November 2000 - Nr. 11
Film Festival Notes
by Lucille de Saint-Andre
The range of more than 20 German productions and co-productions this year at the 25th Toronto International Festival was astonishing -- covering realms from individual to collective consciousness in many parts of the globe, including Germany, Europe, Asia and Africa. Of particular interest was Volker Schlöndorff’s film "The Legends of Rita" ("Die Stille nach dem Schuss"), which with perspicacity probes the politics of the country’s two halves on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the German Reunification.
Two lovely co-productions with Asian backgrounds were "Shadow Magic" and The Turandot Project."
Shadow Magic, shown in Contemporary Cinema, a USA/China/Taiwan co-production, a film by director Ann Hu, (Dream and Memory), explores the world of early cinema in a China deeply suspicious of anything technical and foreign. Imperial Peking in 1902, in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion and the European occupation of the city, is still deeply suspicious of anything foreign, and also technical.
This true story is based on the experiences of Liu Zhong Lun, a young photographer who comes in conflict with his boss in the conservative Feng Tai Photo Shop and Lord Tan, the famous opera star. When he meets Britisher Raymond Wallace and his moving images of shadow magic he’s fire and flame for the new magic.. Not enough to deter him from falling in love with Tam’s beautiful daughter, he soon finds himself ensnared in the fights between good old solid opera conception and the newfangled magic shadow box against a background of beautifully designed sets photographed with amber lighting. In the end the hero wins the girl and becomes a pioneer of the Chinese film industry.
Ann Hu was one of the first students permitted to leave China after the Cultural Revolution and studied film at NYU.
The Turandot Project was initiated by documentarian Allen Miller who wooed famous conductor Zubin Mehta to conduct Puccini’s opera Turandot at the Teatro Communale in Florence. Mehta, impressed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s "Raise the Red Lantern" invited him to collaborate to give the production authenticity and added value. Chinese seamstresses were specially flown to Florence to sew new costumes.
Before the year was out Miller began an even more ambitious historical project: Zhang and Mehta were permitted to stage their collaborative Turandot production in the ancient and beautiful Forbidden City in Beijing. The resulting film permits us to peek in on the back stage drama involved in the mounting of Turandot in Beijing, a production that cost more than $15 million. We are right in the centre of heated rehearsals and conferences as the passionate personalities of directors, singers, and technicians triumphed over such difficulties as hiring and rehearsing of hundreds of extras, including soldiers of the Army -- the building and lighting of large new sets for the staging of an opera on a huge new scale -- sewing of new costumes, needed to match the historical period of the Forbidden City -- and the insouciant Chinese habits of using cell phones during performances and the old custom of talking through the acts of the venerable Chinese operas. Finally, the colours, the costumes and the voices of the famous singers are a feast for the senses.
Another Chinese film, Ang Lee’s "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", a martial arts romance of, again, imperial China in the days of the Quing dynasty balances the epic romance and the classic genre of the heroic warrior story, and wins the audience prize of the Toronto Festival. Ang Lee describes his production as his film "Sense and Sensibility" with martial arts.
Against diverse Chinese landscapes, the Gobi desert, the southern Bamboo Forest, and the city of Beijing, women warriors in spectacular flight sequences fly through the air, righting wrongs, inspired by a musical score with solo performances by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Based on another true story, "Me, You, Them" by Brazilian director Andrucha Waddington shows down-to-earth Darlene Linhares as a peasant woman living with her three husbands in the backlands of Brazil. To think that in macho Brazil a woman manages to peacefully co-habit with three men boggles the mind and is to be much applauded and Brazil’s great star Regina Case manages it with the greatest of ease. This film is a wonderful relief from everyday humdrum lives.
