Day: May 20, 2013

MoMA’s Chinese Realities Series: LFM Reviews San Yuan Li

By Joe Bendel. It could be called a vanguard village. Now entirely encircled by Guangzhou’s urban sprawl, San Yuan Li was once a hotbed of resistance during the Opium Wars. However, drug abuse and other social pathologies have recently become comparatively more advanced there. Yet, new and old China persist, side-by-side each other. A team of artists document the neighborhood’s daily facts of life in Ou Ning & Cao Fei’s San Yuan Li, which screens with Huang Weikai’s Disorder as part of MoMA’s Chinese Realities/Documentary Visions film series.

Industrialization has left a questionable mark on the village. In rapid succession, the audience sees the cramped narrow alleys, dingy sweatshops, haunted looking factories, and the hardscrabble laborers toiling along the river. These are literal “fly-over People,” living beneath the constant approach of airliners. In contrast, viewers also encounter the modern consumerist class (often at booty level), as well as the young color guards and traditional performers representing the ideals of previous eras.

With its frenetically quick cuts and driving soundtrack, San Yuan Li is far more accessible than the term “experimental documentary” would suggest. Although shot in a very stylish black-and-white, the film is sort of like a National Geographic photo spread with a postmodern sensibility and an elevated social awareness. The net effect is often rather hypnotic. While not quite as pointed as Disorder, they are quite a compatible pairing, collectively clocking in at about one and three-quarter hours.

From "San Yuan Li."

Still, there are plenty of telling images throughout San Yuan Li. Indeed, any appearance of Mao portraiture is now ironic, haunting either the go-go capitalism or mounting class inequities unleashed by the Party. Yet, there is also dignity in the faces of average citizens, particularly the diverse selection of work teams captured late in the film.

Neither documentaries have narrative structures per se, but they both convey a vivid sense of contemporary China. As it happens, both San Yuan Li and Disorder are distributed by the dGenerate films, the invaluable specialists in independent Chinese cinema. Highly recommended for China watchers who want to do exactly that, they screen together this Wednesday (5/22) and the following Monday (5/27) as Chinese Realities continues at MoMA.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 20th, 2013 at 2:19pm.

MoMA’s Chinese Realities Series: LFM Reviews Yumen

By Joe Bendel. That hardly took long. An oil boomtown in the 1990’s, Yumen is now a deserted ghost town—literally so if you believe some of the stories told by stragglers. Regardless, viewers certainly get a vivid sense of contemporary China’s “burn rate” in Huang Xiang, Xu Ruotao & J.P. Sniadecki’s Yumen (trailer here), which has its North American premiere tomorrow during MoMA’s ongoing Chinese Realities/Documentary Visions film series.

According to one disembodied voice-over, the abandoned hospital is and was haunted by the spirit of an infant. She once saw it with some friends, one of whom still bears a scar from the encounter. Another man also remembers the hospital, having frequently visited an ambiguously sickly woman there. These remnants of Yumen’s glory days are like ghosts themselves, often filmed like ant-like specks shuffling through the surreal post-industrial landscape.

The directorial trio consistently plays games with the doc format, incorporating what sound like staged reminiscences and showing the seams in between their 16mm reel changes. Nonetheless, there is no mistaking the reality of the northwest Gansu town. It is simply impossible to recreate ruins of such scale on an indie budget. It looks like Pripyat outside of Chernobyl, just without the background radiation (as far as we know).

From "Yumen."

For what it’s worth, the woman’s ghost story is kind of creepy. Yet more to the point, the intertwining memories and images clearly illustrate the pain and dislocation resulting from the death of a community, even one not especially beloved by its residents, such as Yumen.

Yumen is an impressive looking film, but even at its sixty-five minute running time, it feels a smidge stretched. Certain visuals start to repeat themselves and a late scene rather overindulges in globalist irony, as one of their POV figures strolls through a nearby open air market singing along to Springsteen’s “My Hometown.” As a multi-millionaire and self-appointed spokesman of the proletariat, Springsteen might actually be the perfect voice for today’s China, but the sequence just feels too long and stagey.

