DOCUMENTARY
纪录片
---------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 10:00pm
2009年6月18日 星期四
Thursday 18 Jun, 2009
Documentary:《Blind Mountain》（盲山)
A piognant drama based on the true stories of hundreds of thousands of kidnapped "brides" who are sold off by human traffickers as sex slaves and child bearers in the remote regions of China in 1990s'.
Yound college new graduate Bai Xuemei is searching for a job while she is cheated and sold as a "wife" to a remote village. Raped and beaten, she tried to committe suicide or run away but all failed due to the tight monitering of the apathy and selfish villagers. when help finally comes, it is only the beginning of another tragedy...
---------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 10:00pm
2009年5月28日 6月4日 星期四
Thursday 28 May/4 Jun, 2009
Documentary:《CHINAi》（中国)
Treehouse Documentary night on 28th May will show a film from 1972 made by Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy. It recorded the real existing of China and its people at the time during the Cultural Revolution.
Antonioni had been invited to make the film by the Chinese authorities. The film is nearly four hours long and was made for Italian State Television (Rai). It turned out that the Chinese authorities hated the film. Antonioni was vilified. A propaganda campaign was lunched against him and his film. One billion Chinese were asked to denounce a film they had not seen and a man they had never heard of.
The film is beautiful and honest actually. The Chinese authorities wanted a film which glorified the Revolution, a film full of certainties. Antonioni gave them instead a film of immense affection, care, and attention, but one as a result at odds with the official, the sure, the conventional, and the false. In doing so, the film suggested a politics of art based on openness, on looking, on wondering, on respect for the specific, the particular, the individual. It was a journey in search of what was hidden and interior in China, not its political public face, but its human one.
Such a film was not bearable to those in power at that stage. It will he an immense pleasure to be able to view again these wonderful Antonioni's films.
due to the length of the film, it will be devided in two parts. this week will be the first part and the next Thursday the second.
---------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 10:00pm
2009年5月8日 星期四
Thursday 8 May 2009
Documentary:《Xiang Zi》
TreeHouse made its own documentary last month. Directed by Wu Jie who is now studying Anthropology at Minzu University, and edited by Sophie Cao. This documentary is our first try, and is tend to show the life of a man in his forty, jobless moneyless but have to figure out a poetic way to lead his life amongst his wife and children who are all studying eighter in University or in kindergardern.... You will see him walking along the road to his wife's university to his children's kindergardern to the flea market and to his way to find his own dream....
---------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 10:00pm
2009年4月9日 星期四
Thursday 9 April 2009
Documentary:《24 hour party people》
This witty and compelling portrait of eighties music scene is viewed through the eyes of Tony Wilson: a young Cambridge graduate and TV presenter, who, inspired by the Sex Pistols first Manchester gig, founds the now world-famous Factory Records and the Hacienda night-club. The bands he signs include Joy Division and The Happy Mondays - who became seminal artists of their time - whilest the Hacienda transforms Manchester - a declining industrial city into "Mad-chester" - the place to be. All this is built on Wilson's anarchic business philosophy: no contracts, just passion, music and hedonism - if the bands don't like it they are free to leave. No-one leaves, but with debts and hangovers rocketing, things do get completely out of hand...
Comedian Steve Coogan is brilliantly cast as the wry Wilson, struggling to hold it together in a world of vice and angst-ridden geniuses. The fabulous soundtract includes hits from the Happy Mondays, New Order and Joy Divison.
Free to watch at Treehouse Cafe. Make a reservation by SMS 13810446267 or Email to hongbaosha@yahoo.com.cn
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 10:00pm
2009年2月26日 3月5日 星期四
Thursday 26 Feb & 5 Mar, 2009
《马大夫的诊所》（Doctor Ma's Contry Clinic 1&2）
Briefing：
In Doctor Ma's Clinic, poet-turned-filmmaker Cong Feng casted his intimate gaze on the pain and poise of a rural life so marginal and estranged to China's ongoing economic boom that it becomes a powerful critique to the official tongue of national progress. Gifted with a keenness to human suffering, Cong is able to record the plain conversations of people in a town plagued by poverty and malaise, in striking verité.
