"Taiwan Stories" Video: Q&A with Shen Ko-shang, Director of "Two Juliets"

Shen Ko-shang, the director of "Two Juliets," the second segment of the anthology film Juliets, introduced his film and did a Q&A after the screening this past Saturday. Video below.

Sabu at Japan Society: "Monday" and "Non-Stop" Q&A

Sabu made his first trip to New York to attend the first three days of his Japan Society retrospective "Run, Salaryman, Run," which continues until February 5. Below are video of his introductions and Q&A sessions for the screenings of Monday and Non-Stop (aka Dangan Runner).





And here's Yasu Inoue's great trailer for the retrospective:

Wes Anderson, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" -- Q&A at MOMA, 12/7/09

Wes Anderson spoke recently at the Museum of Modern Art following a screening of his latest film Fantastic Mr. Fox, his wonderful, beautifully crafted stop-motion animated version of Roald Dahl's classic book, the first film by Anderson that I've loved since Rushmore. Animation was a logical step for him, since his live-action films are already rather cartoonish. Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of my favorite films of the year -- watch this space for the rest of them.

Yim Soon-rye, "Keeping the Vision Alive" -- Q&A at the Korea Society, 4/22/09

Over her 15-year career as a director, writer and producer, Yim Soon-rye has emerged as one of Korea’s best filmmakers. Her sensitively written, solidly character-driven features – Three Friends (1996), Waikiki Brothers (2001), and Forever the Moment (2008) – impressed critics and viewers with their emphasis on those at the margins of society struggling for dignity, respect and recognition. Yim was much more a critical favorite than a popular success for most of her career, but all that changed last year with Forever the Moment, which told the true story of the Korean women’s handball team that competed in the 2004 Athens Olympics. I reviewed this film when it played at last year’s New York Korean Film Festival; you can read what I wrote here. Forever the Moment won best picture at the Blue Dragon Film Awards and was a major hit last summer, surprising many observers who felt that a sports film, and a women’s sports film at that, had little chance at box office success. Such a turn of events may have seemed unimaginable back in the 1980’s, when Yim was an aspiring filmmaker, studying English literature in college instead of film both because of being discouraged from this pursuit as a woman and also because the field of film studies was at that time very new and undeveloped. Also, apart from such directors as Im Kwon-taek and Lee Chang-ho, the quality of much of the commercial cinema was quite wanting. Women directors and other film workers were an extreme rarity, and the circumstances for those few in the business were less than favorable. Still, Yim persevered, eventually going to Paris for the formal film studies unavailable to her in Korea. Her first major credit was as a producer on Yeo Kyun-dong’s 1994 film Out to the World, a major film of the 1990’s that anticipated the renaissance of Korean cinema later in the decade. That same year, she gained attention for her short film “Promenade in the Rain.” Yim’s first two features Three Friends and Waikiki Brothers went against the grain of what would be expected from a female filmmaker, since both of these films featured male protagonists, demonstrating that at least in the early stages of her career that she was less interested in exploring gender issues than in more universal human experiences.

However, Yim’s more recent features have tackled women’s experiences head on. Yim made a recent appearance at the Korea Society on April 22, 2009 to screen two films in which she does this. One was her short film “The ‘Weight’ of Her,” her contribution to the omnibus film If You Were Me, the first in a series of anthologies commissioned by the Human Rights Commission of Korea. Here is what I wrote on this short film when it was first shown at the 2004 New York Korean Film Festival:

In keeping with the project's aim, it is significant to note that the contributors include two of the very few working female directors in Korea. One of them, Yim Soon-rye, in the film's opener, “The 'Weight' of Her”, takes on the issue of female body image and the premium society places on a particular standard of female beauty. Yim's film is a satirical portrait of a girls' school, where the teacher's lessons reinforce the importance of maintaining a slim figure and keeping up their grooming. The teachers conduct frequent weigh-ins, resulting in a funny exchange in which a male teacher with a prominent potbelly, when confronted with his own weight problem, answers, “It doesn't matter how men look.” The punchline is that the school is actually a finishing school for room salon hostesses. The director herself appears in the film's coda, where she is subjected to a male passerby's comment about the “fat lady” directing the film.

