Bu Hua : "LV Forest", "Sanlitun Village and things that happened there", Tang Ka painting, Greenberg

Very gd animation by Bu Hua
www.buhua.com

「LV森林」卜樺
the video game music with the lyrical flash animation and the message very strong work.

Sanlitun village with a live interactive Habbo Hotel type installation : 李心路，屯裏的那點事兒……

I would have liked to see a short video of the text that was spoken. As is, we see people playing online game together outdoor infront of a giant screen. It is nice, what were the conversation on screen? And would they talk to each other in person beyond the screen back to real life? Its like, if you had all the Secondlife avatars standing together in an open public square all looking at a giant screen with their avatars interacting; would they actually talk to the real person who might just be standing around not far? Would people bother to look up the avatar which interests them in real life? I like to learn more about this project especially.

In general the Chinese participation of their video, animation, digital art work are very strong. Maybe these are professional teams already, not student work. There is clearly a much strong political engagement, personal philosophical point of view as a backbone or repeating theme whereas student works are more concerned with family love, personal experiences. Students world is smaller, and more intimate, youthful more timid and exploration of the world opening infront of them.

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Greenberg **+half, with Ben Stiller

Through this movie, we see in detail the bland everyday lives of people. Good people, responsible men and women. There is no "bad person" in this movie, only people who started out with ideals and slowly everything wears down day by day; people get by; with or without money, with or without success. The Ben Stiller character said at one point that he only wanted to be with a 40 year old divorced woman with 2 kids - as she would not have high expectations of life with him.

The people whom i saw the movie with all thought this is a depressing movie. I didnt find it depressing, but rather an American version of European (French)movie. French movies are very used to taking everyday situations and making poetry or drama or little moving picture paintings out of these remembered moments. American movies tend to have a much faster, clearer line of action. A typical American movie would have more shots of the party w nice food, and the sex more romantic, not slap dash, awkard - I suspect that there is an agenda to showing "things as they are in reality".

Is a movie to entertain us or to show us reality?

For example the Hong Kong film industry definitely is into entertainment. Most viewers say, for reality? You just look all around you and you get it, why pay to see it again in a cinema?

And the dancer/actress Jing Xing said, you want to see about sex, go home and look at it at home! You know it, whats there to see?

How do I see this? There are all kinds of movies for all kinds of reasons suitable to different viewers.

I think a good movie is one I would want to see again because I did not capture everything in one viewing, I still have curiosity about some aspects of the film.

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Tibetan religious painting Tang Ka:
西南民族大學民族研究院根秋登子教授現場講解唐卡

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