The film opens on a rotten street rammed with human and black carbon residue. Here, far away from the largely bureaucratic and hierarchical world of medical establishment, Doctor Ma, a self-taught country physician maintained his professional autonomy among a load of local patients. Over the years, land degradation, pollution, agricultural droughts, and depopulation had afflicted the area. The young and healthy outmigrated in search of better lives, most ended up as cheap labors. The old and the sick remained and kept up the decrepit way of life. Public conversation revolved around daily distress. Embedded himself into the corner of the clinic, Cong was able to achieve an invisibility and bring to lights raw emotions of these conversations within a dignified distance.
Unlike the more refined - but inevitably more manipulative styles of documentaries made with theater distribution or TV broadcast in mind, Cong's filming approach is plain, modest, and unobtrusive. The tone, rhythm, and manner of his subjects are faithfully retained in lengthy colloquial scenes. There was a hidden drive to preserve the spoken words, perhaps out a poet's acuity with the intrinsic value of the crude tongue. The conversations are deeply revealing. The subjects are captured in natural lights and within careful compositional focus, the chiaroscuro in many individual shots reminds of realistic paintings. Here, Cong's experience as a photographer affixed an artistic layer to the rich textual dimension of his lingual records. His appreciation of the local expression and his tender visual approach made the viewing of this debut piece an unforgettable experience.
这是一部小树一直想放却没敢放的片子， 因为太长了，3个半小时，且通篇没有激烈的矛盾冲突或者感官刺激。讲的是，在甘肃一个偏远山沟里的小诊所，附近山凹里的农民，田种完了抽空到这里看病，聚在一起唠嗑，说谁死了，谁家媳妇跑了，谁打工残废了，谁拿不到工钱了，谁被人骗到“水大”的好地方种地，地也种了房也买了，却被赶了回来，一分钱也没拿到，谁在煤窑里一干十几年得了矽肺⋯⋯
苦，苦得死脱。苦到里面出现过的每个人物，没有一个长得哪怕有点秀丽或好看的。黑皱，头发蓬乱脏污，衣服灰暗垮塌，女人们翠紫粉的包头巾鲜艳土气⋯⋯不是没有情节的，情节和事件都蕴藏在漫无边际的谈话里，而谈话是本片唯一依仗的形式，从头到尾都是谈话。而谈话所展现的故事起伏，又被大量缓慢的、忠实纪录农民常态的生活化镜头和空镜再度冲淡。不采用任何拍摄技巧，长镜头，很多的长镜头，偶尔特写。
就仿佛是，导演那么迫切地想把那里人们的生活，毫不走样，毫不夸张也毫不缩减地，照搬到我们面前。
然而这部电影让我们尴尬的地方就在于，哪怕那里的人们日复一日年复一年地过着如此的生活，而我们，观众，只看三个半小时，就已经到了视觉忍受的极限。
本片刚刚在柏林电影节播映过，导演本人说反响不错。于是小树趁热打铁宣传一下
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:15pm - 9:50pm
2009年2月12日 星期四
Thursday 12 Feb 2009
《最后的猎人》（Le Dernier Trappeur ）
Briefing：
Norman Winther est l’un des derniers trappeurs à entretenir avec les majestueuses Montagnes Rocheuses une relation d’échange fondée sur une profonde connaissance du milieu et un grand respect des équilibres naturels.
Avec sa femme, Nebaska, une indienne Nahanni, et ses fidèles chiens de traîneau, Norman nous emmène à la découverte d’un autre monde rythmé par les saisons. Randonnées dans la froidure de l’hiver, descentes de rivières tumultueuses, attaques de grizzly et de loups sont le quotidien du trappeur.
Norman cultive sa vie comme un art de vivre dans ce monde où les blizzards soufflent parfois plus fort que les mots. Ce film est un hymne aux pays d’en haut et à la magnificence de ces vastes espaces sauvages.
