NEWS: Pusher Set For British Remake

(l-r) Mads Mikkelsen (Tonny) and Kim Bodnia (Frank) in the original 1996 film, Pusher.

Vertigo Films have announced an English-language remake of the notorious Danish gangster film Pusher, which starred Mads Mikkelsen.

“As edgy and explosive as Nicolas Winding Refn’s 1996 cult classic, this English-language remake tells the story of a week in the life of Frank, a big time drug pusher in London. Frank’s life is a fun-filled rollercoaster of a ride that soon spins out of control. Friendships start to vanish, there is no longer room for love within his life, and violence takes over. Danger and chaos are all around and he becomes a man trapped in his own world. Eventually Frank is left with no-one to turn to and nowhere to go, becoming a man paralysed with the fear of knowing there is no way of preventing his inevitable fate. Fast-paced, visually striking, witty and with some of acting’s finest talents, Pusher will have you gripped from beginning to end.”

Executive Producer, Nicolas Winding Refn, commented: “Pusher was the film that launched my career and to have Luis Prieto direct the remake in London will be an exciting venture. It’s a classic tale with strong characters and has an engaging narrative. To see my characters, Frank and Tony in London, one of the most exciting and diverse cities in the world, is an opportunity not to be missed.”

Pusher director, Luis Prieto, commented: "I am delighted to be on board such an exciting project and having the chance to work with Nicolas Winding Refn. Pusher will be thrilling, funny, fast paced and visually striking."

Shooting will take place over 5 weeks in London’s Shoreditch and Dalston.

NEWS: The 3rd Taiwanese Film Festival

Europe’s largest Taiwanese Film Festival is back for its third edition with four film Premieres.

The festival, which will kick off on May 26th at the Apollo Cinema, Piccadilly with surprise critical and box office smash Seven Days In Heaven by emerging directing duo, Wang Yu-lin and Essay Liu.

Monga

The line-up will also include the 2010 Berlin film festival contender and Taiwan’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film, Monga by Niu Chen-Zer. The film which has become one of the most successful in Taiwanese box office history stars Asia heart throb’s Ethan Ruan and Mark Zhao.

Also playing will be Leon Dai’s Can’t Live Without You (No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti), offering audiences a profoundly moving drama about a father’s quest to stay with his daughter despite the intervention of the state upholding an irregular bureaucratic rule that may force them to separate.

Love In Disguise

Wang Leehom’s directorial debut, Love In Disguise, will form part of the first Taiwan Cinefest Cross Strait Film Section recognising Taiwanese talent’s contribution in Greater China.

For more information on the event, visit the festival’s official website by clicking here.

NEWS: Terracotta Far East Film Festival 2011

Fourteen films, amongst them UK and European premieres, will be screened at the Prince Charles Cinema, London as part of this year’s Terracotta Far East Film Festival 2011. The event takes place between 5th and 8th May 2011. The films are:

The Lost Bladesman (Guan Yu Chang)
Donnie Yen as the great historical figure Guan Yu from the Three Kingdoms.

Hotel Black Cat (Hei Mao Da Lu She)
Past traumas still linger with the eclectic residents at Hotel Black Cat.

The Tiger Factory
Would you sell your baby to escape to a new life abroad?

Revenge: A Love Story (Fuk sau che chi sei)
A serial killer targeting pregnant women is on the loose.

Man Of Vendetta (Pagwidwin Sanai)
Eight years after his daughter has been kidnapped, a father gets a call from the kidnapper.

Helldriver (Heru Doraiba)
Welcome to Zombie World!

Petty Romance (Jje-jje-han Ro-maen-seu)
A comic artist teams with an unlikely writer to try for lucrative adult comic prize, bringing out their respective wildest fantasies.

Choy Lee Fut (Cai Li Fo)
Two best friends head from Europe to China to learn Choy Lee Fut and get more than they bargained for.

Yazkuza Weapon (Gokudo heiki)
Part man, part machine, ALL Yakuza.

Childs Eye (Tung Ngaan)
Six stranded tourists are caught up in a haunted Bangkok guesthouse.

