See the Light to Come...(20/8)

Seeing is believing, but sometimes it depends on how we look at things…
I like taking photos. The more I practise capturing moving images with my camera, the more I find an alternative way to interpret time and life in the surrounding. The advanced technology in photography enables us to take a picture simply with one click. It becomes too easy sometimes that action with camera simply replaces part of the sensational system of mankind to external happenings and stimulation. People may think that, ‘no worry, I have taken a photo for memory’, but how much memory do they keep just because they take a photo and somehow neglect the basic element to really ‘look at’ things carefully. The same phenomenon can probably occur in certain devastating humanitarian-related affairs when the actual happening is easily prejudiced by a few cliché photos that may not have fully captured the reality. Bearing in mind the tendency to be negligent, it becomes more of a technique to ‘define’ the photography objects and to ‘select’ the means of interpretation about the objects. Here I find the fun to be a camera person…
…As I see the peace and the beauty
…The hope and the future
...people and the life
…The globe of movement
…The totality of the universe
I spent a week in Warsaw this summer and went to Cmentarze Powazkowskie, a cemetery in the north-western part of Warsaw, to visit the grave of a well respected Polish film director, Krzysztof Kieslowski. The cemetery visit inspired me much to contemplate and appreciate life, and some of the ‘nature morte’ snapshots can be found here...
http://www.kodakgallery.eu.com/ShareLanding.action?c=jiw1j59.1exwy214h&x=0&h=1&y=z8mogq&localeid=en_GB_EURO

Xiao wu...(13/11)

Jia Zhang Ke is one of the most acclaimed directors in the sixth generations of the Chinese cinema. My first sight to his moving picture is the story of xiao wu, a work produced during his early filming stage...don't know why but the story of xiao wu appears to me a lot like the blue mood in Dekalog 5 of Kieslowski. Both stories talk about a gloomy life of a youth in the city crashed with enormous changes and adaptation. Apparently there is not much hope to the two young men. Xiao wu and Dekalog 5 are lively illustration of the polemic definition of human nature whether it is good or bad. I cannot draw a line between the two, as I believe there are both traits in the nature. The filming of Jia is artistic, and the Shanxi province under his camera was filled with a taste of communist glory and tragedy. There were use of long shot and close up in the film, and without having much criticising dialogue in the film, the sketch of the urban development in Shanxi was already violently denouncing. There is always a mix feeling of being a Chinese in the debut 21st century.

La Double Vie de Veronique...(2/3)

Exactly fifteen years ago, a film like this was released with a divine status to the film history from then onwards...After ages, I am glad to have it watched again in a proper theatre room. This has been an influential film to me, and last night when I watched it again in MK2, a strong sentiment of the spiritual ritual to film has overflown again from my mind. It is a feeling that I have missed for long time. I still remember the time when I was in high school which films like this had been fascinating my horizon. Renting video tapes from kps would be a leisure after school. At that moment, I realised that someone in this world could actually have made such kind of magnificent films. There are surely lots of elements in the film that I have forgotten or missed when I saw the film years ago. Perhaps the music of Preisner can be so significently touching and the music and soprano just magnified the weight of this film, and altogether with the sepia colour Kieslowski used in the film, the work was just as precious as a glittering crystal that can last long. Irene Jacob acted naturally in divo in the film. I would see the piece expresses much of the view of destiny of Keislowski. The structure of the film, as depicted in the title of the film, is a construction of dualism with two Veronique in two different world. I like the scene of the puppet show. Some editing work in the film, when reviewed again now, is yet to be perfect, but never would it severely distract the spirit and the arrangement of the film. The film is vulnerable in a sense that the fragile nature of life hinters one's expectation to more about in life. Existence would never be single and alone. Someone exists because there is another someone. I believe this is true. The master use of light by Keislowski was fully shown off in the film. I do not know if this is the best film I have ever seen, but I doubt if a similar one can be produced again in future.

Double Vie de Véronique...(10/12)

I have always a checklist for purchase, which exactly demonstrates a motif of the consumerism that I believe I have not been pursuing...I passed by a second hand music store today and I found the soundtrack of a film by Kieslowski in 1991. I still remember how impressive the film was when I first saw it in secondary school, and the beautiful film music has been for long time an item on my wish list. I recall moment after moment that I encountered the soundtrack in music stores in the past. Every time I abandoned my motion to give a buy on it at last. After all, I knew that the chance would come some day in future that I would bring it home, and finally that is. Human likes to possess, and I always know that I am one of them.

A Review on Eleni Karaindrou...(20/9)

When visiting the website of eslitebooks, the bookstore is at the moment presenting the works of Eleni Karaindrou on its music section. It gives a brief introduction of the composer and his works...His music has a sense of broadness of vision and perception, and it is exactly the kind of music Theo Angelopoulos's film is looking for. The kind of harmony of sound and vision is like the master pair of Kieskowski and Zbigniew Preisner. The difference between Karaindrou and Preisner is their varied focus to life. The former composer looks at the scope of world in a magnifying magnitude, while the latter prefers a more micro and objective viewpoint. The different approach is just shown on the films of their partnering directors. We may argue that the influence would be the other way round, meaning that the vision and the story script lead to the development of film music. Nonetheless, there is no doubt how music in film can be such influential for its role to the total experience for the audience. In the modern world, a film cannot live without the music - this is uncontroversial.