Volume 1, Issue 7 / September 1997

Asian Greats

This issue features some of the grand masters of Asian cinema, past and presents, Mohsen Makhmalbaf (a Retrospective look), Kenji Mizoguchi (the Cinematheque Ontario series) and Korean Shin Sang-Ok. Peter Rist rounds out the issue with a look Korean cinema in Montreal.

1) Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Retrospective
Donato Totaro , – 18-09-97
From what I’ve seen so far Mohsen is at least the equal of Abbas Kiarostami, and in terms of eclecticism, commands a much more varied cinematic style. It’s also apparent that the spirit of neo-realism and Zavattini’s ideals about making social

2) Kenji Mizoguchi: The Master
Donato Totaro , – 18-09-97
In 1996 James Quandt, programmer for the Cinematheque Ontario in collaboration with the Audio-Visual Division of the Japan Foundation,Tokyo organized the film series, “Mizoguchi The Master.” The series included stops along New York, Edmonton, Van

3) Two Films by Shin Sang-Ok
Donato Totaro , – 18-09-97
Having seen only three of the 60 plus films directed by Sang-Ok it may be premature to start tossing out superlatives, but his films seen at the recent Cinematheque Canada’s (CCA) “Three Korean Master Filmmakers” series represent one of the major

4) Korean Cinema in Montreal
Peter Rist, – 18-09-97
The first Korean film I saw was Im Kwon-Taek’s Adada (1987) at Montreal’s World Film Festival in August, 1988. Until David Overby programmed the magnificent retrospective of East Asian films at Toronto’s Festival of Festivals the previous Septe