Red Light Revolution
China’s first SX Shop comedy!

Karate Girl (K.G.)
Two sisters from a Karate dynasty, separated when young, now find themselves on opposing sides.

Gallants (Da Lui Toi)
From zero to hero, via old skool kung-fu.

Milocrorze, A Love Story (Mirokuroze)
Hyper colourful multi-segmented film about obsessive love.

The event will include Q&As with directors and actors, plus masterclasses and an official party.

For more information on the event, visit the festival’s official website by clicking here.

NEWS: Glasgow Film Festival Takes International View

The Glasgow Film Festival takes place between 17th and 27th February 2011.

Amongst the screenings of interest to readers of this website are:

Apnea (Greece)
Apnea is the breath control technique used by divers and swimmers to stay under water for minutes at a time. It can cause hallucinations. In the case of swimming champion Dimitris (Sotiris Pastras) it brings on guilt-ridden recollections of his relationship with Elsa (Youlika Skafida), a beautiful environmental activist. He had chosen to concentrate on his training rather than accompanying her on a Greenpeacestyle mission. Now she is missing and he waits anxiously for news, re-examining the past.

Nothing's All Bad (Denmark)
Acutely observed scenes of toe-curling embarrassment blend with the bleakest of black comedy as we meet the lonely Ingeborg who is retired and widowed on the same day, schoolteacher Anna who has had a mastectomy, impossibly handsome Jonas who sells sex to anyone willing to pay and his father Anders who seems ruled by unhealthy sexual urges. Their lives will cross in the most unexpected and poignant of ways.

Cell 211 (Spain)
Spanish regular Luis Tosar is on blistering form as Malamadre, the ruthless ringleader of a prison riot. Alberto Ammann matches his intensity with a sensitive performance as Juan, a young prison guard. Newcomer Juan is being shown around the high-security facility when the riot erupts. His only hope of survival is to trade on the fact that none of the inmates have previously seen him, and so he pretends to be one of the cons. What ensues is an intense, claustrophobic cat-and-mouse thriller.

When We Leave (Germany)
Sibel Kekilli gives an outstanding performance as Umay, a German-born Turkish woman who flees her abusive husband in Istanbul. She arrives at the family home in Berlin with her five-year-old son. Her family welcome her with love but it quickly becomes apparent that they cannot accept her rebellion or her refusal to submit to her fate. She has brought shame to the family, love turns to rejection and outright hostility as she is forced to defy them and make a new life as a free western woman.

Our Life (Italy/France)
Elio Germano is utterly compelling as a man whose strongest failing is his desire to do the best for the people he loves the most. Cocky building site foreman Claudio (Germano) is devoted to his wife Elena and their two young sons. When she dies in childbirth, the world comes crashing down around him. Determined to provide for his boys, he embarks on a career as a building contractor where the best of intentions soon lead to impossible dilemmas. An emotional tale worthy of comparison with the films of Ken Loach…

For more information on foreign screenings at the event, visit the festival’s official website by clicking here.

NEWS: Sparrow Screening At Asian Movies Meetup

For the February Asian Movies Meetup, the group are heading to Barrio Central, Poland Street, London.

There will be a free screening of Sparrow, a romantic pick=pocketing caper by one of Hong Kong’s most respected director, Johnnie To.

Two rival pick-pocketing gangs face off on the streets of Hong Kong over a beautiful woman – romance and chivalry’s definitely still alive!

Beautiful Hong Kong scenery as only Johnnie To can capture, a jazzy uplifting soundtrack reminiscent of French New Wave films, and the impeccably cool Simon Yam are the perfect ingredients for our Valentines film.

The film starts at 7.30pm on 14th February 2011.

For more information on this meetup, click here.

NEWS: Faccia A Faccia Release Cancelled

Eureka! have announced they have pulled the scheduled February 2011 release of Faccia A Faccia (for all formats).

“In the last week, some further unforeseen production issues have arisen regarding this particular title, which has led to us making the decision that it would be in everyone’s best interests for the title to be cancelled completely for the foreseeable future, until all these production issues have been resolved,” read a statement from Steve Hills (Business Administration Manager).

