The Untold Story (1993)

The Untold Story (1993)

Special Time and Location for this week only of October 28th, 8:00PM in Bolton B52
location information please see this link http://www4.uwm.edu/map/vt-cent.cfm Bolton is the building behind Lubar Hall on N. Maryland ave. The room is located in the basement and includes a theater style set up with a DVD projector.

In the late 1980's changes were made to the domestic Hong Kong film ratings system. This opened up the possibility of films dealing with more adult subject matter, under the highest content ratting, Category 3, generally abbreviated as CAT III. Film of this rating including those dealing with controversial subject matter, either sexual or political such as Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together (1997.)

But the majority of CAT III films focused upon either sex or violence, so much so that this began to generate its own subgenre or movement. During the heyday of CAT III films almost half of all Hong Kong productions fit into this type. As a genre, they revolve around two impulses, spectacle and novelty. With each new film attempting to outdo the last, this was a genre of ever increasing range of subject.

The Untold Story is one of the famous of these films, helping to affirm the stardom of Anthony Wong, who plays a sadistic madman. The story is supposedly based upon events in Macao in the late 1960's. It deals with a murderer who flees from Hong Kong and then becomes involved in grisly events in a Macao restaurant. For his role Anthony Wong received the Hong Kong Film Award for best actor, a major accomplishment in the story of CAT III. A wave of copycat films and loose sequels followed.

Hong Kong, Director Herman Yau, Cast Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Danny Lee Sau-Yin, Emily Kwan (Bo Wai), Lau Siu-Ming and Shing Fui-On, 95 minutes, in Cantonese with English subtitles

The Trek (2002)

The Trek (2002)

October 21st, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)

A group of students and naturalists journey into the dense Thai jungle in an attempt to locate a mythical new species of elephant. But things begin to go badly when they discover that everything in the jungle seems to want them dead in the most painful ways possible.

The Trek has a relatively strait forward pattern of seek and destroy, the students seek and everything else destroys. But it in the spectacle of the attacks ranging from insects, spiders, giant snakes and gunmen. The counterpoint to this is the subplots involving the students and their personal relationships including several westerners that have become mixed up in the expatiation leading to predictably absurd results.

Thailand, Directors Chanchai Pantasi, Cast Danai Smuthkochorn, Paul Visut Carey, Eilidh MacQueen, Manaswee Krittanookul and Supaksorn Chaimongkol, 103 minutes, in Thai with English subtitles

Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)

Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)


October 14th, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)


The range of style and subject matter of Japanese animation is far greater then the fraction of it that has become well known in the United States, and this film is a striking example of that fact. Night on the Galactic Railroad is an examination of ideas of existence, life and death seen through the eyes of a child. The central character is Giovanni, a young boy who lives a quiet life caring for his mother in what seems to be a small Western European town at the turn of the nineteenth century. One night a phantasmal train arrives to take him and his best friend on a metaphorical journey through space and time.

Stylistically, the film is slow moving and surrealistic in tone. These factors are what fuel its champions and detractors. The subject matter is also rather heavy, but it would be unfair to say that it is not a film accessible in tone to a great many children. It also deals with a range of philosophical beliefs including both the Christian and Buddhist conceptions of death, as well as a range of episodes that have a distinctly metaphorical bent.

The film is based upon the 1927 novel Night on the Milky Way Railroad by Miyazawa Kenji. For those that are not familiar with his work, he is a man who is widely considered to be the greatest Japanese poet of the early twentieth century. The film is a faithful adaptation of one of his most popular works. During his short life he lived in rural Japan and had a deep interest in varying philosophical disciplines including Buddhism. The majority of his work including the novel in question was only discovered after his death. But a major chan in the adaption from the novel to the film comes from noted avant-garde playwright Minoru Betsuyaku who pinned the script. He transformed all of the characters into cats. Before seeing the film many tend to find this discouraging, but in reality it actually greatly complements the material by giving the characters an unreal, slightly abstract quality. There is also a nod in the film to Miyazawa Kenji’s love and fervor towards Esperanto, many of the signs in the film are posted in both it and the fictional language of the cats.

