Wang Bing comes out and I have to leave for Japan? Damn you, situational irony!
The Wang Bing film is part of a very long documentary in 3 parts. Rust should be taken for voting on its own (not the same as with The Human Condition). It’s being made available for viewing, but anyone who’s seen all the parts should consider Rust on its own merits, as it was released separately, and is apparently fine as a self-contained unit.
John Abraham was born in India btw.
And I see someone exploiting the 阮玲玉 love. ;)
well i really don’t know who will win, i’ve only seen the top pairing films, long wanted to see Actress..the bottom pairing i’m least familiar with and they may be crucial, who knows?
p.s.so Apursansar has kept with Ray in all 7 matches!
Hmm I hope links come out before tomorrow, so that I can squeeze in one match before I jet off to Japan.
i think some may already be on youtube, i’ve not checked.
Great selections from Myra. I have seen the first two films (out of which people can find Little Toys on my yt-channel), and think that Maggie Cheung did a great job as Ruan Lingyu. I´m really surprised to see “West on the Tracks” included which I haven´t seen yet, but I recall Carlo mentioning it at times. I was expecting my favorite Chinese film “In the Heat of the Sun” to be selected, but want to urge people to at least watch it after the world cup is over.
There are online links for all three Indian films:
Days and Nights in the Forest has been uploaded on youtube.
The Seventh Horse of the Sun can be rented online and watched directly for US $ 2,49. I had also been planning to upload a version on youtube, but so far I haven´t been able to find a solution for the subtitles frame rate. But the jaman video quality is better than a youtube video could be, so I would recommend to rent it.
Donkey in a Brahmin Village can be watched online, but I recommend to dowload it gratis for better image quality, and reproduce it with Windows Media Player.
Looks like it is going to be a fitting finale to a fantatsic series.
Myra, I will make sure I catch up on all your entries, I have seen none.
Marc, again, these are some outstanding selections for India.
Having seen the first 2 Indian entries, I must admit that I could not have done better as India’s manager.
>long wanted to see Actress.
Watch out; if possible, see the uncut version.
I expected to see ‘Jalsaghar’ and maybe ‘A River called Titash’… But I trust your judgement Apursansar, should be a good game. Actually, did you use ‘Apur Sansar’ in the tourny?
i’m glad Marc didn’t use the full Apu trilogy in the WC and only Pather Panchali which was the major reason i got to watch Ray for the first time.
i’m really expecting Bing Wang and Stanley Kwan as well!!!
It would have been interesting to select the film my username is based on, but since the “Apu Trilogy” is already Ray´s most well-known I saw no need to display more than one film. The ones I chose instead are some of his other masterpieces that deserve more attention in my opinion.
Yeah, good idea. Everyone should watch Jalsaghar (The Music Room) as well though. :)
Well Days and Nights in the Forest is my favourite Ray film that was not already picked, and Little Toys is my favourite classic Chinese oldie not yet picked.
You´re right, Jon. “The Music Room” as well as “Kanchenjungha” are two great films that I unfortunately had to leave out, it´s just that Satyajit Ray made too many masterpieces. According to Rüdiger Tomczak, his last film “The Stranger” is also among his very best, it´s one of those I still need to see.
This is going to be a slugfest.
The Music Room has a become a particular favourite (of all Ray’s films) among French critics, who were quite slow to take to him i think- Truffaut was very dismissive of Pather Panchali when it won at Cannes, and in the US he hardly gets a look in in critics’ or directors’ top 10s, which reminds me of a thread i did on his awful neglect in the US, including at Criterion.
I was just planning to watch Actress/Centre Stage today. And am I glad to see it included in the final match.
And I do look forward to watching Little Toys, Days and Nights in the Forest and Donkey in a Brahmin Village.
And why aren’t most of the films selected for the last AWC matches still not included in The Auteurs database? :( Ehem, ehem.
At least “Donkey in a Brahmin Village” has meanwhile been added. I´m looking forward to the remaining ones.
Hello everyone! Looking forward to each of these Indian selections.
A China link for you: Actress (the director’s cut!!!!!)
The “The” is one of many variations on this title- it’s also known as Centre(er) Stage, or, in the original Cantonese, simply called by the name of its subject, Ruan Lingyu (pronounced Yuen Lin-yuk in Cantonese, thus the added confusion of its IMDb title not matching her IMDb name). Ruan is an icon- the Chinese woman, in her time, both empowered beyond her origins (glamorous star as well as part of a leftist filmmaking group that envisioned women leading the charge for a less cruelly unequal society) and a victim of sexual double standards in her own relationships. She starred in Goddess, Myra’s earlier selection, and committed suicide one year later, at age 24.
As a holiday treat you will now be offered to see two other Ruan-related films, one earlier and one nearly 60 years after her death and the death of the Shanghai film industry. In Little Toys, uploaded months ago by Marc, she costars with Li Lili (of Sun Yu’s year-later masterpiece Daybreak ) in a stunning montage which feels extremely relevant today in its cry of anger at the human cost of economic failure, though its tragedy is specifically one suffered by the Chinese people in the 1930s. And in Actress, Maggie Cheung plays Ruan in an unusually experimental biopic- the “director’s cut” has been uploaded, and you should try to see that version, as Dan warned. Other versions bowdlerized some of Kwan’s mix of documentary and fiction styles. Cheung fittingly became the first Chinese actress to win an award at a European festival- Cannes, I think?- for her performance as a star who was never so honored and remains too-little-known outside China. In both films being selections, you have a chance to see that Cheung is anything but slavishly imitative of the original.
