Tag Archives: Asian Cinema

Sitges Film Festival 2014

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Sitges 2014

Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia

3-12 October 2014

Sitges, Spain

Sitges website

The 47th edition of the long-standing Catalan genre film festival offered an amazing selection of fantastical cinema, an impressive list of guests, fun midnight screenings and a great zombie parade, all in a beautiful seaside setting.

Among the highlights at Sitges this year were horrific post-Spanish Civil War sisterly drama Shrew’s Nest, produced by Alex de la Iglesia, Sergio Caballero’s sci-fi oddity La distancia, excellent neo-giallo The Editor, Marjane Satrapi’s acclaimed dark comedy The Voices, Dumplings director Fruit Chan’s latest film The Midnight After and intense Belgian serial killer thriller The Treatment.

Although this year’s edition opened with the disappointing fourth instalment of the [REC] franchise, excitement soon flared up again with the well-executed Belgian boyscout slasher Cub, which had an interesting multi-antagonist set-up and ingenious death traps. Also showing on the first weekend, the remarkably disturbing Creep was an American thriller about a terminally ill man who hires a cameraman to make a film for his unborn son. With sophisticated tone shifts and immaculate, taut direction, it was a deeply unsettling exploration of insanity and sexuality.

The programme also included some of our festival favourites: creepy and poignant Australian monster tale The Babadook, Scandinavian droll crime thriller In Order of Disappearance, energetic Cannon Films documentary Electric Boogaloo, dreamy vampire tale A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, sci-fi-tinged marital horror Honeymoon, thoughtful Irish ghost story The Canal, Russian sci-fi epic Hard to Be a God, Korean crime thriller A Hard Day, subversive erotic comedy Wetlands, fantastical masterwork It Follows, not forgetting Fabrice du Welz’s take on the Lonely Hearts killers, Alleluia.

20th Etrange Festival

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20th Etrange Festival poster by Dom Garcia

L’Etrange Festival

4-14 September 2014

Paris, France

Etrange Festival website

The unique and wonderful Etrange Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary this year with a spectacular line-up, which, as always, defied categories with the latest offerings from Takashi Miike and Marjane Satrapi, special programmes picked by Godfrey Reggio, Jacques Audiard and Sion Sono, musical events, emerging talent, short films and an exhibition on Fumetti.

Among the freaky treats on offer, we loved Kim Ki-Duk’s extreme castration drama Moebius, Bill Morrison’s elegiac The Miners’ Hymns, the Mo Brothers’ action thriller Killers, Fabrice du Welz’s staggeringly intense take on the Honeymoon Killers story Alleluia, atmospheric Irish ghost story The Canal and offbeat Iranian vampire tale A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.

Older treasures included Sergei Paradjanov’s sumptuously poetic Sayat Nova, Jerry Schatzberg’s seminal 70s road movie Scarecrow, Jörg Buttgereit’s ingeniously disturbing The Death King and Blaxploitation rarity Dolemite while the Pere Ubu Film Group’s did a live score to Carnival of Souls.

Marjane Satrapi’s dark animated killer tale The Voices won the audience award and we were particularly excited to discover David Robert Mitchell’s fantastical take on American sexual puritanism It Follows, David Wnendt’s uninhibited erotic comedy Wetlands, Nacho Vigalondo’s found footage thriller Open Windows, Austrian Western The Dark Valley, Aleksei German’s last film Hard to Be a God, hallucinatory French nightmare Horsehead and Austrian experimental dance film Perfect Garden.

To mark its anniversary, the programme also included a selection of the best of 20 years of the festival, including Nikos Nikolaidis’s demented noir homage Singapore Sling, Ian Kerkhof’s avant-garde documentary Beyond Ultra Violence: Uneasy Listening by Merzbow, Harmony Korine’s Gummo, Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions, the short films of the Quay Brothers, Duncan Jones’s Moon, Hungarian oddity Hukkle, Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo and Ben Wheatley’s Down Terrace.