“We hope you appreciate our continued commitment to producing product of the highest possible quality, and will accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.”

NEWS: Georges Franju Screenings At The BFI

The BFI, London will be screening two films from French director Georges Franju on 22nd February 2011.

Eyes Without A Face (Les Yeux sans visage)
Desperate to find a cure for his facially disfigured daughter, Dr Génessier carries out experimental skin grafts using the young girls who assistant Louise has lured to his clinic, with horrific results. This delicately handled, sinister masterpiece bears Cocteau’s influence but its weird, brutally poetic tone is Franju’s own.

Le Sang des bêtes
From 1948. An unflinching portrayal of a Parisian slaughterhouse: the finest of Franju’s dark yet lyrical postwar documentaries.

For more information, click here.

NEWS: Birds Eye View Film Festival 2011

The seventh Birds Eye View Film Festival, like the first, will open on International Women's Day. The event, which celebrates a century of women filmmakers, will be staged between 8th and 17th March 2001 at the BFI Southbank, ICA and Southbank Centre in London.

Amongst the films being screened are:

In A Better World Haevnen (Denmark, Director: Susanne Bier)
Claus moves to Denmark following his wife’s death. Anton, recently separated from his wife, commutes from Denmark to an African refugee camp. As each family deals with conflict and grief, their sons form an extraordinary and dangerous friendship with potentially tragic consequences. Ultimately, all must choose between forgiveness and revenge.

Women Of Hamas (Israel-Germany, Director: Suha Arraf)
Gaza’s controversial ruling party Hamas is known for its religious conservatism and hard-line politics but not for the empowered roles available to women. Palestinian-Israeli director Suha Arraf shows women leading public demonstrations and mothers torn between grief and pride as they stand beside their sons videoing their last statements as suicide bombers. With unprecedented access, this is an extraordinary, poignant and complex account of women whose lives are dominated by political struggle.

As well as features, there will be documentaries, shorts, silents, music, masterclasses, premieres, parties, and girls who do gore. “Birds Eye View presents an electric and eclectic ten days of the most inspiring, enchanting and challenging work by women across the world.”

For more information on the event, visit the festival’s official website here.

NEWS: The Barbican To Screen Thrilling Anime

Barbican Film, London are screening Takeshi Koike’s thrilling white-knuckle ride Redline on 22nd February 2011.

This ultra-stylish anime sees daredevil JP entering Roboworld’s Redline, the ultimate racing tournament – despite the military government banning racing on pain of death, and organised crime attempts to fix the result.

Deadly chaos ensues as JP and his customized ‘Transam 20000’ enter the race.

For more information, click here.

NEWS: One-off Screening Shows Democracy-building Process In Afghanistan

Barbican Film, London have a one-off screening for 2009’s Girls On The Air on 9th February 2011.

Focusing on the young Afghani idealists trying to make a difference in a country where the very basic principles of democracy were destroyed, Girls On The Air explores the value of freedom of expression and reveals that Afghanistan is a very different country from the Western media stereotype.

23-year-old Afghan journalist Humaira Habib is founder of Radio Sahar, the first independent radio station born after the fall of the Taliban regime and entirely run by women. In a unique example of a new democracy-building process in Afghanistan, Humaira fights every day for the rights of Afghan women.

For more information, click here.

NEWS: Deleuze And World Cinemas Book Release

Continuum release a paperback version of Deleuze And World Cinemas on 17th February 2011.

Deleuze’s Cinema books continue to cause controversy. Although they offer radical new ways of understanding cinema, his conclusions often seem strikingly Eurocentric. Deleuze And World Cinemas explores what happens when Deleuze’s ideas are brought into contact with the films he did not discuss, those from Europe and the USA (from Georges Méliès to Michael Mann) and a range of world cinemas – including Bollywood blockbusters, Hong Kong action movies, Argentine melodramas and South Korean science fiction movies. These emergent encounters demonstrate the need for the constant adaptation and reinterpretation of Deleuze’s findings if they are to have continued relevance, especially for cinema’s contemporary engagement with the aftermath of the Cold War and the global dominance of neoliberal globalization.

