Blue Valentine

I let Blue Valentine sit on my PVR for over a year before I finally watched it last night. Maybe I intuited how painful the experience would be and procrastinated from it. There is nothing new to the film's plot, which details the deterioration of a love forged on youthful desire and an accidental pregnancy. With two brilliant performances at its heart, the film stands out with its close-up (both literally and metaphorically) of two people falling in and out of love. Exceptionally skillful is the way it alternates two temporalities - the beginning and the end of the relationship - throughout the narrative. Scenes of raw sensuality and genuine sweetness of a youthful romance intercut with that of fatigue, aggression, and the stale desire of a faltering middle-aged marriage. Watching these two "bookends" of a relationship shift into each other, it suddenly occurred to me that the birth and death of love have always existed as parts of each other. At the very height of desire there is an edge, the cresting of something that will inevitably decline. And in the coldest moment of love's death, flashes of warmth linger and refuse to be entirely obliterated. If we look hard enough, we see that love's ecstasy and its terror seep imperceptibly into one another. Blue Valentine is one of those very rare films that dares us to experience this interstice, of love at its truest - and its most unbearable.

McDull

Although not as brilliant as the previous McDull films, McDull: Pork of Music still manages to tickle your funny bone while twisting a knife in your heart at the same time. An homage to "music teachers everywhere," it celebrates the power of music in kids' life with a sweetness that never gets overly sentimental. After all, the sweetness is always amply cut with the series' signature wild, free-wheeling, and frequently scatological humour. The running gag in the film is that whenever beautiful music is heard, people think they want to crap. The doctor's expert advice: you don't really want to crap, you're just feeling moved - it's the same feeling of something churning intensely in your gut! A lot of the animation is two parts grotesque, one part cute, which also protects the sweet moments from becoming syrupy. There are some amazing and lovingly drawn sequences featuring "old" Hong Kong, which makes one sympatheize with the ex-architecture student in the film who quits because he hates all the new buildings and wishes they would just all vanish. And like all McDull endings, this one is resilient but brutally frank. Things are what they are, it's just life. What's left might just be that wanting-to-crap feeling that still churns once in a while when we hear a familiar song. The screening was in a big theatre but it was not very well attended, and many non-Asian (I would venture, non-Cantonese) audiences did not stay until the end. Like much else in Hong Kong, its cinema does not sell so well anymore. How can it, when the juggernaut that is China now dominates the world's attention. My generation of Hong Kongers has seen so many changes and upheavals, yet not of the revolutionary kind. Just dull, aching changes that chip away at all collective memories until not much is left except the feelings, and those no outsiders care too much about or understand. When I hear forty-something Anglophone Montrealers talk about their youth in pre-Quiet Revolution Montreal, I often feel a very similar sense of loss. It's not "correct" to yearn for a colonial past, for a society seen as unjust or oppressed. But everyone needs memories, and there is no pain quite like living under a dictum that one must forget. At least we are lucky because, for now, we still have the cinema (although perhaps not for long). And as I listened to McDull and his friends belt out "My Braised Pork" to the tune of Pachelbel's Canon in D, I totally experienced that do-I-want-to-crap-or-am-I-feeling-moved feeling that the film portrays with such glee and abandon.

Griot

Opening night at VIFF. I had a long day at work and was tired, so wasn't even sure if I was up for the festivities. Luckily, my first film was one that delighted the senses while not making too much demand on the brain. Made by trumpeter Volker Goetze and featuring his friend and musical partner Ablaye Cissoko, "Griot" is a low-key, laconically filmed documentary that brings to life the historical role and contemporary fate of the Mande griot: oral historian, musician, negotiator, mediator, master of ceremony and so much more all rolled in one. When I was studying postcolonial West African literature and film in grad school, I frequently encountered the griot as an enigmatic and fascinating figure in the works of Ousmane Sembène, Camara Laye, Yambo Ouologuem and their contemporaries. The gentle and soft-spoken Cissoko does not play up this mythical role, either in the film or in person. He simply and movingly shows us his respect for a tradition under threat and his quiet passion for the music. The kora, in his hand, is indeed a "magical instrument" and the highlight of the screening undoubtedly was the short but sensational live performance he and Goetze gave at the end.

