Tag: doc

Into the Shaolin (在少林, Sun Hongyun, 2023)

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Like many of the monks at the centre of Sun Hongyun’s documentary Into the Shaolin (在少林
zài Shàolín), our associations with the name are almost exclusively tied up with martial arts movies. Yet as they discovered on entering the temple, it’s not all about kung fu which to some at least came as a disappointment when they were still novices tasked with performing ordinary chores. Then again, many of them do not necessarily anticipate being monks all their lives and so long spent in contemplation leaves them with few other ways to support themselves in the secular world other than through leveraging their martial arts training.

As we can see, many monks come to the temple in childhood often to escape poverty or because they were thought to be troublemakers at home. Sun follows the little monks with empathy, capturing both their mastery over the craft at such a young age and the pain and difficulty it often causes them raising series ethical issues over whether it is right and fair to expect so much from small children who often cry in pain or frustration. Others also remark that they miss their parents having essentially been sent away though one boy explains that his mother managed to get a job nearby so that she can still spend time with him and observe his training.

It’s these familial ties that present the strongest contradictions to the monks and bind them more fully to the secular world. One young man who came to the temple for lack of other options contemplates remaining there for the rest of his life and is a little resentful that even at 18 he still has to get the permission of the grandparents who raised him to go on a mountain retreat. The grandparents, who lost their son, his father, in a workplace accident they believe caused by overwork, want nothing more than for him to get married and start a business and so they flatly refuse to allow him to go on being a monk forever instructing him not to bother contacting them again if that’s what he plans to do. 

But then as others have said, being a shaolin monk doesn’t teach you how to live in the secular world and gives you few transferable skills that would allow you to support yourself. An older monk explains that most of the monks who came to the temple at the same time as him have left but almost all still work with martial arts in some capacity as there’s nothing else for them to do. Even so, the little monks talk of doing other things with their lives once they grow up one hoping to become a soldier defending China and another a movie star. Many came to the temple specifically because of their love of kung fu films starring Jet Li, Donnie Yen, or Wang Baoqiang who himself trained in Shaolin martial arts. 

Others meanwhile have found serenity in the rhythms of the temple and may no longer be suited to living outside of it. The show the boys are preparing utilises a series of boxes of the kind they usually sleep in which as one monk admits to the untrained eye closely resemble coffins but as he puts it no one really needs much more space than their body naturally occupies and it doesn’t really matter where they sleep. Of course, to those in the secular world those things mean a great deal and there’s probably a big difference between a box at the temple and one on the street. Another monk reflects on the shaolin name which means “few trees” though at the temple few is a lot and less is more. He thinks that it’s a fallacy to consider a “return” to the secular world because the true “return” is to your true self which you only discover by leaving home. 

That might be a sentiment shared by a Serbian doctoral student staying at the temple while researching her thesis and in particular the concept of “Chan”. Offering her own insights as a foreigner living at the temple she reflects on the differing attitudes to nature found in China while she seems to be the only woman currently in training. She remarks that it might be odd to call a temple home but that’s what it’s been to here even as she prepares to leave it. Sun’s documentary has an ambivalence to it, at once admiring of the monks in their asceticism, but also somewhat sad not only for their inability to escape their suffering, merely exchange one kind for another, but also for the predicament they my find themselves in should the time come to leave the temple whether by their own will or otherwise.

Into the Shaolin screened as part of this year’s DOC NYC and is available to stream in the US until Nov. 26.

Trailer (English subtitles)

My Anniversaries (オレの記念日, Kim Sungwoong, 2022)

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“Life can’t be all good things,” the cheerful hero of Kim Sungwoong’s documentary My Anniversaries (オレの記念日, Ore no Kinenbi) sighs rather incongruously given that he spent 29 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. As Shoji remarks walking around the prison where he was once incarcerated he only seems to remember the “fun” things rather than the cold or the low level horror that marked his life inside. What continued to weigh on him was the the injustice he suffered and the stigma of being called a murderer though he was innocent. 

Shoji Sakurai freely admits he was no angel in his youth and part of the reason he was pulled in by the police was because he was a considered a troublemaker they wanted to get rid of anyway. He and a friend, Sugiyama, were picked up together and accused of robbery and the murder of a 62-year-old loanshark. They had actually been together at the time in a completely different part of town but the police refused to listen to their alibi and railroaded each of them into false confessions. After pleading not guilty at trial claiming that their confessions had been forced, both men were sentenced to life in prison and each served 29 years. 20 years old when they went in, they were 49 and 50 and when they eventually came out. 