Electric Sheep Film Club: Hero

Hero

Date: Wednesday 11 August

Time: 8:45pm

Venue: Prince Charles Cinema, London

Price: £6.50/£4.00 Prince Charles members

Certificate: 12A

Dir: Zhang Yimou, Hong Kong/China, 2002, 99 min

Prince Charles Cinema website

WEDNESDAY 11 AUGUST, Prince Charles Cinema 8:45pm : HERO

Zhang Yimou’s breakthrough martial arts epic is a lavish visual feast best appreciated on the largest screen possible! Set in the third century BC as the ambitious, war-mongering king of Qin is trying to unite China by force, it stars Jet Li as a nameless swordsman granted a rare audience with his sovereign after killing three fearsome assassins (played by some of Hong Kong cinema’s greatest, Donnie Yen, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung). As the sly king questions the ‘hero’, we are presented with three different versions of the events, each colour-coded. The result is a sumptuous spectacle combining graceful fight scenes, magnificent d&#233cors, dubious truths and questionable politics.

Guest speaker: Zo&#235 Baxter, presenter of Resonance FM’s radio show on East Asian culture.

FILM WRITING COMPETITION:
Film students and aspiring film writers are invited to enter our film writing competition: write a 200-word review of Hero and send it to ladyvengeance [at] electricsheepmagazine.com, marked ‘Film writing competition’ in the subject line. A film expert to be announced shortly will pick the best entry. Deadline: Thursday 26 August. The selected review will be published on the Electric Sheep website in September. Read the May winning review of Midnight Cowboy.

Electric Sheep Film Club: Battle Royale

Battle Royale

Date: Wednesday 14 April

Time: 8pm

Venue: Prince Charles Cinema, London

Price: £6.50/£4.00 Prince Charles members

Certificate: 18

Kinji Fukasaku, Japan 2001

Prince Charles Cinema website

WEDNESDAY 14 APRIL, Prince Charles Cinema 8pm : BATTLE ROYALE

In a futuristic Japan threatened by anarchy, the authorities try to maintain order by sending a group of randomly selected, unruly school children to an island where they are forced to fight each other until there is only one survivor left. This cruel annual game is led by Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano, perfectly cast as the sadistic schoolmaster. The vision of veteran director Kinji Fukasaku, inspired by his own trauma as a young man during Word War II, is stark and uncompromising, and his direction is as tight and efficient as in any of his celebrated yakuza movies. A striking film that works both as an exhilarating action movie and a passionate denunciation of the plight of young people forced to commit violent acts by tyrannical elders.

We are delighted to welcome anime expert Helen McCarthy, author of The Anime Encyclopedia, for a Q&A after the screening.

FILM WRITING COMPETITION:
Film students and aspiring film writers are invited to enter our film writing competition: write a 200-word review of Battle Royale and send it to ladyvengeance [at] electricsheepmagazine.com, marked ‘Film writing competition’ in the subject line. Editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Japan and Electric Sheep contributor John Berra will select the best review. Deadline: Thursday 29 April. The selected review will be published on the Electric Sheep website in May. This is a regular feature of the Electric Sheep Film Club. Read February’s winning review of Kiss Me Deadly.

Next screening: WEDNESDAY 12 MAY: Midnight Cowboy

Watch the trailer:

Electric Sheep Magazine Autumn 08

In our autumn issue we look at cruel games, from the politics of human blood sport in the Corman-produced ultra-violent Death Race, to sadistic power play in the disturbingly funny Korean thriller A Bloody Aria, fascist games in German hit The Wave and Stanley Kubrick’s career-long fascination with game-playing. Plus: interview with comic book master Charles Burns about the stunning animated film Fear(s) of the Dark, preview of the Raindance Festival, reviews of Tarsem’s The Fall and Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time Redux. And don’t miss our fantastic London Film Festival comic strip, which surely is alone worth the price of the issue!

The magazine is no longer available and we are no longer published by Wallflower Press.

Also in this issue: Compass of Mystery Festival, Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr, Jan Å vankmajer’s Alice and a Seeing Double review of Alex Proyas’s Dark City!