I just heard from the office there is Tsai Ming Liang who is guest professor for the PhD section. So i went to hear him talk.
There were v few students, and he asked who the new faces are. Of course, i said, i am a new face - and i am a teacher etc.
So he talked here and there, as usual students didnt say much, so he was really like doing a monologue. Then he asked a question, what is cinema? Nobody answered, and he asked if "the teacher" would like to says something.
So i said, heheh, i will add my 2cents worth... and i talked about Depardieu, how he became Russian in the news because he wants to not pay French taxes, and people were saying what a big fat pig he has become; then i became curious to see what he looked like when he was young, turns out that it was Marguerite Duras who introduced him to cinema. Of course, Duras is a national treasure and a novelist of the French new waves. She also makes films. But her films are v different from others. She declared that cinema as a form is dead. ( I see Tsai Ming Liangs eyebrow twitched a little) and i continue, of course, she means, only her film is alive. Everybody else is dead. (Then everybody laughed). But her film is very special. In this film w the young Depardieu (I described the scene) ... and you are suddenly pulled into the time of the film, it is real time. Not a reproduction of a scene, It is live. You live the moment of the characters. This is totally in sync w her writing. In her fiction too, each sentence is written in the present. You feel the present. And after so many years, the Duras film is still fresh. Not trite, nor aged. This is what cinema could be, a moment in real time. It draws audience in to live in the real time of the film.
And, there are other types of cinema. For example, Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise, and i dont normally watch this type of film. However, I watched it all the same. As Tom Cruise stripped himself and dangled from a wire, coming close to the ground. I see, wow, what big muscles Tom Cruise has, he is not only a handsome guy. He is muscular and well built. Well, that is what cinema does too, i notice a lot of details that i dont normally see. Its a window to some real life things.
And then, there is Avatar, these blue faced guys, who look ugly and weird. With tails that linked to others in a v crude sexual inuandos, very crude, rough film. What so interesting about this? Whys everybody crazy about Avatar. But I watched it too, because if you dont watch movies, you will have very little common conversation with everybody else. Movies are common grounds through which you could exchange ideas socially. So its a social platform of a sort. It has social value.
And of course, there are many many other cinemas, and their uses. But I will not say so much and let the other students talk.
Tsai Ming Liang was flabbergasted by my lively presentation. He started to talk from the moment on facing me, i was his audience.
He invited me to come to the rest of his lectures - he said, lets give the talk together. I said, yeah, if the students wont speak, I will speak for them. :)
The rest of the classes are in Taipei, either on Fri or Sat. And I said, I could only come on Sat, because I cannot get away on Fri. So, I hope everybody else wants it on Sat too. This gives me a reason to get out of the mountain and enjoy Taipei. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Duras
- Les Enfants (1984)
- Il Dialogo di Roma (1982)
- L'Homme atlantique (1981)
- Agatha et les lectures illimitées (1981)
- Aurelia Steiner (Melbourne) (1979)
- Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver) (1979)
- Le Navire Night (1979)
- Césarée (1978)
- Les Mains négatives (1978)
- Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977)
- Le Camion (1977)
- Des journées entières dans les arbres (1976)
- Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976)
- India Song (1975)
- La Femme du Gange (1974)
- Nathalie Granger (1972) Depardieu first film
- Jaune le soleil (1972)
- Détruire, dit-elle (1969)
- La Musica (1967)
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