Oh yeah, Cheung & Tony Leung share the screen in the Kwan film too- but Leung Ka-fai, not Chiu-wai of Wong Kar-wai/Lust, Caution_/_A City of Sadness fame. Leung plays Cai Chusheng, another brilliant progressive director (and hardcore feminist, judging by New Women, Ruan’s final film, which I’ve also upped with subs on the same channel as Actress for anyone curious) whose works Team China unfortunately never had a chance to feature. Bu Wancang was another neglected one- hope someday English subs will appear for Spring Silkworms.
Myra will be uploading Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (which I tend to mis-remember as Tie Shu Qi, in Blue K’s honor, though Shu’s no Ruan) later today- actually she has started uploading part one of the film, Rust, which is all she’s asking us to watch in the next few days. Myra is <unusual Canadian word for "administering"> an exam right now and can’t be with you. If there are misgivings, she wishes people to know that if they find it tough to do four hours of the film, the original plan was only for the first two-hour section of Rust. This was vetoed by the organizers. But in fact the four hours of Rust, while it stands alone fine and has its own IMDb entry, doesn’t represent the full film either- the ideal would be nine hours, but she certainly doesn’t require that. The Human Condition was three separate films, which were joined for later DVD release and then for AWC. Tie Xi Qu is one film, which has been separated by festival programmers and by her for this event, since she wants to introduce the director to more people than those extreme few who have time to experience a 9-hour work along with everything else going on now. But if you can only watch two hours this is alright also. Rust in itself is a documentary in several parts, and the first two hours of the film- set in a smelting plant in the dead of winter- are like one episode. The subject then moves to other factories and the time to the next season.
Yes, it’s hardly ideal to watch one or two sections of a film, but this one is truly the best representative of an entire movement of Chinese films which are notoriously hard to see outside the best museums. Hopefully everyone will see the rest whenever there’s time.
ugh. post
Scorpiorising: i’ve again messaged auteurs to ask for the remaining films (as on the world cup films list) to be added to database, but anyone else wanting to chase that up is welcome.
Tie Xi Qu is coming… Still a ways to go, but the rest will be up hopefully soon! Sorry for the delay in the links. I was nervous so early this morning, as I was invigilating an exam! (Probably more so than the students writing the exam, but for completely different reasons…)
I haven’t seen two of your choices apursansar, but I’m very fond of Days and Nights in the Forest myself.
Thanks for the contributions, Paul. I´m also glad that I will finally get the chance to see Ruan´s last film “New Women”. Of course I wasn´t able to vote against the inclusion of only the first part of “Rust” since Myra´s selection was unknown to me, but definitely agree with Kenji that it wouldn´t have made sense to split this part which has appearantly been released as a single film. I´m looking forward to watch the whole “West of the Tracks”, but might also limit myself to the first part during the voting period since it´s really a massive work.
And I´m glad to see that Myra is back. Hopefully the exam went well despite having to make the world cup decisions. I also hope that the online rentable version of “The Seventh Horse of the Sun” will deter nobody from watching the film, I think the match-up between that film and “Actress” is bound to be the most fascinating one.
I know we’re on a rather tight timeline to finish before Christmas, and I just wanted in a way to apologize for my selections, since they are rather lengthy. :( The Kwan film is indeed the extended director’s version which will do the film more justice than the earlier edited version I watched. Unfortunately, the Wang Bing film is 4 hours… People may find it to be a difficult film to watch… But he’s now considered to be one of China’s leading documentary filmmakers, and even Part 1: Rust by itself is quite something else for me.
There are 6 days till the final ends, that should be fine for seeing most or all of the films, Myra.
I picked Human Condition in circumstances of 5 other famous films in the match v Italy, and sadly that may have been awkward for people to fit in along with other discoveries, but it was still managed by a reasonable number. It had been seen by a decent number already and people could pick which ones to watch among 24 films. I wouldn’t have picked it otherwise. We made a rule allowing up to 10 hours.
Oh okay, thanks kenji. :) So voting takes place December 22 to 23? Is that the set date?
I just finished the epic Wang Bing upload, so now that’s available to view in its entirety. I guess with this, it makes all 6 of the films available for viewing now. Everyone should refer to Paul’s profile for links, like for the last two rounds.
… So happy viewing everyone! I need to go hibernate for a bit… I’m exhausted. :(
Very nice, Myra and Apursansar.
Well, I’ve seen all 3 Chinese selections, and I have to say that Myra has almost certainly offered the strongest roster of any of Team China’s matches. I was wondering when Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage was going to show up! By the way, my advice was solicited concerning West of the Tracks, and I, too, felt that it would be a little awkward and perhaps set an iffy precedent. But having seen the film, I do definitely see why Myra felt that the edit would have been a reasonable alternative to having people watch the 4 hours, because there is a kind of break in the film.
I’ve seen only the superb Ray film in Team India’s roster, and I’m looking forward to the other two selections as Apursansar has time and time again wowed us with unknown masterpieces. And I think Apursansar has done an awesome job of bringing light to Ray’s body of work and just how incredibly diverse, prolific, and sublime it really is. If the films of a Western director of Ray’s stature had the pitiful distribution that Ray’s films from suffer from, cinephiles would be crying bloody murder. His most well-known films are the three films of the Apu Trilogy and Music Room, and Apursansar chose only one of these four films, and highlighted lesser known but just as superb films.
Good luck, you two. I get to sit back, relax, enjoy superb films, and watch you two be on edge for the holidays! Hehehe, schadenfreude is so sweet! I kid, I kid…
Kenji
Here they are folks, the ones you’ve all been waiting for
CHINA V INDIA
Little Toys (Sun Yu) v Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970)
The Actress (Stanley Kwan) v The Seventh Horse of the Sun (Shyam Benegal, 1993)
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks- Part 1: Rust (Wang Bing) v Donkey in a Brahmin Village (John Abraham, 1978)