Kickstart This – Ms. Purple by Justin Chon
Billed as a heartfelt story about an Asian American girl who reconnects with her estranged brother during the final days of her father’s life, Ms....
Preview – Five Flavours Asian Film Festival, November 14-21
The Five Flavours Asian Film Festival is a yearly review of the cinema of East, Southeast, and South Asia. For the 12th time, the Festival...
Kickstart This – I Will Make You Mine by Lynn Chen
In 2011, writer-director Dave Boyle introduced audiences to the mellow vibe of San Francisco musician Goh Nakamura in Surrogate Valentine, a disarming indie comedy in...
The Embodied Landscapes of Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me (USA, 2015) and The Rider (USA, 2017)
‘There simply are not enough films made about this place and these people.’ – Chloé Zhao[1] A people and a place In filmmaker Chloé Zhao’s...
Parachute Homes: Maineland & Where Are You From (Both USA, 2017)
“Parachute Kids” is a term that denotes “children sent to a new country to live alone or with a caregiver while their parents remain in...
Asian Cinema Highlights of 2017
As another year draws to a close, the time has come for VCinema contributors to take a look back at 2017 and select their Asian...
A Taste of the 11th Five Flavours Asian Film Festival
There were a lot of great aspects to this year’s Five Flavours Asian Film Festival. Not only the exciting program but the festival itself had...
The (Ir)reality of Images and Words in Hong Sang-soo’s Claire’s Camera (France/South Korea, 2017) and The Day After (South Korea, 2017) [AFI Fest & SDAFF 2017]
While watching a film by Hong Sang-soo, sooner or later one is hit by the fact that people are wondrously and humourously strange creatures. Fasten...
The Power of Zhang Yimou’s Metaphors and Colour Symbolism in Raise the Red Lantern (1991) [DCCFF 2017]
When we speak of Zhang Yimou, a leading light of China’s so-called Fifth Generation of filmmakers, many people immediately conjure up sumptuous imagery from the...
The Hong Kong Second Wave and their Fascination with the 1960s [DCCFF 2017]
During the mid-1980s, there was a subtle handover between the first and second Hong Kong new cinemas. After the first wavers spent the late 1970s...