Loose Sounds

I made this piece for a creativity workshop and found that I loved the painstaking task of editing: piecing images and sounds together, condensing half a lifetime's feelings into a few crisp minutes. It's comforting, like shepherding found fragments of the past into a safer future where they need not become so lost.

Evening Over The IJ

 

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Crossroads, Paris: Missed Opportunities

What should one do in an academic conference when no one on the podim wants to or is able communicate and everyone in the audience whispers discontent amongst themselves but nonetheless pretends that knowledge is being transmitted and worthwhile conversations are happening? I found myself in this dilemma on day one of the Crossroads conference. It's one of my favourite conferences because it always takes place in an interesting city (often truly a "crossroads" city like Istanbul and Hong Kong) and cultural studies remains one of the most interdisciplinary, socially engaged, and genuinely creative academic fields. Yet, lecture after lecture, from gifted intellectuals many of whom are giants in the field, very little efforts were made to engage the audience, let alone inspire, move, or just surprise them! In some cases, there was not even a transmission of ideas or information, either because of an incomprehensible accent, poor room acoustics, or just an inability to speak at a speed or in a manner attuned to the ear, not the eye. In many cases, it's sadly a combination of all three. Having given lectures to large groups, I understand how much effort it takes to truly try to communicate. It's often tempting to just read out a piece of writing that's there already, heading for publication, admittedly the "true" destination of the work. Yet, in a conference, one is given an opportunity to connect with people who might never read your work, whose only potential contact with one's ideas is just this moment, in the auditorium. When gifted with such a precious opportunity, an invitation from an audience to reach out, to enthrall, to persuade ... why do most academics, especially those who are most accomplished, choose to ignore?

 

 

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July 1 On The Thalys

The scenery whizzes by outside but I can only see fragments from my aisle seat on the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris. My Canadian friends affectionately wish me a Happy Canada Day. I wonder how the July 1 protests have gone in Hong Kong. My best friend is about to undergo major surgery in New York. There is someone I miss in Vancouver. And pieces of my heart are left in Amsterdam.

Everyone on the train is engrossed in their mobile devices, fingers touching screen, eyes glued to flipping images. They seem connected to the world. I just feel fragmented. What lies at the journey's end? At least I am staying curious.

 

 

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Houseboats on Westerdoksdijk, A'dam

I love the domestic details on these houseboats: firewood, kids' bikes, hanging laundry. This is true Amsterdam living!

 

The Life and Death of Marina Abramović @ Carré, A'dam

Having only heard and read about, but not experienced, any of Abramović's famous performance works, I went to see the Robert Wilson production of her "autobiography" without too much preconceived expectations of what I should be seeing. I have to admit, experientially, it felt much more like attending conventional theatre than being in the middle of a performance piece. Still, as I took my seat, the sight of three black dogs milling about on stage amidst three "coffins" with the artist's face on them was bizarre enough that it left an immediate impact. The piece did not focus too much on the artist's works (only two black-and-white footage which at different times hovered above the stage, one of a skeleton pressing upon a young woman and the other of a needle moving close, too close, to an open eye, vaguely recalled the bodily violence of A's early works), but much more on her actual life: family history, childhood, love affairs. In fact, the most poignant moment seems to be about her bidding goodbye to her work, her presence becoming an apotheosis, from martyr to symbol to saint. Her presence throughout the piece seems strangely distant, almost immaterial. Is the artist now absent?

What left the most impact on me, not surprisingly, were Antony Hegarty's beatific voice soaring into the ether and Willem Defoe's indefatigable presence as the narrator who sometimes got into the middle of the action, whether as a dancing Serbian officer or A's one time lover and collaborator Ulay. Still, I was greedy for more. The production was truly a feast for the eyes and ears, but the rest of my body both dreaded and wanted more, but it was mostly left alone.

 

EYE of Amsterdam

I visited the new EYE film museum in Amsterdam for the first time on Tuesday. Although I miss the old film museum in the middle of Vondel Park, I have to admit this new venue is an impressive piece of architecture. Located right across the Ij from the Central Station, it is remaking the formerly quiet North into a veritable culture centre. Apparently, the famed Paradiso concert hall will also have an extension next to the museum in the future. It certainly looks like those cute little free ferries that whisk passgengers across the Ij will soon be a hub for music and movie fans' postmortem discussions!