Tribute to Aruna Vasudev
Film scholar, painter and documentarian Aruna Vasudev, a member of Asian Film Archive’s International Advisory Panel, dedicated her life and career to championing Asian cinema. Vasudev’s double aspiration to introduce world cinema to India, and put Asian filmmaking on the global map led her to create Cinemaya: The Asian Film Quarterly in 1988, generating Asian film criticism that could be distributed on an international scale. In 1990, a joint conference organised by Cinemaya resulted in Vasudev’s founding of the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC), cementing a crucial infrastructure and precedent for incentivising curation, recognition and support of Asian films. In honour of Vasudev’s recent passing, this issue of the Asian Cinema Digest commemorates her legacy of fostering and uniting international film cultures, highlighting similar efforts of today.
Image still from Aruna Vasudev: Mother of Asian Cinema (2021, Supriya Suri)Aruna Vasudev: Mother of Asian Cinema
Supriya Suri’s documentary features extensive interviews with Vasudev herself and numerous film practitioners, tracing the institutional gaps that plague Asian cinema and how Vasudev’s efforts made waves. The biopic traces the rise of recognition Cinemaya afforded to emerging writers and filmmakers, and its cultivation of collective discussions that bred the founding of NETPAC and Osian’s Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema. The full film is available to watch on Vimeo.
Asian Film Journeys: Selections from Cinemaya
Throughout its run, Cinemaya: The Asian Film Quarterly remained one of the most lively, homegrown platforms for Asian film criticism. The magazine gave many Asian writers a chance to be published in (and translated into) English and broke authentic, multicultural perspectives into a largely Western world of Asian film discourse. With selected articles from 1988 to 2004, Rashmi Doraiswamy and Latika Padgaonkar’s partial compendium gives readers a glimpse of Asian cinematic developments of the time, as captured by their own community.
The Work of Aruna Vasudev
Writing for the NETPAC blog, cinema scholar Wimar Dissanayake broaches Vasudev’s writings, identifying its key concerns for cinema as a cultural product and practice. As an advocate for Asian cinema to the international community, Vasudev acknowledges the complexities of our interconnected era. To envision the full dimensions of cinema’s potentialities, both agree that it is crucial to examine the tensions between globalism and localism, politism and secularism.
To Watch
Image still from Pyo Chit Lin (My Darling) (1950, U Tin Myint)Pyo Chit Lin (My Darling): Film Screening with Live Music
For one screening only on 27 September at Oldham Theatre in Singapore, see Myanmar’s earliest surviving colour film on screen with a live music accompaniment by Malaysian artist Lee Hort Kent, which combines Burmese instruments and electronics. Restored by the Asian Film Archive and Memory! Cinema Association in 2017, Pyo Chit Lin (My Darling) is a vibrant and heartfelt love story that captures Myanmar’s burgeoning film industry in the 1950s. The event is part of the Asia-Europe Cultural Festival 2024 – Closing Curtain, organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation – ASEF with the financial support of the European Union (European Union in Singapore) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (Udenrigsministeriet).
Minikino Film Week
From 13 to 20 September 2024, the Minikino Film Week – Bali International Short Film Festival will present 5 international programmes, with themes of Heart, Mind, Nerves, Soul and Taste. The festival’s goals to break boundaries and develop robust platforms for short filmmakers are taking form through educational programmes, inclusive screenings, a short film market and 10 guest programmes from partnering film institutions, including Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, S-EXPRESS and Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
Image still from Dancing Ghazal (2022, Niki Kohandel)Other Cinemas: Tales in Translation
3 short films by artist filmmaker Niki Kohandel: …-then love is the name (2022), Dancing Ghazal (2022) and Kharab Kari (2022) are available for online viewing until 30 September 2024. Kohandel’s tales of translation surround her use of “obsolete recording devices and her imperfect knowledge of languages”. The film programme, organised by community project Other Cinemas, will include a conversation with Kohandel within September.
MARG1N x Film Comment: Print Out: The Love on Your Shoulders, The World It Sustains
As part of an exclusive series “Print Out”, Film Comment has reprinted Alyssandra Maxine’s published article for MARG1N, a new Southeast Asian film magazine. MARG1N’s first issue, entitled PIRATE.LOV3R.2024.MKV explores our affectations for film piracy and its mysterious, unregulated and unbeatable networks. In The Love on Your Shoulders, The World It Sustains, Maxine speaks to filmmakers Martika Escobar, Davy Chou and Sam Manacsa about the declines and shifts of hipster film culture, grassroots film clubs and the revenue challenges of arthouse film distribution.