The other film was an hour-long documentary released in 2001, Keeping the Vision Alive, a lively and informative history of women directors in Korea and their struggles to carve out a place in both a male-dominated film industry and general society. Yim’s documentary contains many valuable anecdotes from the many interviewees on screen. Most fascinating is the story of Park Nam-ok, the very first Korean female director (Widow, 1955), whose story of the making of her film sounds very much like the experiences of present-day indie filmmakers; she borrowed from relatives, and along with her crew performed multiple duties on set, from catering to cleaning, all the while carrying her baby around with her. Not only directors, but producers, cinematographers, lighting designers, editors, gaffers, and other crew members are given equal time here. The film touches on all periods of Korean cinema up to and including more recent filmmakers such as Byun Young-joo, who created one of the greatest documentary works ever made, her trilogy on the “comfort women” who were forced to sexually service Japanese soldiers during World War II: The Murmuring (1995), Habitual Sadness (1997), and My Own Breathing (1999). Byun remarks in the film that today’s lighter and more user-friendly film equipment is especially a boon to women filmmakers, making it much easier for them to be technically self-sufficient. Technical barriers to women in the film industry are remarked on by several filmmakers; many men would not allow women to learn about how cameras worked or even to touch them, treating such knowledge as closely guarded secrets.

The circumstances for women in the Korean film industry were rapidly changing even in 2001, as Yim documents, and today it’s almost a different world, since in recent years female film directors have very much increased in number, to the point that now Korea has more working women directors than any other country in Asia. These directors have contributed some very impressive films in recent years. A partial list: Jeong Jae-eun (Take Care of My Cat, The Aggressives); Byun Young-joo (Ardor, Flying Boys), Lee Jeong-hyang (Art Museum by the Zoo, The Way Home); Park Chan-ok (Jealousy is My Middle Name); Gina Kim (Gina Kim’s Video Diary, Invisible Light, Never Forever); Lee Su-yeon (The Uninvited); Pang Eun-jin (Princess Aurora); Kim Hee-jung (The Wonder Years); Kim Mee-jung (Shadows in the Palace); Kim So-young (Women’s History Trilogy); Lee Kyeong-mi (Crush and Blush) – when I met Ms. Yim after the screening and discussion, we bonded over our mutual admiration of this last film, which I hope to review here soon.

Yim’s latest film Fly, Penguin recently had its world premiere at the Jeonju International Film Festival, which ends today. Below are clips from the discussion and Q&A session following the screening at the Korea Society.

Introduction/on making "The 'Weight' of Her":

In the next two clips, Yim discusses the first Korean women filmmakers, her own experiences in the industry, the circumstances for women filmmakers today, and her reasons for making the documentary:

Yim's response to my question about her focus on male characters in Waikiki Brothers, and the genesis of the film Forever the Moment:

And in this last clip, Yim expresses her admiration for director Kim Ki-young's portrayal of female characters, and praises Lee Kyeong-mi's film Crush and Blush:

Film Comment Selects Q&A: Celina Murga and Paul Schrader, 3/3/09

Below are clips from the Q&A following the screening of Celina Murga's A Week Alone during Film Comment Selects. Moderating was Film Comment editor Gavin Smith.







And here is Paul Schrader introducing Adam Resurrected:

Yoji Yamada -- "Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp": Q&A at Japan Society, 10/17/08

Yoji Yamada has become of late one of my favorite directors. This prolific Japanese filmmaker creates films that are old-fashioned in the very best sense. He is a humanist in every sense of the word: the relationships and struggles of common people are solidly at the center of his works, and all of his stylistic choices are in the service of this focus. Yamada's recent "samurai trilogy," The Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, and Love and Honor, based on the novels of Shuhei Fujisawa, proved that his talent remains undimmed after 72 films (and counting). Yamada, however, will forever be best known as the director of the 48-film series featuring as its main character Tora-san, the itinerant traveling salesman played by Kiyoshi Atsumi. Yamada collaborated with Atsumi on all except the third and fourth films in this series, which ended with Atsumi's death in 1996. All of these films followed the same template: Tora-san returns to his home after a long period away, and stumbles into adventures, always meaning well yet managing to make a mess of things. He invariably falls in love with a woman along the way, but ultimately a lasting relationship is not to be. Yamada assembled an impressive stock company with these films, playing family and friends of Tora-san, most notably the exquisitely lovely Chieko Baisho, as Tora-san's sister Sakura, and brief appearances by Chishu Ryu, Ozu's frequent lead actor, as a priest. These actors also frequently acted in Yamada's non-Tora-san films. All of these films exhibit the qualities that makes Yamada's films so special: a deep love of humanity, a generosity of spirit, and an engaging mixture of humor and sentiment that makes these films always a pleasure to watch.


