Summary: An artist, Ku, lives with his mother near an abandoned fort, reputed to be haunted. One night, investigating strange noises, he meets the beautiful Yang who is living there, and finds himself caught up in her struggle to survive attacks by agents of an imperial noble who murdered her family. Analysis: The Chinese wuxia…
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Crows & Sparrows (1949 Movie): Summary & Analysis
Summary: The story takes place in Shanghai at the end of 1948. Hou, an official of the Republican government takes possession of Mr Kong’s property, a residential house, driving the old man into a tiny corner room downstairs, while he and his concubine occupy the top level. Two other families, the Huas and the Xiaos,…
Two Stage Sisters – Summary – Analysis
Summary: Against the backdrop of the evolution of Shanghai-based Yueju (aka Shaoxing opera), Two Stage Sisters unfolds around Chunhua, a child bride who runs away from her arranged marriage in 1935. Taking refuge with an itinerant Yueju company, Chunhua becomes an apprentice in that opera troupe and befriends the master’s daughter, Yuehong. On stage Chunhua…
The Wild Bunch (1969 Movie): Summary & Analysis
Summary: Set in 1913 during the Mexican Revolution, along the Mexican-Texan border, The Wild Bunch tells the story of an aging gang of outlaws led by Pike, and chased by bounty hunters led by a former gang member, Deke Thornton. They rob a bank, which turns out to be a set-up by the railroad company…
Whisky (2004 Movie): Synopsis & Analysis
Synopsis: Jacobo Köller is the owner of a small outdated factory in Uruguay’s grey and quiet port of Montevideo. A year after his mother’s death, his brother Herman visits from Brazil to attend the ceremony of the setting of the stone in the cemetery. Jacobo asks Marta, his loyal chief employee, to pretend they are…
Whale Rider: Summary & Analysis
Summary: The opening sequence presents a powerful juxtaposition between contemporary culture and Maori heritage, with a modern hospital birth-scene intercut with mysterious shots of a whale and a female narrator recounting the Maori tale of Paikea: a mythical descendant of the Ngati Konohi tribe who discovered Whangara on the back of a humpback whale after…
West Side Story (1961): Summary & Analysis
Summary: On New York’s West Side, two gangs, the white Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks, fight over turf. At a dance, the tensions are palpable, but Tony, a former Jet, and Maria, the little sister of Bernardo, the Sharks’ leader, fall in love at first sight. While they meet secretly, the Jets and the…
WR: Mysteries of the Organism – Summary – Analysis
Summary: The film is a collage of different materials, mainly documentary footage from the US, and fictional events taking place in Belgrade, Serbia. The ‘American’ section also contains various materials: interviews that attempt to shed light on the life and the theories on the relation between sex and politics espoused by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, reflections…
The Ascent (Movie): Summary & Analysis
Summary: The film is set in Nazi-occupied Belarus and follows the story of two partisans (Soviet resistance fighters): Nikolai Rybak (Gostiukhin) and Boris Sotnikov (Plotnikov). A German counterinsurgency detachment surrounds the starving partisans and refugees in a frozen forest. The partisans’ commander sends Rybak to get food for the insurgents from neighbouring farms. Sotnikov volunteers…
Viridiana (Movie): Summary & Analysis
Summary: Viridiana tells the story of a novice nun who, in the film’s opening scenes, is asked by her Mother Superior to visit her widowed Uncle Jaime. She has not seen him for many years but he has asked to meet her before she takes her vows. Spending the night at the farm where he…