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Spring 2012
SATURDAY CHINESE FEATURE FILM SERIES
Ringling College of Art and Design
Academic Center Room 207
Admission is free and open to the public..
All films have Mandarin sound-tracks and English subtitles.
January 28: 1:30 pm
Last Train Home 归途列车
Director Fan Lixin, 2010. Documentary, 90 min.
This showing is a collaboration with the award-winning documentary series POV (www.pbs.org/pov).
Six years in the making, this is a gripping and much acclaimed “slice of life” documentary of a family in which the parents left their two children with their grandparents for sixteen years in order to improve the family’s lot in life by becoming workers in a jeans factory, and able to return to their home village only once a year at New Year’s. The daughter, now 17, is angry and hostile; her younger brother, is quiet, a good student. Those who’ve ridden Chinese trains will find the footage unsettlingly familiar. Those who’ve never been to China may begin to understand why they had to put brakes on population growth. Those who cheer China’s move to a market economy will be sobered by the human consequences for a huge segment of the Chinese population, and by the desperation parents attach to their children’s education as the only way up and out of poverty. And possibly you may never look at a pair of jeans in quite the same way.
February 25: 1:30 pm
If You Are the One 非诚勿扰
Director Feng Xiaogang, 2008. 130 min.
Stars Ge You
http://www.whatsonsanya.com/ent85.html
Bachelor Qin Fen, a newly successful amateur inventor heading into his late forties seeks “a sane, healthy woman” through on-line personals. After interviewing and rejecting several respondents, he meets Smiley, a beautiful woman stuck in a dead-end relationship with a married man, who wants friendship, not romance. She agrees to marry him as long as she can keep a place in her heart for the other man. Wanting more than a platonic relationship, Qin embarks upon a campaign to help Smiley get over her unrequited love – with unexpected results.
March 24: 1:30 pm
Detective Dee and the Phantom Flame 狄仁傑之通天帝國
Director Tsui Hark, Hong Kong 2010. 123min.
Stars Andy Lau Ka Fai, Carina Lau
http://kaleidoscope.cultural-china.com/en/
The setting is Tang Dynasty, 690CE. In preparation for the coronation of Empress Wu Zetian, China’s first and only woman emperor, a gigantic Buddhist statue is in the final stages of completion when several high officials mysteriously self-combust and burn to ashes. To solve the mystery, the Empress frees Judge Di Renjie, who has been imprisoned for the last 8 years, putting him under surveillance by her favorite maid-in-waiting. Di, a skilled martial artist who trusts no one and disbelieves supernatural explanations, gradually exposes various duplicitous players. A martial arts extravaganza with an actual plot.
April 21 1:30 pm
Lust, Caution 色 戒
Director Li Ang (Ang Lee), Taiwan, 2007. 157 min
A controversial prize-winning film set in late 30s and early 40s Hong Kong and Shanghai. A young woman joins a Hong Kong theatre group that becomes involved in deadly anti-Japanese resistance activities. As part of a plot to assassinate a highly placed collaborator, she prepares to gain access by becoming the man’s mistress. The scheme is thwarted when the target is recalled to Shanghai and promoted to head of secret service. After three years, the plan is resurrected, but complicated personal emotions threaten the outcome. A long film that slowly but inexorably builds toward an inevitable outcome. (Includes graphic sex scenes.)
Series is designed by Dr. Carolyn Bloomer to supplement her Cultural Beliefs course Modern China,
and is co-sponsored by the Gulfcoast Chinese American Association
and the Sarasota Chapter of the U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association.
For more information contact: cbloomer@Ringling.edu.
Location: Films will be screened on the campus of Ringling College of Art and Design in room AC 207 in the new Academic Building on the west side of Old Bradenton Road south of Martin Luther King Boulevard in area #34 on the campus map available on line at http://www.ringling.edu/fileadmin/pdf/CampusMap.pdf .