Yet the incongruous thing about Shoji is just how happy he seems to be. He isn’t particularly embittered by his experience and even at one point thanks the police because it’s because of them that he now gets to live a great life doing what he always wanted to do. Rather than be consumed by the hopelessness of his situation, Shoji decided to make the best of his incarceration by looking to the future and working hard to build a life for himself when he got out. He spent his time writing poems and songs and even though he hated making shoes on the prison production line became the best shoemaker in the place. Together with the director he revisits the prison on what appears to be some kind of open day with former guards running stalls in the courtyard. Shoji makes polite small talk with them as if they had been colleagues rather jailor and prisoner describing most of them as kind and only alluding to one who wasn’t while remarking that it’s usually the latter sort who earn speedy promotions. 

After release from prison both Shoji and Sugiyama continued to campaign for their convictions to be overturned which they finally were after a retrial victory, an incredibly rare event in Japan. Since then, he’s continued to advocate for changes to the judicial system and help others in a similar position to clear their names so that they can try to move on with their lives. In some senses, his sentence didn’t end when he was released because he was still the victim of a false conviction and continued to suffer under its weight, unjustly labeled as a murderer even if he admits he had once been a thief. Shoji met and married his wife Keiko not long after he had come out of prison and she describes him as having been almost glowing with the joy of his newfound freedom, but also recounts that he once tried to jump out of a window because of the hopelessness of his situation. 

His success in overturning his conviction gives hope to others like him who feared they’d spend the rest of their lives in prison labeled as a criminal for something they didn’t do or perhaps never even happened. Relentlessly cheerful, always cracking jokes, he assures them he can win and will continue striving until all the falsely convicted prisoners of Japan (of which there are many given the prevalence of forced confessions) are freed and the laws changed so that all the available evidence has to be presented to the court rather than only that selected by the prosecution. Even after being diagnosed with terminal cancer he continues to travel around the country and exclaims how “blessed” he is to have led such a good life. In many ways it’s the definition of a life well lived by a man who decided to be a cheerful in the face of adversity and did his best to chase happiness in whatever form he found it even in the darkest moments of his life in the knowledge that spring would one day finally arrive. 

My Anniversaries screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection. 

International trailer (English subtitles)

Flowing Stories (河上變村, Jessey Tsang Tsui-shan, 2014)

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Shooting in her own home village, documentarian Jessey Tsang Tsui-shan spins a meandering tale of diaspora and dislocation in her 2014 documentary Flowing Stories (河上變村). Beginning in the small village of Ho Chung in which almost all of the residents have gone abroad to find work, the film charts the paths of migration along with the hardships discovered both at home and away while centring the village festival held every 10 years as a point of reunion as sons and daughters return in celebration of an idealised village life the modern world has denied them. 

Tsang begins her tale with Granny Lau, an elderly lady who lived next-door to her when she was a child whose relatives often brought her souvenirs from Europe. As Granny Lau explains, her life was always hard. She married Grandpa Lau at 19 in an arranged marriage but he left to find work abroad soon after, returning only a handful of times in 20 years during which they had several children Granny Lau had to raise alone. She describes her familial relationships as without affection, her husband a virtual stranger to her while she also had to work in the fields leaving her disconnected from her sons and daughters. Later, many of them traveled to Calais to work in the restaurant Grandpa Lau had set up with the intention of reuniting his family in France. 

The children who went also talk of hardship, being unable to speak the language and mixing only with other migrants from Hong Kong many from the same the village. Fourth daughter Mei Yong remarks that only the thought of the village festival kept her going when she came to Calais at 17 leaving all her friends behind and having nothing much to do other than work in the restaurant. Her sister-in-law says something similar, that when she arrived she was immediately put to washing dishes and only reprieved when the children were born but that wasn’t much better because the only source of entertainment available to them was to have dinner together. The second of the sisters Mei Lan moved to London with her husband and still doesn’t know the language, having regular mahjong parties with with her neighbours who are also from Hong Kong and many of them nearby villages. 

Most of the others say they don’t think they’ll ever move back, as Grandpa Lau eventually did, because they’ve spent more than half their lives abroad and have had sons and daughters who have grown up and made lives in other countries. But for Mei Lan it’s different because she has no children. She and her husband regret the decision to go abroad, suggesting they did so because their parents encouraged it thinking it would be easier for them to find work but really there were opportunities to be had in Hong Kong and they might have been happier living in a place where they spoke the language. 

But life is hard in every place, and equally for those who leave and those who are left behind. Some reflect on the changing nature of Ho Chung with its new settlement across the river dominated by detached houses which has, a daughter who moved to Edinburgh suggests, disrupted the sense of community. Where people once rarely closed their doors and neighbours wandered through each others homes helping each other out where needed, now everyone is scattered in disparate settlements. Then again, Granny Lau seems to think that sense of community is largely a myth explaining that in her day you had to do everything yourself, no one was going to feed your cow or plough your field if you couldn’t do yourself.

