A graduate student from Burkina Faso named Mamadi, forced to find last-minute employment in order to cover his tuition and housing expenses after his educational grants fail to materialize at the local embassy, calls on a fellow countryman and distant cousin – a politically frustrated, self-exiled intellectual with a slew of unpracticed doctoral degrees hung […]
Himatsuri, 1985
On an insular island in modern-day Japan, a band of woodsmen headed by an eccentric, experienced frontiersman named Tatsuo (Kinya Kitaoji) methodically and deliberatively fell trees in careful formation, carving out a progressive swath through the vast forest before ritualistically cleansing themselves at the end of the day at a pristine river overlooking a sacred […]
A Brighter Summer Day, 1991
On an unassuming summer afternoon in 1959, the imploring voice of a principled, concerned father (Guozhu Zhang) is heard through the near empty halls of a junior high school as he attempts to persuade the school administrator into reviewing the grading of his son’s examination paper for Chinese literature (a subject that he claims his […]
State of Fear, 2005
One of the festival highpoints (and certainly one of my personal favorites) from this year’s slate of films from the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival is filmmakers Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy’s exhaustive (and inspired) documentary, State of Fear: a sobering, trenchant, and disturbingly relevant dissection of Peru’s contemporary history through […]
Kitchen, 2003
Kitchen opens to the wistful narration of an eccentric and irresponsible, but affable young Hong Kong hairdresser named Louie (Jordan Chan) who, as the film begins, has traveled to a quaint Chinese province in the rain to attend the funeral of a friend and former client. Concerned over the plight and well-being of the elderly […]
The Day the Sun Turned Cold, 1994
A somber and methodical young man named Guan Jian (Tuo Zhong Hua) enters a bustling metropolitan police station and, without a scheduled appointment, asks for a personal meeting with the chief inspector (Hu Li) in order to file a formal complaint against a “village housewife” named Pu Fengying (Siqin Gowa) who, he unsentimentally admits, is […]