MCLC: 50 best filmmakers under 50

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Kevin B Lee <kevin at dgeneratefilms.com>
Subject: 50 best filmmakers under 50
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Source: dGenerate Films:
http://dgeneratefilms.com/uncategorized/cinema-scope-magazine-honors-chines
e-filmmakers-among-50-best-filmmakers-under-50/

Cinema Scope Magazine Honors Chinese Filmmakers among ³50 Best Filmmakers
Under 50"
By Maya Eva Gunst Rudolph

To celebrate its 50th issue, Cinema Scope has compiled a list of fifty
directors under 50 who represent ³the future of cinema.² Much to the pride
and delight of all those who champion Chinese voices in contemporary
cinema, Cinema Scope has chosen to honor several significant Chinese
filmmakers: Liu Jiayin, director of Oxhide and Oxhide II, Zhao Liang,
director of Petition and Crime and Punishment, Pema Tseden the Tibetan
director of Old Dog, Jia Zhangke, director of such films as Unknown
Pleasures and The World, as well as the 2008 documentary Dong, and Wang
Bing, director of Coal Money and Man With No Name.

Profiling Liu Jiayin, Andréa Picard praises Liu and the Oxhide series,
musing ³Who was this filmmaker who so maturely delineated the space of her
imagination, carving a humanist monument from next to nothing?² On these
remarkable films that measuredly unfold an intimate world of family
minutiae, Picard discusses Liu¹s ²carefully calibrated yet warmly sensual
sound and image construction, a droll humanism, and, ultimately, a feisty
hopefulness.² 
Zhao Liang, called a ³poet of justice² by reviewer Albert Serra, is
described as an artist who ³cannot simply describe social injustices,
lies, abuses of powerŠbecause as an author he¹s realized that ³reality²
itself is unjust and abusive. And it¹s absurd to find a way to fight
against it because reality has as much power as the ³system² does in
China.² Of the careful examination of power and artistry at play in Zhao¹s
Crime and Punishment and Petition, as well as his dedication to pulling
back the layers of the grueling injustices of Chinese beaurocracy, Serra
writes: ³With any other topic he could have been involuntarily serving the
propaganda of what he¹s criticizing, but the issue of the absence of
justice turns our hearts with so much power that this is impossible.²

dGenerate films consultant and blog contributor Shelly Kraicer takes on an
appraisal of the frontrunner of Tibetan new wave, Pema Tseden (in Chinese,
Wanma Caidan). Of the director of The Silent Holy Stones, The Search, and
most recently Old Dog, which is currently enjoying an international
festival run, Kraicer says, ³Given Pema Tseden¹s extremely complicated
position as a Tibetan in China, and the necessity of having his films pass
stringent Chinese censorship, his ability to speak eloquently of
individual despair and the emergency of cultural obliteration is
masterful; his ability to do this in films of such eloquent, quiet beauty
is nothing short of astonishing.²

Reviewed by Chris Fujiwara, Wang BingŒs work, which includes the films The
Ditch and Fengming, a Chinese Memoir, is described as being imbued with
³an attempt to imagine unimaginable (though real) conditions for human
life, there is also a war-movie element, a working-over of the terrain,
together with the becoming-mineral of humanity that recalls the
hard-bitten, antiheroic sagas of Samuel Fuller, Anthony Mann, and Miklós
Janscó.² 

Jia Zhangke, perhaps the Chinese filmmaker on this list whose reputation
most predicts inclusion on such a list, is discussed by Tony Rayns as an
inspiration to those filmmakers who followed in the footsteps of Jia¹s
early hometown trilogy: Xiao Wu, Platform, and Unknown Pleasures. ³After
Jia,² writes Raynes, ³the flood. From the start, Jia had a genius for
seeing and showing how larger social changes (political, economic, moral)
impacted on individual lives.²

Congratulations to Cinema Scope for reaching this milestone and to all the
directors who grace this list‹the future is in your capable hands.