What I'm reading now

Michael Berry, editor, Speaking in images: interviews with contemporary Chinese filmmakers, Columbia University Press, 2005.

I stumbled across this marvelous book a while back and have gained a lot of interesting insight into Chinese-language cinema, so I thought I would share it with all you folks on AnD.  Berry is an assistant professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  But don't expect any cultural studies double-speak (or speaking in code or whatever it is this particular group of academics indulges in to keep the rest of us in the dark).  The book is a series of interviews between Mr. Berry and 20 filmmakers from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and these Chinese filmmakers are distinctly uninterested in academic discourse.  In other words, these people speak their minds and they are all, refreshingly, very plain spoken, meaning that you and I can understand what they are talking about.

A selected list of filmmakers interviewed include:

China Xie Jin

Tian Zhuangzhuang

Chen Kaige

Zhang Yimou

Taiwan Hou Hsiao-hsien (and Chu T'ien-wen)

Edward Yang

Ang Lee

Hong Kong Ann Hui

Stanley Kwan

Fruit Chan

Peter Ho-sun Chan

Notably absent from the Hong Kong portion are heavy-weight directors such as Tsui Hark, Wong Kar-Wai and Johnnie To.  It is not mentioned why these directors declined to participate. 

One complaint  I have of the book from the perspective of someone who gravitates more to Hong Kong films is the disturbing and aggravating practice of giving all names in their accepted Western form and then in Pinyin (but not in Cantonese).  The same is true for films--they are listed with an English title and then given a Mandarin title.  Nowhere is the title given in Cantonese, despite the fact that the films were made  in Hong Kong with the actors speaking Cantonese and released there with official Cantonese titles.  I hope this isn't the harbinger of the future, that the Cantonese cinema of Hong Kong is like Camelot, existing for one brief, shining moment before disappearing forever into the misty realms of history and mythology. :-)