On October 17, 2008, the Japan Society in New York launched their monthly film series, "Best of Tora-san," running through May 2009, and consisting of eight episodes selected by Yamada himself. The first screening was of the very first film in the series, Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp (1969). Yamada gave a live Q&A after the screening via digital video feed from Tokyo's Keio University. Below are clips of that conversation.


Yamada's opening remarks:

On the transition from a television series to a film series:

On how the character of Tora-san relates to certain Japanese cultural concepts (Part 1):

(Part 2):

On the influence of rakugo (Japanese storytelling art) on the conception of Tora-san's character, and the origin of his name:

Yamada's answer to my question about the casting of Chishu Ryu:

On the connection of the Tora-san films to the social and political realities of the time (Part 1):

(Part 2):

On the status of Tora-san as a national icon:

And finally, Yamada joins the Japan Society audience for a virtual photo-op:

Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis -- "There Will Be Blood" -- Post-Screening Q&A, 12/11/07

Paul Thomas Anderson's masterful new film There Will Be Blood opens on December 26, and has already been topping numerous year-end critics' lists. Based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, the film is simultaneously epic and intimate, and a terrifying vision of the greed and violence that are the primal underpinnings of American history. Besides the prodigious command of sound and image present in nearly every frame -- from the bravura opening sequence that is as great an example of pure cinema as I've seen in recent memory, to the final astonishing sequence that fulfills the promise of the film's title -- the film makes frequent and canny use of perhaps its greatest asset, the volcanic performance of Daniel Day-Lewis, brilliantly essaying a role that most nearly recalls his only slightly more evil character in Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

Much like Walt Whitman's famous description of himself in "Song of Myself," There Will Be Blood is indeed large, and contains multitudes. I saw the film two weeks ago, and am still struggling to wrap my head around it. So until I can put together a proper review, I've posted below some video highlights of Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis discussing the film. Appearing with them are moderator David Schwartz of the Museum of the Moving Image, which hosted the screening, and actor Kevin O'Connor.

In this clip, Anderson discusses the influence of John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre on his film, and Day-Lewis explains how clothing can reveal character:

In this next clip, Day-Lewis discusses the relationship between his character Daniel Plainview and his adopted son:

In this last clip, Anderson and Day-Lewis talk about their working relationship while making the film:

Julian Schnabel: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" -- NYFF Press Conference, 9/17/07

Below is a video clip and quotes from the New York Film Festival press conference for Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which opened this past Friday. Moderating was Richard Pena from the Film Scociety of Lincoln Center, who was also on this year's selection committee.

In this clip, Schnabel discusses his strategy for directing Mathieu Amalric, who potrays Jean-Dominique Bauby, the subject of the film and the author of the memoir on which the film is based. Well, sort of. You'll see what I mean when you watch:

As you can see, Schnabel loves to talk about himself as much as his film, and while this may come across as self-aggrandizing and offputting, and perhaps justifiably so, this is entirely in keeping with all three of his features, which are artist portraits that are as much about himself as their subjects.

Below are quotes from Schnabel on the film, plucked from the sea of his rambling personal anecdotes and digressions. "Did that answer your question?" was a constant refrain as Schnabel got continually sidetracked in his responses.

