The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Asian Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis For Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987) Abbas Kiarostami recruited locals from the rural northern Iranian village of Koker, among them, the Ahmadpour brothers. […]
Daily Archives: October 25, 2007
Chen Kaige’s Ba wang bie ji opens, in Beijing, with two men, costumed performers in the Opera, walking onto the stage as an offscreen voice addresses them. It is 1977—the year after Mao’s death and the trial of the Gang of Four, blamed (along with Mao) for the Cultural Revolution. Why haven’t these men performed […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Asian Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis Beijing, China, 1953. Comrade Stalin’s death postpones Lin Shaolong and Chen Juajan’s marriage. Their son’s voiceover notes the delay. Like David Copperfield, he refers […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Asian Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 under the Manchu treaty; the end of World War II, fifty years later, brought liberation. Parallel to […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Asian Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis In 1990 northern Iran experienced a devastating earthquake. The warm, humane comedy of Abbas Kiarostami’s film precludes condescending rhetoric of noble suffering. His surrogate, […]
Dennis Grunes 