Image still from Taming the Garden (2021, Salomé Jashi)The Black Sea Photo Project and the Ongoing Battle of Georgia’s Documentary Filmmakers
On 6 September 2024, The Center for Documentary Photography in Romania presented their 15-year long project, The Black Sea Multimedia Photo Project at the Design Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia. The photography exhibition, screening and photobook surrounds the Black Sea, which is bounded between Europe and Asia, as a site of fantasy and conflict across history and current times. Georgia Today reviews the project alongside commentary on the concurrent political and censorship challenges faced by Georgian documentary filmmakers. Board members of the Documentary Association of Georgia (DOCA), Anna Dziapshia and Salomé Jashi expound on the issues at hand, and their hopes and efforts to create assistance for documentary filmmaking.
Image still from Ghatashraddha (aka The Ritual, 1977, Girish Kasaravalli)Restored ‘Ghatashraddha’ is a reminder of the ‘complex question of oppression’
Selected for Venice Classics, Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddhal (1977) remains a relevant critique on caste oppression and damaging beliefs about womanhood and purity. The adaptation of U. R. Ananthamurthy’s novella is named after a symbolic ritual and depicts a young woman’s traumatic persecution following the public revelation of her pregnancy. Nandini Ramnath writes on the timeless impact of the film with a transcript interview of director Kasaravalli describing his inspirations and restoration challenges faced by the film’s deterioration.
Image still from Us and the Night (2024, Audrey Lam)Film Rewrites Itself: An Interview with ‘Us and the Night’ Director Audrey Lam
Indigo Bailey reviews Audrey Lam’s poetic hybrid film about the nightly companionship of two library workers on the graveyard shift, unfolding a playful treatise of stories, wordplay, adventure and time. The film’s romantic treatment of the library as a safe utopia, a land of stories and adventure builds into its serendipitous energy and atmosphere. Lam shares about her personal experiences as an ex-librarian and lifelong reader alongside the gradual decline of print, ending on a note of affinity between the modular forms of film and language.
TO LISTEN
Image stills from Youth (Hard Times) (2024, Wang Bing)Film Comment: Locarno 2024, with Inney Prakash and Cici Peng
Film Comment Editor Devika Girish is joined by Prismatic Ground’s director Inney Prakash and Locarno Critics Academy participant Cici Peng as they discuss their key picks from the 77th Locarno Film Festival. Some of the Asian films discussed include Hong Sang Soo’s By the Stream (2024) and Wang Bing’s Youth (Hard Times) (2024).
Image still from The Calamari Wrestler (2004, Minoru Kawasaki)A.C. Film Club #132 – The Calamari Wrestler
Minoru Kawasaki is known for his surreal comedies on human-animal hybrids, the most notorious of them being The Calamari Wrestler (2004) where a pro-wrestler makes a comeback into glory after transforming into a giant squid. Michelle Kisner from The Movie Sleuth and the A.C. FIlm Club hosts banter and deep dive into Kawasaki’s uncanny filmography, pondering the latent social and physical humour in his protagonists’ animal-selves.
TO SUBMIT
Call for Submissions: 2024 Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India (FPRWI)
The 9th edition of Film Heritage Foundation’s week-long audio-visual preservation training workshop is calling for international applicants. The curriculum of lectures, hands-on sessions and restored screenings will take place from 7 to 14 November 2024 at the Vyloppilly Samskrithi Bhavan Multi-Purpose Cultural Complex, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Submissions close on 25 September 2024.
Call for Submissions: Pune International Film Festival (PIFF)
Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) is calling for submissions of feature films 70 minutes and above produced between 1 January 2023 and 31 October 2024. A full list of regulations can be found on their FilmFreeway submission page. Submissions will close on 31 October 2024.
This edition of the Asian Cinema Digest was compiled by Renee Ng. The Asian Cinema Digest is a monthly compilation of content taking place internationally involving Asian cinema and the moving image. Featured programmes are not representative of AFA’s views and are unaffiliated to the AFA unless otherwise stated.