早年定义的「猎人」，比方说美国西部英雄大卫克罗、作家杰克伦敦等人，如今已不复存在。然而，现在还剩下一个最后的坚守猎人精神者，依旧生活在大自然中，坚守古老的猎人哲学。这名最后的猎人名叫诺曼，50岁，与伴侣涅芭斯卡生活在一起。制片团队跟随诺曼、涅芭斯卡和他们的狗，在远北地区待了一整年，带领观众跟随一个真实人物的脚步，深入了解他每天所面临的挑战与事件，还有以他的狗儿们为主角的精彩冒险。《最后的猎人》完全融入一个独特绝美的环境，是一趟开创之旅，颂赞一种与动物及大自然完美结合的生活方式。
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 9:30pm
2009年1月15日 星期四
Thursday 15 Jan 2009
《远山》（Rural Mountain）
Briefing：A documentary from 1995, focusing on coal mining-workers' life in Qilian Mountain of Qinghai province. Worker's dark and dirty faces with coal dust on are just stunning, but they don't realise the hardship of their life. They continue their dangerous life as it is...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 9:30pm
2009年1月1日 星期四
Thursday 1 Jan 2009
FILM《季风中的马》（Season of The Horse）
Briefing: Mongolia's traditional ways of life are under fire thanks to a combination of economics, shortsighted thinking from Chinese bureaucrats and global warming. One nomadic herder's troubles demonstrate the problems and should raise awareness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 9:30pm
2008年12月18日 星期四
Thursday 18 Dec 2008
Two pieces from Zhang Zhong
1, <The 11th year as a high school student>
<高十一>
Chinese High School is normally 3 years; students will take the Official University Exam in their third year. For those who fail to pass the University Exam however, they tend to stay another year in High School wishing to have a better result in the next year’s Exam…Let’s call these students Repeater.
Repeaters are certainly not the best students, and they are not willing to enter some not-so-well universities, then their stories can go like repeating and repeating until they finally pass the Exam for entering their dreaming University…
Lao Yang is one of these specials who had been doing 8 times of the college exams for his dream Hunan Fine Art College. This winter, as usual, he moved in the suburban area of Hunan, being close to his dream, he is going to experience again the struggle for entering the college. Whether he will be success or not, the 29-year-old man has already no other way to go...
2, <Yue Ming‘s Summer Vacation >
<曰明的暑假 >
It's been the 10th year for Yue Ming to come to this rubbish field to collect things salabe to earn his tuition fee. Being 16, second grade in a middle school, doing good at his study, Yue Ming is happy with his summer time, especially when he is playing vedio games with his brother... Life can be so different from what we experienced.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 9:35pm
2008年12月4日 星期四
Thursday 4 DEC 2008
Pilgrimage to the Realm of Buddha
The Story
In the novel The Journey to the West, he was a weak, confused monk, devoted to Buddhism but too feeble to protect himself. Only thanks to the efforts of his disciples – a few half-god, half-monster beings – could he reach the Realm of Buddha and accomplish his mission.
Yet historic records told quite a different story. The monk was resolute and heroic. Determined to “learn from Buddha and continue his legacy”, he ventured, even if he had to stow away in the first place, to pilgrimage to India, where he studied hard to earn acclaim from the court and the clergy. Back in China, he dedicated himself to writing and translating the Buddhist Scriptures he had brought. His legacy, if just for the tangible part, includes 12 volumes of travel notes and 1335 volumes of translated books.
His name is Hsüan-tsang.
In the seventh century A.D., when the Chinese Tang-Dynasty, later known as the superpower in that age, was just proclaimed, a Buddhist monk named Hsüan-tsang sneaked out the capital Chang’an and began his journey along the Silk Road.
This was a trade route between the East and the West, at that time well-known for eerie setting and violence.
Nature placed snow-mountains and deserts along the Silk Road to intimidate adventurers.
If caravans just paid off Turkish cavalries for “protection”, they would be soon cruelly disillusioned by bandit attacks.
Hsüan-tsang, all alone, simply set off on the Silk Road. He wanted to go to India – the country of Buddha.
In the following two years, Hsüan-tsang covered 12,000 kilometers and traversed 108 countries in the region. 1,300 years ago, this monk just charted the Silk Road on foot.
He later wrote a book - Records of the Western Countries.
Originally meant to be a geographic guide, the book is now a must read for many archaeologists.
The book, valued as much as Roman d’Alexander and The Travels of Marco Polo, bears accounts of the erstwhile glory of the Silk Road.
The book was even assumed to be a report of military espionage, but history shows that it rather spread political reconciliation and spiritual comfort.
Some believe that the book is of great value for deciphering the ancient history of India.
Some even maintain that Hsüan-tsang was already a global citizen before the term “globalization” was created.
Some say that Hsüan-tsang was the only spark of light in the darkness of the Subcontinent’s history of that era.
However, even today much of the pilgrimage still remains mystery.
Cinematic Rendering
This is the first documentary film made entirely by means of computer graphics.
The FLASH rendering relates the plots from The Journey to the West, a Chinese fiction created in the 16th century. The 3-D animations tell the historic legend of Hsüan-tsang. Two storylines – fictive and historic – unfold in parallel to illustrate the adventure of the pilgrimage and the spirit of the hero.
