During a televised debate in 2016, populist presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte made a typically belligerent statement that he himself would jetski to Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea and plant a Philippine flag there. Duterte claimed that he was ready to die a hero to keep the Chinese out of the bitterly contested maritime territory. “That made millions of Filipino workers and fishers vote for him because of that one promise,” says film-maker Baby Ruth Villarama. As her new Oscar and Bafta-contending documentary Food Delivery: Fresh from the West…
Tag: Culture
Preparation for the Next Life review – deeply felt story of love among the marginalised in New York
Chinese-American film-maker Bing Liu made an impression with the poignant documentary Minding the Gap about people from his home town in Illinois; now he pivots to features with this sad and sombre study of romance and life choices among those on the margins of US society, adapted from the prize-winning novel of the same name by Atticus Lish. The scene is the no-questions-asked world of New York’s Chinatown; newcomer Sebiye Behtiyar plays Aishe, a Chinese Uyghur Muslim undocumented immigrant. One day she catches the eye of Skinner, played by Fred…
Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea review – gripping trip along supply lines in China standoff
Director Baby Ruth Villarama and her crew board an assortment of maritime vessels to record the ongoing strife and its consequences between the Philippines and China over control of what has recently been named the West Philippine Sea (WPS), formerly part of the South China Sea. This area, which is seen by just about everyone (apart from the People’s Republic of China) as part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, has been increasingly infiltrated by Chinese boats, some of them fishing vessels but mostly Chinese coast guard vessels that have…
Zootopia 2 bucks trend for Hollywood releases in China as it breaks records for foreign animation
A comedy about animal cops investigating a reptilian mystery has become the highest-grossing foreign animated film ever in China, bucking the trend of declining interest in overseas productions that has resulted in Hollywood films struggling in the Chinese box office. Zootopia 2 (called Zootropolis 2 in some European countries), a hotly anticipated and widely marketed sequel to 2016’s Zootopia, was released in China last week. In its first seven days, it made about 2bn yuan (£213m) in ticket sales, making it one of the best-performing films of the year. On…
Film festival in New York cancelled after China puts pressure on directors
An independent film festival due to start in New York this weekend has been cancelled after several film-makers pulled out due to harassment from the Chinese authorities, raising concerns about transnational repression. The inaugural IndieChina film festival was planned to take place between 8 and 15 November. But on 5 November the festival’s curator, Zhu Rikun, posted on Facebook that he had been forced to cancel 80% of the planned screenings because film-makers had pulled out. Zhu said the requests primarily came from directors based in China, who cited “personal…
I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan review – startling stories of China’s new precarity
From the early 2000s until the Covid lockdowns, Hu Anyan was one of China’s vast army of internal migrants, moving between cities in pursuit of work. He did 19 jobs – shop assistant, hotel waiter, petrol attendant and security guard, among other things – in six cities. Although all these jobs were atrociously paid, they still earned him more than the one he tried for two years in the middle of this period: writer. (An 8,000-word story earned him less than 300 yuan – about £30.) Then, during Covid, he wrote…
The Beijing courier who went viral: how Hu Anyan wrote about delivering parcels – and became a bestseller
Hu Anyan is not a fan of online shopping, but, as he discovered during the months he spent as a courier in Beijing, plenty of people are. Not long into the job, he was assigned to delivering parcels to a large construction site. He didn’t have to deliver that many – 10 to 20, most days – but getting them to their rightful owners wasn’t always easy. There was a crane driver who was often in the air when Hu arrived. He would ask him to come again the next day,…
Ballad of a Small Player review – Colin Farrell seeks redemption in Edward Berger’s high-stakes gambling yarn
The vast emptiness of luxury hotels is part of the mystery and spectacle of Edward Berger’s intriguing if static and overwrought psychological drama-thriller; it is about a desperate chancer and gambling addict, faced with the metaphysical crisis of renewing or annulling his existence by staking everything on a single bet. Screenwriter Rowan Joffe adapts the 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne, whose title is ironic. He would not have these problems if he really was a small player. He is a big player and a big loser, although his smallness comes…
Horror film digitally altered in China to make gay couple straight
An Australian horror film featuring a scene with a same-sex wedding was reportedly digitally altered for release in mainland China, transforming the gay couple into a heterosexual one, provoking outrage from viewers who spotted the change. The critically acclaimed film Together, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, was released in selected cinemas in China on 12 September. It follows the journey of a young couple who move to the countryside and encounter mysterious and grotesque changes to their bodies. In one scene, which features a wedding between two men, one…
Ten Years: has the hit film’s dystopian vision of Hong Kong in 2025 become a reality?
A taxi driver struggles to keep working as his native language of Cantonese is sidelined for Mandarin. Petty gangsters do the work of the authorities amid a violent debate about a national security law. Supporters of Hong Kong independence are jailed. In 2015, a scrappy group of Hong Kong film-makers imagined what their semi-autonomous city could look like under the increasing influence of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). “Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental,” reads the first scene in the opening credits. But decade on, many…