"Fred Hughes, who used to work for Andy Warhol, had MS, and when Andy died, he got progressively worse, and finally ended up in his house on Lexington Avenue in a bed in the middle of his living room, like Miss Havisham. And I used to go and read to him -- he was locked in, he was inside his own body --and I used to read to him, and Darren McCormick, who was his nurse, gave me the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as a gift. Well, some years later, my father, who was married to my mother for sixty years, and never had been sick in his life, he had prostate cancer for awhile, but they figured he was old enough that it wouldn’t grow so quickly, so they didn’t do anything about it, but when my mom died at eighty-nine and a half, he immediately got sick. And he lived another two years, but I usually took him to Mexico for Christmas with the kids, and I couldn’t take him that year, so I called Darren McCormick and asked him if he would watch my dad and write down whatever my father said. So he stayed with my father, but the day he arrived, which was December of 2003, the script came from Kathy Kennedy, so I was very familiar with the book. When my father died, he was terrified of death, and I felt like I had failed him, because I couldn’t help him through that. And I really made this movie, I think, as a self-help device. I’ve always had a problem with death, and I think that Jean-Dominique Bauby actually helped me out a lot. I couldn’t help my dad, but I thought it could help somebody else. So I really made it for my father."

"I talked to Bernard, and he said, 'You know, Jean-Do said to me, I have been reborn as someone else.' And I think at that moment, I mean, he really felt like, okay, he was a good writer, he had a good job, he was very competent, but there was something ordinary about who he was. And he had the chance to be a great artist. And I think he might have, if he had the hubris and the chutzpah to do it, he might have said, okay, take away my body and I will be conscious, and I will look into my interior life. And I think that in a sense, when he was healthy, he was quite superficial and very normal, and I think once this happened to him, he really – you know, I know this rinpoche that can actually meditate in his dreams, you know, I can’t do that, but it’s interesting if you – Necessity is the mother of invention, I mean, all of a sudden this guy was out at this vantage point that was very, very unique, and he was able to speak back from that place, and I think he reported back some things that were able to help all of us."

Sidney Lumet: "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" -- NYFF Press Conference, 9/19/07

Below is a video clip and quotes from the New York Film Festival press conference for Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Moderating was Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum, who was also on the festival's selection committee.


In this clip, Lumet discusses casting Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke as the brothers:

And in the quote below, Lumet explains why he has completely sworn off shooting on film:

"When the studios and the exhibitors settle on who’s going to pay for the electronic projectors, I think that’s the end of film. I don’t think there is one director who has ever liked film, except as a tactile thing. It’s wonderful when you’re in the cutting room, and it’s running through the Moviola, and you’re rewinding it, and it feels great on your fingers. But it’s a pain in the ass! It’s cumbersome, it’s rigid in its rules, and you’re constantly at the mercy of not just the cameraman, you’re at the mercy of the lab. John Schlesinger once told me that on Midnight Cowboy, he went through sixteen answer prints before he got one that satisfied him. Now, I don’t know if you know what that means. The answer print can only be made with the original negative. You know what you’re risking there, every time that’s run to make a print? And then when you’ve got a good print, then you can make your inter-positive and your inter-negative, but not until you’ve done that.

"There’s another problem with film. On a picture like Dog Day Afternoon, I was going crazy, because the first obligation of that movie is, hey folks, this really happened. If you don’t know that it really happened, then it’s just going to be an exploitative, silly movie that you won’t believe. Too outrageous. Now, one of the ways I can let you know that it really happened is through the sense that you get from the photography. And all we could do was try to defeat film. For example, as you know, when you shoot the sky on film, the blue of the sky is never the same as the blue that your eye sees. You go out to Central Park, you shoot the grass, that green is not the same color on film as it is to your eye. Now look, I’m not a fool, there’s been a hundred years of glorious movie photography. But naturalistic photography does not exist, in anyone’s picture, to get what the eye sees. With high-def, of course you do, there’s a reason for it. You may remember from your high school class that there are only three forms of energy, correct? Electromagnetic, which is what light is; chemical, which is what film is; and thermal, which is what heat is. That’s it, that’s all that exists in the universe that we know of. When you’re using film, you are going through two of those three forms. You start with electromagnetic, which is what light is. It records on a chemical base, and then when it’s projected, you’re going back to electromagnetic. Now in each one of those stages, you’re losing so much, I cannot tell you. And it’s for that reason that film requires so much more lighting than high-def. It’s for that reason that the color is different, because you have changed the energy form. It went from light to a chemical, and that chemical will never be the same as what the light was. If you want another reason, I’ll keep going. (laughs) It’s for that reason that to me high-def is it, I love it. That’s why I did the television series [100 Centre Street], I wanted to find out about that Sony camera that I first saw."