If you want to get a good look at Yumen this film is probably your best option, because the government is not likely to sponsor tours there anytime soon. It is not for everyone, but it should fascinate those with a taste for more experimental documentaries in the spirit of Disorder and San Yuan Li. Recommended for aesthetically adventurous China watchers, Yumen screens this Monday (5/20) at MoMA, presented in-person by Sniadecki, the former American expatriate filmmaker, whose previous credits include Chaiqian and Sognhua, two similarly naturalistic observations of Chinese daily life.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on May 20th, 2013 at 2:18pm.

Martial Arts On-Stage: LFM Reviews Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon!

By Joe Bendel. Revenge is a family business for the characters of Lone Wolf and Cub. This is not exactly an official stage adaptation, but fans of the manga and films will recognize certain elements. The Rogue Assassin’s young Boy did indeed choose the sword over the ball. However, they might just meet their match in the form of the titular nemesis in Fred Ho & Ruth Margraff’s musical martial arts stage-production, Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon!, which officially opened this weekend at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre.

Once, the Rogue Assassin was the Shogun’s Kaishakunin, until the Imperial councilor, Iyagu of the ruthless Yagyu clan, convinced the old tyrant to turn against his loyal executioner. Iyagu’s assassins succeed in killing his wife, but the Shogun’s betrayed “second” escapes with his infant son. This proves to be a costly escapade. For ten years, the Rogue Assassin cuts through the Imperial assassins and ninjas like butter, depleting the Shogun’s treasury and undermining his ruling authority.

Rather sick of it all, the Shogun imports three super assassins from abroad, at considerable cost to Iyagu’s face. Not inclined to take matters lying down, the old conspirator plays his trump card, unleashing the She-Wolf Assassin. Raised from infancy to be Iyagu’s personal La Femme Nikita, her fate is mysteriously intertwined with that of the renegade father and son.

Much fighting ensues, impressively choreographed by lead actor Yoshi Amao for swords and Emanuel Brown (Electro in Broadway’s Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark) for martial arts beatdowns. The resulting spectacle is musically accompanied by the Afro Asian Music Ensemble, under the direction of conductor-multi-reed player Masaru Koga, performing Fred Ho’s funky Lone Wolf-inspired score. Incorporating elements of electric bass and baritone sax driven blaxploitation soundtracks and traditional koto and shakuhachi music, Ho’s themes are hip and propulsive, yet still fit the Jidaigeki action on-stage.

Unfortunately, Ho’s hardcore leftist ideology does not serve the story as well. Frankly, the Uncle Sam assassin caricature is just laughably didactic. A chicken fried colonialist, Colonel USA is hardly representative of the inward looking American foreign policy during the Edo era (1603-1868). Frankly, it is a bit of agitprop street theater that does not fit the otherwise dignified Noh-esque production.

Regardless, the stagecraft of She-Wolf is quite impressive. The lighting and smoke are suitably moody and the spare set is rather evocative. Likewise, the costumes provide the right period look without interfering with the fight choreography.

The cast holds up their end, too. Yoshio Amao is all kinds of brooding badness as the Rogue Assassin, but Ai Ikeda does him one better as the steely She-Wolf. Takemi Kitamura also shows some dramatic flair and action cred as She-Wolf’s sister (the most substantial of her three roles).   As is standard practice, two young actors rotate as the Boy. Bradley Fong showed real presence in the part Sunday afternoon, never drowning amid all the stage effects and melee unleashed around him. (His alternate, Jet Yung is surely quite good, as well.) With Perry Yung’s Iyagu chewing the scenery with admirably villainous glee, it is a strong ensemble all around.

This is one of the better martial arts themed productions to grace New York’s independent stages in a fair amount of time and the music is always very cool. There are certain awkward excesses to She-Wolf, but that is sort of par for the course in New York’s theater world. Hopefully, Mr. Ho is happy with director Sonoko Kawahara’s muscular staging, considering the program’s sad note regarding his ill health. Recommended for martial arts fans and soul-world fusion jazz listeners, She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon! runs through June 2nd at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre.

Posted on May 20th, 2013 at 2:17pm.