This isn’t the only work of animation that was based around Miyazawa Kenji’s life and works, in honor of the centennial anniversary of his birth the 1996 animated film Spring and Chaos was produced. It was a loosely biographical film detailing events in the poets frequently tragic life and depicts the writing of the novel that Night on the Galactic Railroad was based upon. Other works that have an acknowledged debt to this source material include Leiji Matsumoto’s well loved Galaxy Express 999 manga, which spawned a range of feature films and a TV series.

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Japan, Director Gisaburo Sugii, Cast Mayumi Tanaka and Chika Sakamoto, 108 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles

Lady Terminator (1986)

Lady Terminator (1986)

October 7th, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)

It is true that you can learn a lot about a culture from its popular forms of entertainment, and without a doubt this applies as much to the absurd as to the series.

While other cinematic forms exist in Indonesia, the only area that has received any kind of world wide exposure are the Exploitation, Super Hero and Horror films produced primarily from the mid 1980's to mid 90's. The aforementioned films are legendary for their otherworldly strangeness, mixing the serious with the camp.

In Lady Terminator a long dead witch possesses the body of a young lady, who it seems is not a lady but an anthropologist. Now she hunts the descendant of the man who originally killed her, now the only person who has the power to stop her return. Instead of taking a few elements from The Terminator, the film brazenly copies entire sequences and frequently one-ups them. This can be said to be the spirit of this kind of remarkably unhinged romp, which for the right audience is a genuine treat.

Indonesia, Director Jalil Jackson, Cast Barbara Anne Constable, Claudia Rademaker and Christopher J. Hart, 82 minutes, in English

Marrying the Mafia (2002)

Marrying the Mafia (2002)


September 30th, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)

The last ten years have been a tremendous boom time for South Korean film in terms of the size and scope of films as well as international recognition. One of the genre that has been consistently popular throughout this period is the Romantic Comedy. This weeks film helped to create a sub-genre of romantic comedies revolving around gangsters. Examples of this are the two My Wife is a Gangster sequels, Marrying the Mafia and its sequels, My Boss My Hero and Family: Action Vs. Love.

This example follows a young up and coming businessman as he finds himself ordered by a notorious mob boss to marry the man’s daughter.

South Korea, Director Jung Hong-Sun, Cast Jung Joon-Ho, Kim Jung-Eun and Yoo Dong-Gun, 98 minutes, in Korean with English subtitles

The Last Emperor: Pu Yi's Latter Life (1986)

The Last Emperor: Pu Yi's Latter Life (1986)


September 23rd, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)

The figure of Puyi has always been a derisive one, a seemingly odd man out who finds himself at many of the crucial moments of modern Chinese history. For this film, writer, director Li Han Hsiang presents a more subdued portrait of the man. The figure of Puyi (Tony Leung Ka Fai), last Qing Emperor of China and later the figurehead of Japanese occupied Manchuria, looks back at his life in a kind of bewilderment. As an old man living in the shadows of his youth, he is truly haunted.

The story of Puyi is also a story of sweeping transition, and the film itself exists in a small way as part of such a wave of change. The films director, Li Han Hsiang, began as a university student in his native Beijing, studying the art and architecture of forbidden city first hand. By the end of the civil war he had immigrated to Hong Kong, finding work in the Mandarin dialect film industry. During the next decade he would invent or popularize a series of genre including the Hongmei Opera film and a wide range of sweeping historical epics. Later during the mid 1960's he established the first modern studio in Taiwan before returning to Hong Kong in the early 1970's. At this point he created a string of episodic sex comedies that were many of the most popular films of that decade. This allowed him the clout to direct a string of high concept Qing palace films, leading to the conditions under which he would return to work in the Mainland.

