Truth
be told I did not see a great deal of new film in 2016 but here are my year's
highlights:
The
Ornithologist (dir.
Joao Pedro Rodrigues)
Easily
the best thing I saw all year: Joao Pedro Rodrigues’ extraordinary mindfuck of
a film reconceptualised Saint Anthony of Lisbon with stunningly bold visuals as
we venture into the heart of northern Portugal’s darkness to the eventual
light. This potent cocktail of the erotic, the religious and the mystical is
about as close to inducing cinematic nirvana as you’ll likely ever see. A
masterpiece.
HyperNormalisation (dir. Adam Curtis)
Every
new documentary by Adam Curtis is something to celebrate and this was no
exception: a wild and terrifying ride through the current political and
technological nightmare unfolding from San Fran to Syria, via Trump’s Taj
Mahal, social media algorithms, Islamic extremism and Gaddafi.
An
impressive tour around the shadowy world of corporatism and the
military-industrial complex takes aim at everyone from Saudi royalty to Obama
as the motivators for an Orwellian state of endless war is revealed. There are
the occasional moments when you feel like the onslaught of historical incidents
covered will fail to coalesce around a central thesis but Grimonprez somehow
manages to tie it all up together as we revisit Iran-Contra to the current mess
plaguing the Middle-East. A decent double-bill with HyperNormalisation.
The
Age of Shadows (dir.
Kim Jee-woon)
Three
of the major Korean films to hit Aussie shores (The Age of Shadows, The
Wailing, The Handmaiden) dealt in some way with Korean-Japanese relations
but Kim’s Age was a cracking mix of spy-thriller and
historical action; the train scene was worth the price of admission alone.
Elle (dir. Paul Verhoeven)
Inevitably
the high praise lavished upon Verhoeven’s unsettling rape-drama means that some
of the cinephile haut monde would deem it “overrated” (did I hear someone say
‘Pedro Costa would have done a better job!’?) but whatever, this was a definite
highlight and one of the few films that got me on its opening weekend to an
actual cinema. Real life is chaos and Elle captured the
messiness and unease in which people deal with tragedy and trauma not in accordance
to Hollywood screenwriting codes, but to our basic instincts formed in
childhood.
 |
| Wake Subic |
A
towering achievement by Gianvito, this companion piece to Vapor Trail
Clark excavates the US involvement in the Philippines, specifically
around toxic contamination from military bases and the devastating effects on
the local population. Frequently heartbreaking, Gianvito brilliantly oscillates
between the Philippines’ present tragedy and the bloody past of US military
adventurism, with illuminating clarity that draws a thematic through-line in
political history from Taft to Obama.
Somehow
the Brisbane Asia-Pacific Film Festival overlooked the film but
found space in an “Asia-Pacific” film festival for Manchester By the
Sea and Toni Erdmann, both films to the best of my
knowledge that don’t exactly deal with an Asian country, its history or people
quite like Wake Subic does. Never mind, as long as there’s some
caveat about open borders or the like, at least we get to see some films already
with Australian distributors over the fearless work of a master like Gianvito.
What a time to be a cinephile in Brisbane!
A
Sunny Day (dir.
Ying Liang),
The Hedonists (dir. Jia Zhangke)
Ying’s
short is a haunting examination of Hong Kong, family and the Umbrella Movement;
Jia’s a bittersweet portrait of coalminers struggling for meaningful employment
in 21st century regional
China; both were beautifully executed snapshots of an uncertain future for the
people of the region’s behemoth superpower.
Mrs.
K (dir.
Ho Yuhang)
A
genre-blending action-thriller with echoes of Leone and Lau Kar-leung,
Malaysia’s great auteur Ho Yuhang once again teams up with the legendary Kara
Hui for a rollicking revenge tale with some great cameos by Fruit Chan and Kirk
Wong.
Ghosts
in the Darkness exhibition
at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
The
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum ended the year with an exhibition showcasing
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s photography and short films, as visitors were
invited to venture into a dark jungle of fireworks, spaceships and animals to
experience the magic of the Thai artist at his creative best.
Film
Alert 101
A
special mention should go to this blog which has been an ongoing labour of love
for Geoff but one which has blossomed into a must-read resource for Aussie
cinephiles eager to share memories or engage in lively debate. The threads on Elle and
the NFSA were great!
Finally,
now that we are imminently to enter the Trump era, what better way to mark the
period than with a shameless piece of terrific, frankly wonderful,
self-promotion? Although it was misunderstood (bigly) as an ode to
misogyny and anti-Japanese sentiment, a film I helped produce, Colonel
Panics, was a highlight of my year and I was very happy to see it
completed and unleashed on others. It will be released in Japan in 2017 but I
want to go on the record and say it was not in fact “anti-Japanese” but rather
a rebuttal to the creeping militant nationalism and regressive misogyny within
some parts of Japanese society. Many of the women we showed Colonel
Panics to understood and appreciated the insights into a breed of
Japanese male otaku that present a terrifying threat, but alas, it was
white-knighting males who had to decry it as anti-woman and virtue-signal empty
platitudes about “objectification”.
Editor’s
Note: At the risk of being accused of mutual admiration, let me note I met Ben Cho a decade or more ago when the Brisbane Film Festival was in
its prime and people gathered there for its specialist selection films from
East Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Iran. We’ve been friends since and I have always been impressed
with his insightful critical analysis. I’ve encouraged him to write
more! I’m also glad that his film-making ambitions are slowly being realized. His
second feature Colonel Panics, (watch the International Trailer on Youtube) made in Japan in 2015/16 and now ready for
festival and other screenings is a shock to the system and I can only hope that
it will get the screenings and critical attention I believe it deserves.
Onward.
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