Animated Feature Contenders: China's "White Snake"

by Tim

The original Chinese title for the new animated mythological epic White Snake is just a hair different from the one that distributor GKIDS is using to promote the film. The literal translation is White Snake: Origin, which tells us quite a lot, in fact. This isn't just any old fantasy adventure, you see: it is, in fact, an original prequel to one of the most important of all traditional Chinese folk tales, "Legend of the White Snake." This matters for a couple of reasons: first, because it explains something that a lot of American critics have been complaining about, which is the film's frequently inscrutable narrative progression. Which is, to be fair, a little bit inscrutable, but much less so if you keep in mind that, for the target audience, many of the things that seem most inexplicable have already been explained simply by the film announcing up front that it takes place in a certain kind of generic universe where certain rules apply. Which sucks if you're not part of that target audience, but we can at least try to meet the film where it lives.

Second, even if you (like me) don't know much or anything about "Legend of the White Snake," you probably at least know one or two folk tales from your own background culture, and wherever you come from in the world, folklore has a very distinct cadence...

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Doc Corner: 'One Child Nation' is an Oscar Frontrunner

By Glenn Dunks

When introducing One Child Nation at a recent screening at the Sydney Film Festival, co-director Zhang Lynn noted that all of the Chinese crew were of the generation born to the nation’s one child policy. For both Lynn and her directing partner Nanfu Wang, this searing documentary is clearly more than just an examination of their homeland’s shameful history, but a personal exorcism of sorts. A cleansing for themselves and their subjects, many of whom Wang and Zhang force to confront the demons that have haunted them for decades.

With just two films to her credit about China, Wang has become an important name in the documenting of contemporary Chinese society...

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The Man Is Chan

By Salim Garami

What's good?

I just wanted to tie up our celebration of Jackie Chan's quintessential Police Story and Police Story 2 finding their way into the esteemed catalog of the Criterion Collection by recognizing the other thing he's best known for besides kicking fools in the face: pre-emptively auditioning for the Jackass crew by partaking in some of the most dangerous stunts recorded on film. Safety is for mere mortals as far as Chan is concerned and he is probably convinced that if any characters are ever killed on-screen in a movie, then the actor themself must also be killed for versimilitude.

Not really, but much like his fight choreography, the sort of discipline and ambition Chan displays on screen in order to wow audiences around the world is the kind that pays off a lifetime of painful falls and crashes. He mirrors his own character's resilience to obstacles and defies fear and death with his stuntwork.

Let's get that listing over with so we can watch some more Jackie Chan.

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Doc Corner: China Comes Into Focus in Documentaries

by Glenn Dunks

Two weeks ago (I had to take a week off to help put on an award show!) when discussing Zhang Zanbo’s The Road, I mentioned the rise of documentaries not just by Chinese filmmakers, but about China in general. A fascinating convergence in the rise of China as a global and controversial super-power with the rise of documentary filmmaking as a populist artform. It seems appropriate then to look at a recent trio of documentaries that focus on China and that each tackle a compelling and important subject: women’s sexual rights, animal poaching, and the destruction of the Earth...

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Doc Corner: From the Chiffon Jungle to the Great Outdoors at DOC NYC

Last week we looked at a group of films among the mammoth collection of titles playing Doc NYC. The festival continues and so we're looking at a few more films, taking a sort of cinematic road trip from the big city, down the highway to the Rocky Mountains and then back again.

The “chiffon jungle” is what the subject of Otis Mass’ debut film, The Incomparable Rose Hartman, a fashion and pop culture photographer whose images are as iconic as they are striking, labels her home of New York City. A place where fashion is as integral to daily life as breath is to life. Feel to free disagree, but as the first person to understand the appeal of the decadent backstage of celebrity life and master it into something truly artful, Hartman soon built a reputation that put her subjects at ease and made her none synonymous with New York’s cultural scene in a more extravagant way than the likes of Bill Cunningham. Whether she was photographing the models backstage and on the runways of  Donna Karen, Caroline Herrera or Halston, or capturing the more candid, celebratory side of celebrities like Jerry Hall, Andy Warhol, Grace Jones, Liza Minnelli and Cher at Studio 54, her work is justifiably as iconic as it is extraordinary...

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