The reality that Hong Kong would indeed be returned to China really hit its political high note in the early 1980's. Negotiations between Great Brittan and China proved troublesome, and the delegations of prominent local Chinese figures sent to the Mainland were frequently treated with contempt and mistrust with a few notable exceptions such as the author Jin Yong. But on one count relations were healthy to say the least, and that is through cinema. It was decided that a prominent Hong Kong director would be invited to make films in China. Among Chinese film makers of this era, Li’s Qing court dramas had become well known and respected and in many ways he became the logical choice. To this end he agreed to direct a series of film on the condition that he had complete creative control.

His first two efforts were a two part film dealing with the destruction of the Summer Palace and rise of the Empress Dowager, The Burning of the Imperial Palace and Reign Behind the Curtain (1983). These proved successful and so he set his sights on more contemporary issues in an examination of Puyi. These three films also helped to launch the career of Tony Leung Ka Fai, a discovery of Li’s. For a Hong Kong director to make films on the mainland was no small leap of faith, he was the first to do so in contemporary times. The reason for this is that any such director would have their film banned in Taiwan, which amounts to commercial suicide. But someone of Li’s stature doing so had such an effect as to begin to open Taiwan cinematically to the mainland.

It would be impossible to talk about this film without noting Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 epic film of a similar English title. Li’s film predates the later effort by a year, representing the first time a Hong Kong director had shot in the Forbidden City. But on other levels the two films are worlds apart. As a Western perspective Bertolucci’s film tends to have a fetishistic relationship with the foreign trappings of China. Li’s film is arguably more centered upon a character study of the man, and of course it is set much later in his life. Some of those involved in Li’s film, including his own son claim that the later film was directly influenced by Li’s work, to the point of attempting to cast several of the same actors. This is debatable, but one thing is for sure, Li’s work stands on its own merits and continues to be a historically important film in its own right.

Mainland China, Directors Li Han Hsiang, Cast Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Poon Hung, Margaret Lee Din-Long and Lee Din Hing, 88 minutes, in Mandarin with English subtitles

The Contract (1978)

The Contract (1976)

September 16th, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)

Michael Hui plays a bumbling, rarely used actor/extra working under the yoke of an abusive long term contract that he has signed with a fictitious Hong Kong television network. Now he has been offered a more lucrative position with another network, but the catch is he hast to nullify his current contract before he can take the job. But in the dehumanized world of network politics a contract is a contract.

The Hui Brothers were the undisputed kings of Hong Kong comedy throughout the 1970's, and The Contract has all the elements that make for a great Hui film. A script penned by Michael Hui and loaded with bitting satire, a great opening comedy theme composed and preformed by Sam Hui and enjoyable performances all around. Like many Michel Hui scripted films, much of the comedic subject matter springs from real life social or economic problems that existed in Hong Kong at the time. In this case examining the network wars that were continually going on between TVB and ATV among others.

The brothers were and still are closely linked to television. They first came to prominence in the late 1960's with their Hui Brothers variety show. The show was similar in tone to American series such as The Smothers Brothers or Laugh In, in that it dealt with hot button issues of the day with an eye towards the common people.

Each of the brothers went on to make a considerable name for themselves. Michael Hui as a comic actor and director of bitting satire, Sam Hui as the eternally popular originator of modern Cantopop (Cantonese pop songs) and Ricky Hui as a solid character actor with a comic bent. But it is together that they reached the greatest of heights. This series has previously shown The Private Eyes (1976), which is frequently regarded as their most iconic work. This slightly later film is a comedic masterpiece in its own right and it sure to delight the tastes of many.

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Hong Kong, Director Michael Hui Koon-Man, Cast Michael Hui Koon-Man, Samuel Hui Koon-Kit, Ricky Hui Koon-Ying, Tiffany Bao, Ellen Lau, Yeung Wai, Cheng Fu Hung, 96 minutes, in Cantonese with English subtitles