For the animations, physical models were made, photographed and scanned into computers. The color, texture and imagery of these models were based on the ceramic artifacts known as Tang San Cai – the three-colored figures from the Chinese Tang-Dynasty. They turned out to be much more compelling than human actors.
These ceramic actors do not “act” the history. They stage snapshots of certain moments for the audience to fill in plots out of their memory or imagination. The film is meant to have a conversation with the audience.
A dozen of 2-D settings were hand-made based on classical paintings from the Tang-Dyansty, Tibetan Thang-ka and ancient Indian murals. Camera manipulations then created 3-D landscape, battlefields, monasteries etc.
The whole film was fashioned under a transcendental perspective to create seamless orchestration of the fictive, the historic, the realistic and the spiritual.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 9:35pm
2008年11月20日 星期四
Thursday 20 NOV 2008
<好死不如赖活着>
<To Live Is Better Than To Die>
Once upon a time in China, there was a shortcut to get a pleasant amount of money whitin a few minuts i.e. by selling their blood. People in short of cash for various reasons were really into this. Some cheap money as 50 or 60 RMB would make a blood seller cry, as in remote regions of China people need no more than 2RMB to survive. Driven by the not efficient but easy way of collectting money, a pyramid-shaped network was set up nation-widly; Some government-authorized parties such as clinic stations and hospitles and medicine committees were even involved into this illeagle industry, becoming blood agents. It seems that everyone in this business was happy, till disasters came...
From end of 1990s onwards, numeriously villages and towns involved in blood-selling business were found hounted by AIDs. In a village namely Wenlou, more than 60% of the population were infected... men and women were infected and their children were inherited, to die sooner or later than their family members was the only issue left for them to concern.
TO LIVE IS BETTER THAN TO DIE is a documentary which records a year in the life of a family in the village of Wenlou in Henan province, chronicling their bleak day-to-day existence and struggle to cope under dire circumstances.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:00pm - 9:00pm
2008年11月6日 星期四
Thursday 6 NOV 2008
<我是中国人>
< I am Chinese>
沈少民的作品可能是最令人动容的。这部名为“我是中国人”的纪录片，拍摄了中俄边境的一个小村庄。村子里的人血统混杂，他们内心认同中国，认为自己是中国人。但是，在广袤的中国边境上，他们是一群处于边缘的被遗忘者。这些高鼻深目的村民，不会说俄语。一个长镜头颇有深义，一群俄罗斯族的村民在看电视，节目内容是关于中国传统相面。他们津津乐道的时候可能没有想到，作为汉族智慧的相术，其实并不适用于高加索人种的他们。这群文化意义上飘荡无根的村民所面临的境遇，是否会让在超级都市的文化拼盘中张皇失措的人们感受到一些切肤之痛呢？
They have high noses, blue eyes, and light-colored hair, but they speak authentic dialect of North East China. Of all the time, they were drinking, and dreaming of a Chinese woman.
Marrying a Chinese woman will have their offsprings get rid of the face features such as high nose or blue eyes...
They have been living in this village on the China-Russian border, Hongjiang village, for ages since the Russion October Revolution in 1917. During the WW1 and 2, Hongjiang village became a sanctuary for many Russians as well...
The above people I was talking about are Russion immigrants or refugees from through last century. They lived and died in China and already mindly have their root in this nation. In that dirty and poor village, they sweared what the grumpy chinese old men swear; they sing what the grumpy chinese old men sing; they are sometimes nasty just like chinese nasty men...but so far they still have not been authorized by Chinese Government. They are not officially Chinese, either Russian...
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, some of the Hongjiang Russians and their offspring were suspected of spying, and their village became known as the “Village of Spies”. Wanting to rid themselves of this stigma, the elders advocated marriage only to pure Chinese to mask their Russian appearance. Intermarriages became common and offspring often marry their close relatives, with resulting genetic complications and a confused culture.
Their only aim is to change their racial features to become pure Chinese, become accepted within the Chinese community, and end the suffering …
I Am Chinese is a documentary made by Shen Shaomin, a Chinese artist. His shooting and screening is shocking and sometimes poignant. The scenario of villagers killing the cattles and pigs and geese are so bloody and specific...
联系方式 Contact Info：
Mobile: 13810446267
Email: hongbaosha@yahoo.com.cn