About Dry Grasses

Turkey, France, Germany / 2023 / 197min.
Director：Nuri Bilge CEYLAN

Samet is a public school art teacher in a remote area of Anatolia. Sick of everything around him, he asks to be transferred to Istanbul. Living in the same boarding house as his fellow teacher, the affable Kenan, he introduces Kenan to Nuray, who teaches English in a different school. But this puts a wrench in the works of the budding relationship between him and Nuray. Meanwhile, the love letters of Samet's favorite student, Sevim, are confiscated by another teacher and her request for them to be returned is not accepted. She brings a complaint against Samet and Kenan to the principal. CEYLAN has once again pushed himself to the limits of his style, creating a fresh masterpiece to knock the audience off its feet with its intense conversations between the characters, the long takes that patiently capture them, and the gorgeous yet harsh depiction of nature. Screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where Merve DIZDAR, playing Nuray, won the Best Actress award.

©️2023 NBC FILM/ MEMENTO PRODUCTION/ KOMPLIZEN FILM/ SECOND LAND / FILM I VÄST / ARTE FRANCE CINÉMA/ BAYERISCHER RUNDFUNK / TRT SİNEMA / PLAYTIME

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Life is Cheap... but Toilet Paper is Expensives

USA / 1990 / 83 min
Director：Wayne WANG

A young man arrives in Hong Kong from San Francisco with a briefcase for a mysterious recipient named Big Boss. However, without any way to meet him, the time just goes by in vain... This "docu-fiction" film is built from neo-noir settings featuring Hong Kong gangsters and femme fatales. The film is brilliantly directed by Wayne WANG, enhanced with the bustling beauty of Hong Kong in the late 1980s – several years before the return of Hong Kong to China with the political and ideological urgency of the situation interestingly expressed without hesitation. Produced in 1989, the film was distributed in Japan by EUROSPACE and released in theaters in July 1997 to coincide with the return of Hong Kong to China. The digital restoration conforms to the final cut made by director WANG himself in 2021. The original 35mm film was digitally restored in 4K resolution, with additional footage shot in Hong Kong in 1996.

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Man in Black

France, USA, United Kingdom / 2023 / 60 min
Director：WANG Bing

A naked old man wanders through the corridors of an empty, dimly lit theater and steps onto the stage. The camera approaches him, swivels, and takes a good look at his body. He stands still, then makes a bowing motion and begins a strange dance.... This naked man is the modern classical music composer WANG Xilin. He sings his own compositions a cappella, plays the piano, and then speaks in his own words about his experiences in Communist China and how torture destroys people forever. WANG Bing has already dealt with similar themes in films such as "The Ditch," about a forced-labor camp in the desert in the early 1960s, but it is the extraordinary stylistic beauty of this film that sets it apart from his previous works. Caroline CHAMPETIER's meticulous and astonishing images capturing the aging body and the theater, the music accompanied by intense pain, and the songs and choreography - all these elements combine to make a truly remarkable biopic. The film was screened as a Special Screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

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The Daughters of Fire

Portugal / 2023 / 8 min
Director：Pedro COSTA

Shot in Cinemascope, with the screen divided into three parts-each features a different woman singing in a different location near an erupting volcano of their loneliness, hardships, work struggles, and indomitable spirit. While still being characteristically Costa in its ethereally-lit, beautiful yet hellish visuals, this musical film is also quite unusual for him in its use of graceful, hymn-like music. Concludes with archival footage capturing Fogo's eruption in the 1950s, and images of a house made of volcanic rock. An Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Short Story

CDirector：WU Lang

A man dreams. His wife has left him and he is trying to mend their relationship. He awakens to the fear that his dream might be true. Starring HUANG Jue of "Long Day's Joumey into Night" and LI Meng who WU Lang also directed in "Absence," this short film is a mood piece depicting the subtle gradations in relationships between men and women. Premiered in the Orizzonti section of the Venice International Film Festival.

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In Water

Korea / 2023 / 61 min
Director：HONG Sang-soo

HONG Sangsoo makes films at an astonishing pace, releasing as many as two a year, using new approaches and experimenting with fresh methods of storytelling in each film. Yet, his experiment this time of making everything out of focus shocked everyone, and in fact confused many viewers. And surely something is lost just in the experiment. First, it takes some time for the audience's eyes to get used to it, and second, although HONG doesn't usually favor close-ups, one is unable to follow the minute changes in facial expressions of the actors. Nonetheless, the simpler narrative structure may have aided this poetic and intimate work about a young man who was once an actor and now tries to make a short film as a director with two friends.
HONG himself worked on the compelling and muffled music, which sounds as if it were recorded on analog tape.

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【Special Performance】GIFT

Japan / 2023 / 74 min
Director：HAMAGUCHI Ryusuke
Music and Performance: ISHIBASHI Eiko
* Screening of "GIFT" + Live music performance by ISHIBASHI Eiko

The collaboration of musician ISHIBASHI Eiko and film director HAMAGUCHI Ryusuke is still fresh in our minds from the film “Drive My Car.” This time, they teamed up once again to create "GIFT." The project originally started when ISHIBASHI asked HAMAGUCHI to make a video for her live performance, and in the process of the project "Evil Does Not Exist" was completed as a so-called talkie film, and "GIFT" was completed as a conjunction with ISHIBASHI's original request. Although this film is shorter in length than the former and has been edited differently, the films follow the same general story. In the case of this film, intertitles are used for dialogue and explanations in the style of silent films. The peculiar formation of this project made the collaboration of the most cutting-edge musician and filmmaker of our time possible in the oldest form of cinema - the silent film - and the result is to be determined during the live performance.

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【Additionally Announced】Youth (Spring)

France, Luxembourg, Netherlands / 2023 / 212 min
Director：WANG Bing

A cluttered workshop is captured by a hand-held camera. Young men and women are sewing clothes with their sewing machines at breakneck speed. They are accustomed to the repetitive labor, and even while their hands are working, they carry on lively conversations with their colleagues. Here and there an argument breaks out, and conversations about romance are exchanged between the young employees.... As the title suggests, WANG Bing's new film focuses on China's young generation in their late teens and twenties and their repetitive workdays in Zhili City, Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, a hub for garment manufacturing. The camera remains neutral and observational, unflinchingly capturing the poor working conditions of these young people and how they cope with life, love, and wage negotiations. While it does not appear that a better future awaits many of these young people, their optimism in enjoying the here and now leaves a strong impression. The film premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

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