NEWS: One-off Theatrical Screening For Controversial Japanese Police Drama

Ahead of its DVD release on 14th March 2011, Gen Takahashi's controversial epic on corruption in the Japanese police force, Confessions Of A Dog will have a one-off screening at the ICA Cinema in London on 16th February.

Violence, illegal pay-offs, drugs, intimidation – all things that you would relate to the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, but Gen Takahashi’s epic three-hour exposé introduces us to the most dangerous gang on the streets – Japanese law enforcement.

Takeda (Shun Sugata) is an honest police officer, father and husband, but after he’s promoted to detective, he quickly becomes embroiled in dirty backroom dealings, blackmail, and corruption that goes right to the top of the force. Meanwhile, renegade investigator Kusama (Junichi Kawamoto) must decide whether he should shake the foundations of Japanese law enforcement with the information that has come into his possession about the police. What will happen if both these men listen to their consciences?

Too controversial to receive a theatrical release in Japan, Confessions Of A Dog has instead been distributed out of Hong Kong, and has won critical praise from around the globe at festival screenings.

The director will be in attendance for a Q&A session chaired by Japanese film historian Jasper Sharp.

For more information, click here.

NEWS: BFI To Screen 1961’s Léon Morin, Prêtre

The BFI, London will have a special screening of Léon Morin, Prêtre on 28th February 2011.

In a French village during World War II, a communist, atheist widow challenges a charismatic radical priest. Instead of a battle of wills, their relationship develops into an ongoing discussion about the nature of divine grace.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s film, based on Beatrice Beck’s autobiographical novel, brings his characteristic toughness and leanness to this story of a relationship that is both intellectual and emotional, tentatively growing in the malign shadows of the occupation.

For more information, click here.

NEWS: A Third Window To The East

East Winds: A Third Window Film Festival will be staged between 11th and 13th February 2011.

According to the distributor Third Window Films, who are staging the festival in conjunction with the Coventry University East Asian Film Society, the goal of the event “is to raise awareness of Asian cinema to a university crowd who might normally not have much chance to catch Asian cinema on the big screen.”

With a 220-seater cinema at the University of Warwick, the event is promising cheap ticket prices and a variety of films from all over Asia – “a new type of cinema.”

Amongst the films being shown are:

Confessions (Director: Tetsuya Nakashima)
A grief-stricken schoolteacher acts on her suspicions that her students were responsible for the death of her daughter.

Kick The Moon (Director: Kim Sang-jin)
A follow-up to the Korean box-office smash hit Attack The Gas Station. A hilarious tale of romance gone wrong!

Memories Of Matsuko (Director: Tetsuya Nakashima)
After a college student learns that his long-lost aunt has been found dead in a park, he begins piecing together her tragic life.

Cold Fish (Director: Sion Sono)
A tropical fish shop owner is unwittingly roped in as a murder accomplice.

Confessions Of A Dog (Director: Gen Takahashi)
This screening includes a Q&A with the film’s director.
Violence, illegal pay-offs, drugs, intimidation: an epic exposé of the most dangerous gang on the streets - Japanese law enforcement.

The Message (Director: Kuo-fu Chen & Qunshu Gao)
This screening includes a Q&A with director Qunshu Gao.
An Agatha Christie-style drama about WWII Chinese government agents trying to unmask a spy for the resistance.

For more information on the event, visit the Warwick Arts Centre’s website here.

Memories Of Matsuko

NEWS: BFI Delve Into The Archives

Orphee

The BFI, London will screen two French films from 1950 on Thursday, 10th February 2011.

Orphée (Director: Jean Cocteau)
A variation on the classic Greek myth of Orpheus, set in post-war Paris. As the myth unfolds, Cocteau’s visually poetic style draws the audience into realms both real and imagined through his use of special effects and camera trickery.

Un Chant d’amour (Director: Jean Genet)
Writer Genet’s only film, and considered by many a masterpiece of erotic cinema. Set in a male prison, its highly sexualised atmosphere proved hugely influential on modern gay filmmakers.

