmmaker and said, “Now here is an instrument called the motion picture camera.  Go and film and celebrate the beauty of the creation and the dreams of human spirit, and have fun with it.”

But the devil did not like that.  So he placed a money bag in front of the camera and said to the filmmakers, ‘Why do you want to celebrate the beauty of the world and the spirit of it if you can make money with this instrument?”  And, believe it or not, all the filmmakers ran after the money bag.  The Lord realized he had made a mistake.  So, some 25 years later, to correct his mistake, God created independent avant-garde filmmakers and said, “Here is the camera.  Read more

Love Among the Ruins [SPRINGTIME IN A SMALL TOWN]

From the Chicago Reader (July 9, 2004). — J.R.

Springtime in a Small Town

*** (A must-see)

Directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang

Written by Ah Cheng

With Hu Jingfan, Wu Jun, Xin Baiqing, Ye Xiaokeng, and Lu Sisi.

It’s strange and very telling that the film most highly regarded in the Chinese-speaking world –especially in Hong Kong and Taiwan — is hardly known outside China. Fei Mu’s 1948 Spring in a Small City, as it’s usually called in English, is a film I doubt I ever would have seen if a Chinese friend hadn’t sent me a subtitled copy taken from a rare showing on SBS, Australia’s state-funded multicultural TV channel, several years ago.

Once I discovered that Fei Mu’s black-and-white film lives up to its reputation, I mentioned it casually to a local Chinese film buff, who told me it was readily available at the video store he frequents in Chinatown. Why then are English subtitled versions so scarce? After all, the film was a key inspiration for Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000), which has been savored by non-Asians across the globe. And Tian Zhuangzhuang’s color remake of Fei Mu’s classic, Springtime in a Small Town (2002), showing this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center, is no less accessible. Read more