The Shanghai International Film Festival has added additional Asian titles to its Golden Goblet international competition.
The three new entries are Gao Qunshu's Beijing Blues, Huo Jianqi's Falling Flowers and Uchida Kenji's Key of Life.
Beijing Blues is a documentary-style police drama featuring non-professional actors. Gao won the runner-up Jury Grand Prix at Shanghai with his second feature Old Fish (2007).
Falling Flowers is a melodrama about two writers trapped in Hong Kong during the Sino-Japanese war starring Song Jia and Huang Jue. Huo previously won the Golden Goblet for best film with Life Show (2002).
Key of Life is a black comedy about a failed actor contemplating suicide who switches identities with a rich businessman who has amnesia, only to inherit problems with the yakuza. It is scheduled to open in Japan in September.
Seventeen films are now in competition including the previously announced Indian entry Colour of Sky, directed by Bijukumar Damodaran.
by Xiongmee Xiong through instruction by Professor Rev. Dr. James Kenneth Powell II, opensourcebuddhism.org. Very pleasant intro, visuals and video. The origins of the Hmong are obscure. Christian missionaries proposed they were the lost tribe of Isreal. Mountainsides of China for at least two thousand years near the yellow river, as early as 3000 BCE (seems a bit early). They migrate to Thailand and Laos to escape the Chinese. In china too, they are persecuted. Nice crips visuals. The pauses are effective. "Hmong" means "Free" known as "Miao" in China but is offensive. The provinces are named, but now, like the Jews, the Irish, they are global wanderers due to persecution. The types of Hmong are explained nicely. Exogamy and surnames are presented. One must marry outside their surnamed family. Shamanism emerges. Everything has a spirit, continuous circle birth and rebirth. The spiritual coexists with the physical -- ancestral, nature, evil spirits abound. Fantastic video of the shaman. He heals sickness...sometimes it is loneliness and depression. The black cloth enables communication with the spirits. Pleasing ancestral spirits, they will bring good spirits to the families. The afterlife makes funerals sacred. The qeej is a guidance for the soul to go to the right direction so they can reincarnate properly. The Secret War brought them to America. Fantastic video again. We hear of Veng Pao the general. Nice to see him in action. Heard much of him in Madison. They tried ...Video Rating: 4 / 5
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