For more information, head to the BFI’s website here.

NEWS: Michelangelo Antonioni – The Directorspective

The Barbican Theatre, London is presenting a focus on three films by Italian modernist director Michelangelo Antonioni between Saturday, 5th and Sunday, 20th February 2011.

The themes of all three films concern the alienation of man in the modern world, and their stylistic similarities demonstrate a radical style of filmmaking, which challenged conventional forms of narrative cinema in the early 1960s.

L’avventura
Antonioni’s first international success, L’avventura proved popular with audiences around the world. A wealthy Italian woman goes missing on a yachting trip to a deserted Mediterranean island, and while her boyfriend and best friend search for her, they fall in love.

La Notte
Following his breakthrough success in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Marcello Mastroianni plays a sophisticated Milan-based author, and Jeanne Moreau his wife, in this tale of a middle-aged couple whose relationship is suffering a crisis of apathy. La Notte, which follows them through a day and a night in the glamorous post-war city, won the Golden Bear at Berlin.

L’eclisse
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1962, L’eclisse is the most aesthetically daring of Antonioni’s work of the early 1960s. It centres on Vittoria (Monica Vitti), who leaves her lover to begin an affair with Piero (Alain Delon). In this subtle and artistic film, it is not so much the action that counts, as the events and non-events with which it is interspersed.

More information on these films, as well as screening dates/times, can be founded by clicking here.

L'eclisse

NEWS: Japanese Film Season At The ICA

Confessions

In February, the ICA hosts Back To The Future Japanese Cinema Since The Mid-90s, the Japan Foundation’s Touring Film Programme.

The Japan Foundation explores a fertile period in Japanese filmmaking through a series of films made since the mid-90s. The films include those that were central to the Japanese film industry’s artistic and commercial resurgence, and showcases the work of some of the most important Japanese filmmakers of the past 20 years, including established names such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa and new talent like Yuya Ishii.

Many of the films in the season were popular in Japan and international film festivals when originally released but have been relatively unseen in the UK because they did not find distributors. The 2011 line-up offers UK audiences an insight into a pivotal period that changed the landscape of Japanese cinema and provided the industry with a new lease of life.

The season launches at the ICA, the only London venue, before touring to venues in Belfast, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Bristol and Sheffield later in the year.

Amongst the films being shown are:

Cure (Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Cure is the seminal work by leader of the J-Horror genre, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. A spate of murders in Tokyo are linked by a large X slashed across the dead bodies. Detective Takabe (Koji Yakusho) and psychologist Sakuma (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) are called in to track down the serial killer. Kurosawa often looks at how society can shape an individual, which we see here when a young drifter (Masato Hagiwara), suffering from amnesia and possessing strange hypnotic powers, becomes part of the investigation.

The Bird People In China (Director: Takashi Miike)
The Bird People In China is a gentle and understated drama by Takashi Miike. The title refers to an ancient legend that bird people once soared the skies with the aid of large mechanical wings. Workaholic Wada (Masashiro Motoki) heads out of Tokyo to investigate a large deposit of jade accompanied by debt collector Ujiie (Renji Ishibashi) and their guide Shun (Mako). The trio reach the Yun Nan Mountains of provincial China and a village where the titular legend lives on. The film addresses environmentalism, ethics and the value of wealth, and becomes an allegory for man’s loss of innocence and longing to regain it.

Go (Director: Isao Yukisada)
Go tells the story of a Korean teen living in Tokyo and struggling with prejudice, personal identity and first love. Adapted from Kazuki Kaneshiro’s eponymous novel, Go has gained international cult status. The film opens with a raw energy reminiscent of Danny Boyle's Trainspotting with the beleaguered protagonist, Sugihara (Yosuke Kubozuka), receiving a pasting from his own basketball teammates. Sugihara overcomes persecution with help from his father’s boxing lessons until he meets Sakurai (Shibasaki), his first love.

