The Cinematheque offers film lovers free Canadian premiere of Monographs: Video Essays on Asian Cinema, May 14 to 27
Audiovisual film criticism delves into everything from Indonesian horror movies to Vietnamese war movies
SPIRIT FILM, a Filipino video essay in the Monographs: Moments program.
The Cinematheque streams Monographs: Motifs and Monographs: Moments from May 14 to 27.
FANS OF ASIAN film have an embarrassment of riches on offer, as The Cinematheque streams the free Canadian premiere of an ambitious and thought-provoking new collection of video essays that span work from Vietnam and Uzbek to Myanmar, Iran, and China.
Monographs: Motifs and Monographs: Moments are themed programs of six and four short films, respectively, that take a deep dive into Asian cinema—a sort of genre-pushing audiovisual film criticism, with a wealth of clips illustrating each compelling argument.
Launched as a response to the uncertainties of the pandemic as a way to engage the Asian film community, Monographs was commissioned by Singapore’s Asian Film Archive.
The Motifs program features standouts like Indonesian-born, Hong Kong-based researcher and curator Riar Rizaldi’s “Ghosts Like Us”, tying the history of Indonesian horror films to the way media technology can liberate the ideological state apparatus of cinema. Elsewhere, Vietnamese filmmaker Truong Minh Quý edits together found footage from his home country’s propaganda war movies to understand their allure and power over citizens.
The separate Moments program, propaganda is also the subject of Filipino filmmaker Raya Martin’s "SPIRIT FILM", a meditation on her home country’s cinema during Japanese occupation. "Casting a Spell to Alter Reality", meanwhile, finds Amsterdam-based Thai artist Pam Virada exploring scenes in Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s informal coming-of-age trilogy, and ideas of Chinese folk tales being passed from generation to generation.
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