The State of the World

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul (Thai: อภิชาติพงศ์ วีระเศรษฐกุล; born July 16, 1970) is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer. His feature films include Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the prestigious 2010 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or prize; Tropical Malady, which won a jury prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; Blissfully Yours, which won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard program at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival; and Syndromes and a Century, which premiered at the 63rd Venice Film Festival and was the first Thai film to be entered in competition there.

Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Weerasethakul has directed several features and dozens of short films. Themes reflected in his films (frequently discussed in interviews) include dreams, nature, sexuality (including his own homosexuality), and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia, and his films… read more

Wang Bing

Wang Bing (Chinese: 王兵; pinyin: Wáng Bìng) (born 1967 in Shaanxi) is a Chinese director, often referred to as one of the foremost figures in documentary film-making. Wang is the founder of his own production company, Wang Bing Studios, which produces most of his films. Wang’s 9 hour epic documentary of industrial China, Tie Xi Qu was considered a major success. Tie Xi Qu went on to win the Grand Prix at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film and was shown for the first time in Spain at the Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival. Wang’s film, Fengming, a Chinese Memoir, premiered at both Cannes and Toronto in 2007. More recently Crude Oil premiered at the 2008 Rotterdam Film Festival. —Wikipedia

Pedro Costa

Pedro Costa (born 1959) is a Portuguese film director. He is acclaimed for using his ascetic style to depict the marginalised people in desperate living situations. Many of his films are set in a district of Lisbon inhabited by the socially disadvantaged and shot in a natural and low-key way that makes them resemble documentaries. While studying history at University of Lisbon, Costa switched to film courses at School of Theatre and Cinema (Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema). After working as an assistant director to several directors such as Jorge Silva Melo and João Botelho, he made a first feature film O Sangue (The Blood) in 1989. He collected the France Culture Award (Foreign Cineaste of the Year) at 2002 Cannes International Film Festival for directing the film No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda’s Room). Juventude em Marcha (Youth on the March, known as “Colossal Youth” in Anglophone countries, and “En avant, jeunesse” – “Onward, Youth” – in Francophone countries) was selected for… read more

Chantal Akerman

Dubbed by the Village Voice as “arguably the most important European director of her generation,” Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman is known for making innovative films that have often earned comparison to those of Jean-Luc Godard or Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Although she rejects the label of “feminist filmmaker,” Akerman has become a guiding light in making films about the real issues faced by women, employing an experimental, deeply personal approach to her subjects.

A disciple of Godard (who first inspired the then-15-year-old Akerman with his Pierre le fou), Akerman attended Brussels’ INSAS film school and the Universite Internationale du Paris. She demonstrated her devotion to Godard with her first amateur short subject, 1968’s Saute Ma Ville (Blow up My Town), which three years after its completion was entered in the Oberhausen Festival. Working on the fringes of show business in New York in the early ’70s, Akerman became an enthusiastic participant in the avant garde film… read more

Dubbed by the Village Voice as “arguably the most important European director of her generation,” Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman is known for making innovative films that have often earned comparison to those of Jean-Luc Godard or Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Although she rejects the label of “feminist filmmaker,” Akerman has become a guiding light in making films about the real issues faced by women, employing an experimental, deeply personal approach to her subjects.

A disciple of Godard (who first inspired the then-15-year-old Akerman with his Pierre le fou), Akerman attended Brussels’ INSAS film school and the Universite Internationale du Paris. She demonstrated her devotion to Godard with her first amateur short subject, 1968’s Saute Ma Ville (Blow up My Town), which three years after its completion was entered in the Oberhausen Festival. Working on the fringes of show business in New York in the early ’70s, Akerman became an enthusiastic participant in the avant garde film movement, putting her theories to good use in such European movie projects as Je Tu Il Elle (1974), Tout Une Nuit (1982), and Seven Women Seven Sins (1986).

In 1975, Akerman made her best-known and one of her most influential films, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a film that was barely shown in the U.S., but which generated considerable response in Europe. Filmed largely in real time, it was an over three-hour-long chronicle of mundane episodes from the daily life of a 40-year old woman who snaps when faced with intense emotion and commits a horrifying crime. This focus on activities and occurrences over traditional narrative and continuity is a typical feature of Akerman’s films (the 1972 short Hotel Monterey consists entirely of shots of people walking in and out of a rundown New York hotel). She is also known for utilizing experimental compositions of light and architectural design, with detached, non sequitur soundtracks to underscore the “action.” In 1996, Akerman made perhaps her most mainstream film to date, Un Divan a New York. A romantic comedy about an American psychoanalyst and a Parisian dancer who agree to switch apartments, it starred William Hurt and Juliette Binoche. Three years later, Akerman ventured to Jasper, Texas, where she made Sud, a documentary about the horrendous killing of James Byrd, Jr., an African-American man who was savagely murdered by three white men. The film was screened at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:79189~T1)

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