Josee, The Tiger And The Fish (Director: Isshin Inudo)
Josee, The Tiger And The Fish is a romantic drama about a college boy who falls for a girl with cerebral palsy. While at work in his part-time job in a mahjongg parlour, Tsuneo (Satoshi Tsumabuchi) hears talk of a crazy old woman who pushes a huge buggy around the neighbourhood. A chance meeting with the woman introduces him to Josee (Chizuru Ikewaki) who is in the buggy. Josee’s narrow world is opened up as the pair become friends and then lovers. The film was an unexpected indie box-office success in Japan on its release.

Linda, Linda, Linda (Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita)
Linda, Linda, Linda takes an upbeat look at Japanese youth culture, and showcases fresh young talent. Three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei (Yu Kashii), drummer Kyoko (Aki Maeda, Battle Royale) and bassist Nozumi (Shiori Sekine) are forced to find a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son (Doona Bae, Sympathy For Mr Vengeance) despite her limited comprehension of Japanese. The group struggles to learn their set, which includes ‘Linda, Linda, Linda’ by Japanese ‘80s punk-popsters The Blue Hearts, in time for the performance.

One Million Yen Girl (Director: Yuki Tanada)
One Million Yen Girl is a Japanese road movie about a lonely college graduate Suzuko (Yu Aoi). An incident at work leaves her with a conviction and a criminal record. The shame this brings to her and her family results in her leaving town, moving from place to place, taking part-time jobs and saving one million yen in each before moving on. Problems arise when she falls in love with a co-worker Nakajima (Mirai Moriyama), who hears of her one-million target and reputation for moving on.

Sawako Decides (Director: Yuya Ishii)
Sawako Decides is a comic drama about female empowerment. Sawako (Hikari Mitsushima) leaves a humiliating office job in Tokyo ¬ we see her testing wretched new toys on spoilt children – to return to her rural hometown and her ill father. Sawako attempts to help with her father’s failing clam-packing business, but the elderly female workforce resents and despises her. Meanwhile, Sawako’s hopeless boyfriend tracks her down, and she begins to despair of ever making sense of her life. Yuya Ishii, who began as an indie maverick to become a major talent, turns Sawako's big decision into a credible and uplifting narrative twist.

Confessions Of A Dog (Director: Gen Takahashi)
Gen Takahashi introduces the most dangerous men on Japan’s streets in Confessions Of A Dog, a film deemed too controversial to receive a theatrical release in Japan. The worst perpetrators of violence, illegal pay-offs, drugs and intimidation are not the Japanese mafia but the police force. Takeda (Shun Sugata) begins as an honest officer but becomes embroiled in dirty back room dealings and blackmail, while renegade investigator Kusama (Junichi Kawamoto) considers whether he will expose the force’s institutional corruption.

Confessions (Director: Tetsuya Nakashima)
Confessions is Japan’s official entry for 2011’s Oscars. A teacher whose daughter has been murdered by two of her teenage students controls the narrative, standing before her unruly class and laying out her reasons for the revenge which is to follow. Inexorably, the truth behind the tragedy is revealed as the film moves between numerous perspectives, allowing the audience unprecedented access to the hearts and minds of a cross-section of troubled characters. The film is full of anger, sadness and surprises.

Memories Of Matsuko (Director: Tetsuya Nakashima)
A young man clears out the cluttered apartment of his recently deceased aunt Matsuko, and finds, amid the clutter, the truth about how she came to be beaten to death, homeless and alone, on a riverbank. Director Nakashima has created a moving melodrama of a woman's life from the 1950s to 80s, in which tragedy is offset by wonderful flights of fantasy and moments of magic. Miki Nakatani gives a brilliant, award-winning performance as Matsuko from angelic schoolteacher, through her fall into prostitution, to her final tragic years. This visually vibrant film is an Amelie-esque fairytale of a starry-eyed woman searching for her prince, and is punctuated by flamboyant musical set-pieces reminiscent of Bob Fosse.

