Tag: Anthropology

A Passage Beyond Fortune and Chinese Way of Life in Moosejaw. An Interview with Weiye Su.

The reason why this director made A Passage Beyond Fortune is because of the false information being spread for the sake of bringing in the money.

Now available to stream on TheNFB.caA Passage Beyond Fortune's filmmaker Weiye Su

Weiye Su is a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker with a goal, and that’s to dispel the myths concerning the underground tunnels that exist underneath the city of Moosejaw, Saskatchewan. What’s offered is a falsehood. After his family relocated here many years ago, what he wanted to discover about the past concerning fellow Chinese as this country was being built is important. He knew very early on their stories aren’t as well known, and he’s given one family a chance to be heard in A Passage Beyond Fortune.

Ultimately, this mini-documentary is about the legacies that those Asians crafted with their own hands. Although the United States is considered a land of opportunities more so than Canada, both have an important place in history. As most scholars know, in those early settlement years and even throughout the Depression, not everyone treated foreigners kindly. This filmmaker’s goal is to explore the proper cultural contexts and reverence, than to present stigmatized notions on what life was like back then. He also recommends reading Brian S. Osborne’s essay, Moose Jaw’s Tunnel Vision: Mystery, History, and the Construction of ‘Canada’s Most Notorious City.’

Continue reading “A Passage Beyond Fortune and Chinese Way of Life in Moosejaw. An Interview with Weiye Su.”

The Problem is More Than Deep in Dongnan Chen’s Documentary, Singing in the Wilderness

Singing in the Wilderness doesn’t have anthropologists explaining what’s going on. Instead, Chen is letting the moments he’s captured on film speak for itself.

Singing in the WildernessPlaying at the LAAPFF 2022 at the Directors Guild of America on May 6, 2022 5:00 pm (buy tickets)

Dongnan Chen‘s Singing in the Wilderness (旷野歌声) is a very sombre look at lives of those still living at Little Well Village in Yunnan Province, China. The Miao Christian Choir found fame when they appeared on national television back around 2003, and this documentary looks at what’s come from it, for better or worse. I see their struggle for self worth and question if embracing a different religion is good for their soul, especially when there’s still individuals still struggling.

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Krampus for the Holiday Season? (Part One)

Krampus has been featured in many comic books or films since becoming mainstream…

KrampusBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

You better not pout when a different kind of supernatural force comes to town this holiday season. Some revellers may well encounter the Christmas Devil–aka Krampus! This name is a derivation of the Germanic word krampen (claw) and some may say he’s as old as time. This creature has changed over the years. In the old days of Germany, before the coming of Christianity, children feared the wild and woolly horned beast. Any child known to be misbehaving was whipped with a birch stick (or a swath of) by this monster. Some were even taken away to the underworld never to be seen again. The lucky who were “released” most likely promised to mend their ways.

In later years, he was known to visit villages with Saint Nicholas on Krampus Night (Krampusnacht; Dec 5th)! The good were rewarded by his friend and the bad found sticks of birch left in their shoe (it was a tradition to leave it out on this night). These days, a chance encounter from someone cosplaying as him doesn’t always provoke the same response.

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[VFF2019] Timeline for Homo Sapiens, A Review

KrampusLocation:
Victoria Event Centre
(Fringe Venue 1)
1415 Broad Street

Remaining Shows:
Aug 25 07:00 pm
Aug 28 05:45 pm
Aug 30 05:00 pm
Aug 31 12:30 pm

It’s rare to find an act in any Fringe Festival that is more educational than it is entertaining. Timeline for Homo Sapiens is billed at a T-Edge talk, an irreverent non-academic intellectual redneck look at prehistory. Freeman the Handyman is a street polymath that looks at the growth of civilization through the lens of an amateur anthropologist, biologist and geologist who loves to talk. All the ideas are worthy of a Travel Channel or DTOUR network special. It’s all about alternative theories exploring how we evolved and arrived to what we are today (and what we are doing to this planet). To be offered material much like how Erich von Däniken posits the development of ancient civilizations is a show I had to check out.

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Examining the Dark before the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, A Movie Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

Planet of the Apes

Those damn dirty apes are at it again. This time, they are going to own the world instead of hide from it in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. When a surviving pocket of humanity not devastated by Simian Flu pandemic needs to reactivate a dam so what’s left of San Francisco can obtain electricity, to see humans and apes clash is inevitable. Strangely, the reason is not necessarily about resource control.

This film series does not need viewers to remember every single detail from its previous film, Rise of … but remembering the key players certainly helps. Rocket the chimpanzee (Terry Notary), returns as Caesar’s right-hand man who is faithful to only him and Maurice the orangutan (Karin Konoval) is the humble monk who is wise to let the conflict play out by not interfering in the inevitable war that’s to come.

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