YIDFF awards

[Eija Niskanen]

I saw the winning film. It is a story of a woman, who & her husband
(both worked for a regional newspaper) sufffered through being labeled
a rightist both in the early 1960s and during the Cultural Revolution.
They were at labor camps and the husband died there. The film was only
long takes of the woman telling the story (for 183 mins) with only a
few intershots of a window or similar scene. It was very interesting,
though, as usually Chinese history is treated as the history of
masses, and this film personalized history.

But on your note, it is true that very similar films from China seem
to be winning every time...

Eija

On 10/11/07, Wei Ting Jen <intewig at gmail.com> wrote:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wang Bing winning the Grand Prize again -
> doesn't that mean that Chinese directors have won three straight in a
> row now? Wang Bing in '03 and '07, and the Flood documentary in '05.
>
> And I note that the Asian currents section was won by another Flood
> documentary too - how did other KineJapan members find these films?
> According to my friends in the Chinese doc industry the three
> Gorges/Flood theme has become very overdone and trite, would be
> interested to see if the directors did anything special to merit this
> top prize.
>
> Wei Ting
>
>
> On 10/11/07, Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu> wrote:
> > Perhaps to give Markus a break from his great reports (my wife, at
> > least, reports she is exhausted after the festival), here is a link
> > to the awards announcement:
> >
> > http://www.yidff.jp/2007/2007-e.html#award
> >
> > For Japanese films, Kawase's Tarachime won the Special Prize in the
> > International Competition, while Nomoto Masaru's Back Drop Kurdistan
> > won an Award for Excellence in New Asian Currents and a Citizen's Prize.
> >
> >
> > Aaron Gerow
> > KineJapan owner
> >
> > Assistant Professor
> > Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> > Yale University
> >
> > For list commands, send "information kinejapan" to
> > listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> > Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>