Kamikaze Girls (Director: Tetsuya Nakashima)
Kamikaze Girls is a stylistically playful look at Japanese idol culture, based on a manga comic by Novala Takemoto. Teenager Momoko escapes from the boredom of her hometown by adopting a Lolita image, although her doll-like clothing belies a gutsy, forthright attitude. It's the latter aspect of her personality that attracts her fashion opposite, surly biker chick Ichigo. Together the pair form an unlikely alliance. With two J-Pop stars in the lead roles, this cult comedy plays narrative tricks and features frenetic animated interludes.

Memories Of Matsuko

NEWS: Learn More About François Truffaut

Ahead of their nationwide theatrical releases of Silken Skin and Day For Night, the British Film Institute, London have an illustrated lecture on the films’ director François Truffaut, which will take place on 1st February 2011.

Entitled The Truffaut Paradox, Ginette Vincendeau will explore the filmmaker’s many paradoxical aspects: a moving force behind the iconoclastic politique des auteurs, Truffaut nevertheless became a popular mainstream director. His cinematic influences ranged from Jean Renoir’s ‘casual’ realism to Hitchcock’s highly constructed plots. Last but not least, the ‘man who loved women’ produced some of the most luminous but also some of the darkest portrayals of women.

In addition, François Truffaut in Focus is a short course on the director which the institute will be running from 8th February until 1st March 2011. Expert scholars from Film Studies at King’s College London will lead thought-provoking and accessible seminars, richly illustrated with extracts and focusing on his oeuvre from a range of critical perspectives. Sessions will include discussion of his cinephilic writing of the 1950s, the films of the New Wave period, the figure of Antoine Doinel, and the treatment of sexual difference during the New Wave and beyond.

For more information, including course dates and costs, head to the BFI’s website here.

NEWS: A City Of Sadness Special Screening

The British Film Institute, London will be screening Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1989 film, A City Of Sadness, on 7th February 2011.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s rich and intricate canvas is political history writ small, and a family saga, with gangster leanings, that encompasses the post-war making of Taiwan: from the Japanese withdrawal in 1945 to the arrival of Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949 (fleeing Communist revolution on the Chinese mainland) and the beginning of forty years of martial law on the island.

The film, which stars Tony Leung, will be introduced by Richard Combs.

For more information on the film, head to the BFI’s website here.

NEWS: BFI Celebrates Chinese New Year With Tian Zhuangzhuang

The Warrior And The Wolf

The British Film Institute (BFI) in London will be joining in with the Chinese New Year celebrations with the following screenings of director Tian Zhuangzhuang’s films between Thursday, 3rd and Saturday, 12th February 2011:

The Blue Kite
Probably the director’s most famous film, this impassioned drama follows the fate of a Beijing family and their acquaintances through the political and social upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s. The film’s child’s-eye perspective on the era wasn’t enough to prevent it being outlawed in China, with Tian himself banned from filmmaking for five years.

The Horse Thief
A largely wordless film set amid the expanses of the Tibetan plateau and influenced by the films of Kurosawa. The visual poetry of The Horse Thief captures not only the breathtaking beauty of the landscape but an elaborate depiction of Tibetan religious ritual. It follows the story of a man who has to reconcile his crime against man and god to fend for his family, and who must face the consequences of his action.

The Warrior And The Wolf
The director’s most recent film takes him into the controversial terrain of international co-production. Asian superstar Maggie Q figures in an erotic tale of the supernatural in which a soldier becomes stranded among a remote tribe and becomes both captor and prey. Filmed in China’s spectacular Xinjiang region, where gorgeous mountain vistas, epic wastelands and weather-ravaged battlegrounds provide apt location for this part epic, part fable in which distinctions between beast and man become blurred.

The Go Master
An intense, stately character study, following the fortunes of Wu Qingyuan, master of the ancient game of Go. A native of China, Wu emerged as a prodigy who, at a young age, moved to Japan and rose to prominence as the top Go player in the world. The tumultuous Sino-Japanese relations that dominated the 20th century form a dramatic backdrop to this poetically rendered true story. This screening features an extended introduction and overview of the career and context of director Tian Zhuangzhuang by Luke Robinson, University of Nottingham.

For more information, including screening days/times, head to the BFI’s website here.

The Go Master