ContemporAsian, The Museum of Modern Art’s monthly series spotlighting contemporary films by emerging directors throughout Asia, continues this fall with new films from the Philippines, Pakistan, and India. Digital filmmaking and international coproductions are rapidly transforming an industry in which the transnational flow of talent and resources—even between the U.S. and Asia—has become the norm.
Each ContemporAsian program will have a week-long run in The Roy and Niuta Titus theaters, affording audiences expanded opportunities to see films that get little theatrical exposure, but which engage the various styles, histories, and changes in Asian cinema. The ContemporAsian exhibitions are organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art; and William Phuan, independent curator, with additional support from Asian CineVision. The Spring 2009 season will present films from Japan (March), Mongolia (April), and China (May).
Dinner with the President: A Nation’s Journey
November 13-19
Directed by Sabiha Sumar, Sachithanandam Sathananthan. With Pervez Musharraf. Sumar and Sathananthan’s documentary/diary interweaves personal reflection, an intimate dinner with President Musharraf, and testimonials from culturally conflicted Pakistanis of various classes: upper-class fashion designers, beach-bumming bourgeois teens, tribal religious heads, peasant families, activists, and even the president’s mother. What emerges is a portrait of a country struggling with its paradoxes, caught between stringent tradition and freewheeling globalization.
Autocrats defend democracy, drunken revelers holler for their militaristic president, and conservative rural men tell the female documentarians, “We look at you and wish we could be like you.” The resulting film is an extraordinary example of visual reportage that includes rare footage of encounters with tribal leaders in the North West Frontier Province, the social environment that is the bedrock of the Taliban.
Herbert
December 11-17
Herbert. 2006. India. Directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay. Written by Nabarun Bhattacharya, Suman Mukhopadhyay. With Bratya Basu, Sabyasachi Chakravarthy, Lily Chakravarty. Based on Bengali novelist Nabarun Bhattacharya's novel of the same title, Herbert is the kaleidoscopic saga of Herbert Sarkar, an idiot savant in Calcutta who incites the wrath of the International Rationalist Society with his successful business enterprise, “Dialogues with the Dead.” Rife with allusions to classic Hollywood, and to directors from Satyajit Ray to Jean-Luc Godard, Suman Mukhopadhyay’s debut feature is an astounding, encyclopedic parable: magicalrealist fable, and a timely allegory of cultural imperialism. Wittily self-reflexive, in flashy reds and twilights blues that recall the techni-colors of MGM musicals, and featuring a remarkable lead performance from Subhashish Mukherjee, Herbert takes up its visionary madman as the only man in touch with the past, in a world rapidly turning to ghosts. 142 min. -- www.moma.org
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