In her own way strangely cheerful in her stoicism, Granny Lau is a tough woman who asks why she would cry for a husband who was over 80 years old when he died, insisting that she had “nothing to be nostalgic about” and counting herself lucky as long as she has two meals a day. Now only around 900 people remain in the village, while it is said that the Shaolin Temple may be looking to build a new complex in the area as the natural vistas are disrupted once again by diggers further eroding the traditional qualities the village festival celebrates. The stories of migration flow in and out of Ho Chung taking pieces of the of the village with them as they go but equally leaving behind a melancholy sense of loss for a disappearing way of life.

Flowing Stories screened as part of this year’s Hong Kong Film Festival UK.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Counters (카운터스, Lee Il-ha, 2017)

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Counters poster 1The far right is on the rise the world over and Japan is no exception. A resurgent nationalism has long been a worry as the memory of wartime folly fades and the young, manipulated by fears of the nuclear threat from North Korea and frustrated by a stagnant economy, are duped by the messages of unscrupulous forces who convince them the cause of all their troubles is an easily scapegoated minority. Lee Il-ha’s documentary Counters (카운터스) takes a look at the deeply entrenched xenophobic racism directed at “Zainichi” Koreans and the counter protest movement against it which finds itself divided over the question of violence.

The main focus of Lee’s documentary is the enigmatic leader of the “Otoko-gumi” (lit. “men’s group”, a noticeably yakuza-esque name) – former mob boss Takahashi. Unlike many of the “Counters” who turn up to disrupt right-wing rallies, Takahashi identifies himself as a right-winger who venerates the Emperor and the Imperial past but cannot tolerate the unfettered bullying of those who shout vile racist statements while preaching the glory of Japan. A former yakuza, Takahashi himself had originally been taken in by the falsehoods spread by men like Sakurai – the virulently racist leader of Zaitokukai which makes the dubious claim that Zainichi Koreans are somehow “privileged” thanks to special residency arrangements originally set up to avoid the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to account for all the Korean (and Taiwanese) residents who arrived as Japanese citizens during the colonial period. Though he had harboured doubts about the anti-Korean propaganda he’d been hearing, it wasn’t until he had the opportunity of a straightforward conversation with an activist that he came to realise that it was all lies and the guys on the other side had a point after all.

Later, one of his comrades describes Takahashi as an old school yakuza – the kind that thinks it’s his job to protect people and stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Takahashi evidently doesn’t like bullies or liars and was brought into the struggle by witnessing an old lady in kabukicho crying after a protest. His methods are, however, those of the street. Running Otoko like a gang he determines that the best way to silence the racists is to rough them up so they’ll think twice about coming back.

This places places Otoko at odds with the mainstream Counter movement which is committed to non-violent protest and social change through outreach and education. Though their aims share much in common, the Counter organisation fears becoming with associated with Otoko because of its less savoury elements – not only the violence itself but Takahashi’s criminal past and ties to the yakuza. If the Counters want to be taken seriously as a legitimate protest group, they have to be careful to present a professional, diplomatic image. Meanwhile, Otoko is free to shake things up without needing to think too hard about anything much beyond crushing the racist right.

Another activist engaged in building a shelter for oppressed minorities – not just Zainichi Koreans but Ainu, Brazilian-Japanese, LGBTQ+ etc, admits as much when he attempts to probe the paradox of Takahashi’s liminal status in the political world. The progressive movement has long been bound by its own principles and progress has been slow. Like it or not, Otoko seems to have created a shift in the political landscape no matter how one might feel about their methods. Takahashi corrals his men into building the shelter by day, but is a frequent visitor to the Yasukuni shrine in the mornings. Nevertheless, he remains an unlikely ally at the side of all oppressed peoples including transgender men and women and the LGBTQ+ community.

Lee imbues his footage with the true punk spirit, spinning back from Takahashi’s violent clashes to a whimsical jazz overshadowing the shadiness of government while playing heavily with on screen text and effects which occasionally trivialise the action as in Sakurai’s failed showdown with the Mayor of Osaka who proves once and for all that he won’t have any of Sakurai’s nonsense in his kind and welcoming city. The level of vitriol on show is truly shocking with heinous, violent statements offered by ordinary young women turning on the kawaii to call for the deaths of a persecuted minority while middle-school girls influenced by right-wing fathers preach atrocity in the streets (tacitly confirming the veracity of various other atrocities the right is usually keen to deny). The long awaited anti-hate speech law may finally have been passed, but there is still much work to do. The Sakurais of the world aren’t giving up, but neither are the Counters. A timely reminder that now more than ever resistance is the key.

Counters was screened as part of the 2018 New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (Korean subtitles only)