|
Love for Share
Friday, September 14, 7:00 PM
In
Person:
Nia Dinata
Sadanand Dhume
|
Nia
Dinata's film looks at polygamy in Indonesia - the largest Muslim
nation in the world - through the connected stories of three women
from varied social classes and backgrounds, all of whom are
married to men with multiple wives. No stranger to controversy
(her previous feature Arisan! featured the first same-sex kiss in
Indonesian film history), Dinata tells these women's stories with
great passion and sympathy. (Indonesia, 2006, 119 min., Bahasa
Indonesia with English subtitles.)
* Promotional partner:
USINDO (United States - Indonesia Society)
AWARDS:
Best Feature Film
Hawaii International Film Festivals 2006
Silver Award
11th Lyon Asian Film Festival, France 2006
Best Movie
MTV Indonesia Movie Awards 2006
Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film
Jakarta Film Festival 2006
Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Art Director, Best Actress
Bandung Film
 Watch trailer
|
|
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
Sunday, September 16, 2:00 PM
The New York Times:
"Mr. Tsai's films are held together internally, and connected one to another, by an elusive, insistent logic that is easier to recognize than to describe. But once you do start to recognize it, each new movie offers passage to an exotic place that feels, uncannily, like home." |
The films of Taiwan-based
director Tsai Ming-liang (subject of a 2004 Freer
retrospective) are cinematic tone poems immediately
recognizable for their impeccable mise-en-scene, low-key,
absurdist humor, and atmosphere of longing and desire. In
his latest, Tsai films for the first time in his native
Malaysia, where a Chinese man, beaten and left for dead in
the streets of Kuala Lumpur, is nursed back to health by a
migrant worker from Bangladesh. Intended for mature
audiences. (Taiwan, 2006, 115 min., Taiwanese, Malay,
Mandarin and Bengali with English subtitles)
Watch trailer
|
|
Hello Yasothorn
Friday, September 21, 7:00 PM
In
Person: Anchalee Chaiworaporn, film
critic.
|
Filmed in a
retina-scorching palette of garish colors, and featuring a
cast clad in retro-60's outfits and hairdos, Petchthai
Wongkamlao's zany musical is a prime example of Thailand's
bounty of over-the-top gut busting comedies. The
multi-talented Wongkamlao stars (under his stage name Mom
Jokmok) as a country bumpkin who travels to Bangkok to
retrieve the woman of his dreams, who was sent there by a
meddling aunt who wants to keep the couple apart.
(Thailand, 2005, 96 min., Thai with English
subtitles)
Watch trailer
|
|
Syndromes and a Century
Sunday, September 23, 2:00 PM
In Person: Anchalee Chaiworaporn, film
critic
|
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's beguiling
yet good-natured films - among them Blissfully Yours and
Tropical Malady - have gained him an enthusiastic
following on the international film festival circuit. His
latest feature combines two love stories, separated by
decades, whose similar details resonate across the years
and flow with the logic of dreams. The film's gently
seductive atmosphere and repeated symbolic motifs suggest
a voyage into the transcendental mysteries of life and
love. (Thailand, 2006, 105 min., Thai with English
subtitles)
AWARDS:
Best Film Award
9th Deauville Asian Film Festival, France, 2007
Best Editor Award
Asian Film Award, Hong Kong, 2007
Special Mention
Fribourg Int. Film Festival, Switzerland, 2007
Honourable Mention
Adelaide Film Festival, Australia, 2007
Watch trailer
|
|
Love Conquers All
Friday, October 12, 7:00 PM
|
An award-winner the Pusan, Hong Kong
and Rotterdam film festivals, Tan Chui-mui's
ironically-titled fiction feature debut is at the
forefront of a burgeoning independent film movement in
Malaysia. Making creative use of digital video, Tan's film
is about a young woman who moves from the country to the
outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, where she falls under the spell
of a charismatic but possibly dangerous suitor. (Malaysia,
2006, 90 min., video, Cantonese, Mandarin and Malay with
English subtitles)
AWARDS:
Grand Prize
City of Lisbon
Golden Digital Award
31st Hong Kong International Film Festival
Oikocredit Award
21st Fribourg International Film Festival
VPRO Tiger Award
36th International Film Festival Rotterdam
2006
New Currents Award
11th Pusan International Film Festival
FIPRECSI Award
11th Pusan International Film Festival
Watch trailer
|
|
Before We Fall in Love Again
Sunday, October 14, 2:00 PM
|
Like his frequent collaborator Tan
Chui-mui, James Lee uses the digital video medium to tell
intimate stories about relationships. After a man's wife
disappears, he meets a man with whom she'd been having an
affair. The two become unlikely accomplices in trying to
solve the enigma of why she left them. With its sly humor
and natural performances, Lee's film is mystery wrapped in
a tale of lost love. (Malaysia, 2006, 99 min., b&w and
color, video, Mandarin with English
subtitles)
AWARDS:
BEST ASEAN FEATURE AWARD
Bangkok International Film Festival, July 2007
Watch trailer
|
|
Village People Radio Show
Friday, October 26, 7:00 PM
|
With a painter's eye for nature and a
pleasantly laid-back sensibility, talented documentary
filmmaker Amir Muhammad creates a portrait of aging
guerilla fighters from Malaysia's outlawed Communist party
living in exile in the Thai jungle. Their reminiscences of
decades of fighting, and their fascinating views on
reconciling party doctrine with their Muslim faith, are
punctuated with excerpts from a Malay radio adaptation of
Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale - a metaphor for the party's
historical relationship to the Malaysian government.
(Malaysia, 2007, 72 min., video, Malay and Thai with
English subtitles)
Watch trailer
|
|
Singapore Dreaming
Sunday, October 28, 2:00 PM
In Person:
Woo Yen Yen and
Colin Goh, co-directors
|
By turns boisterously funny and gently
lyrical, this delightful film by husband-and-wife team Woo
Yen Yen and Colin Goh follows a family trying to make ends
meet in Singapore's topsy-turvy economy. The father plays
the lottery obsessively, his son can't find a job despite
his degree from an American university, and his son-in-law
is reduced to tricking his friends into buying insurance
policies. All this changes when dad finally does win big -
but not necessarily for the best. (Singapore, 2006, 105
min., Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and English with
English subtitles)
AWARDS:
Winner Montblanc New Screenwriters Award
54th San Sebastian International Film Festival
Watch trailer
|
