Yang Fudong (Chinese, born 1971) has called An Estranged Paradise (1997–2002), a film completed five years after its shooting due to lack of funds, a “little intellectual film,” a work about the educated class. Shot in 35mm and transferred to digital, this black-and-white film follows Zhuzi, a young man living in Hangzhou, also known as Paradise for its natural beauty. It captures a sense of alienation as Zhuzi, plagued by an unknown ailment, lifelessly goes about his daily life and seemingly drifts from one romantic relationship to another. From what illness could he be suffering? Scenes of doctor visits reveal little. The fragmented narrative reveals even less.

An intriguing landscape ink painting–demonstration sequence, more than four minutes long and appearing before the title card, provides cues for how to read this film. Trained as an oil painter at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (renamed China Academy of Art) in Hangzhou, before his interest turned to photography and film, Yang understandably has spent a lot of time contemplating the art of painting. Chinese ink painting occupies an essential place in traditional intellectual life as an educated person in ancient times was expected to master the Four Arts: qin(zither/music), qi (go/board game), shu (calligraphy), and hua (painting). Minimalist static shots capture the making of a traditional landscape ink painting, accompanied by a voice-over explaining the aesthetic: from the mastery of brushwork and the use of ink to the art of composition and the poetry embedded in each painting; more important than the representation of a landscape is the expression of the state of mind of the creator. 

The film’s multiple montage sequences, stitching together shots of natural scenery, commerce, street life, strangers, and train tracks, might not serve a narrative purpose but they conjure up a psychological and poetic landscape (much like what one finds in an ink painting) whereby Zhuzi lives out his existential crisis. His joylessness, aimlessness, and disengagement bring to mind the works of film auteur Michelangelo Antonioni, whose characters suffer the discontent and ennui associated with modernism. Yang, who was born during the Cultural Revolution and came of age when China was rapidly modernizing and transforming into a quasi–market economy, has effectively mapped out the state of mind of a character experiencing life evolving at breakneck speed.

Situating this film in the context of filmmaking in China at the time it was made, Yang, very much like his contemporaries Zhang Yuan, Lou Ye, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Jia Zhangke, among those known as Sixth Generation filmmakers, drew inspiration from the fast-changing world he lived in. This generation has witnessed the most turbulent transformations in Chinese society in modern times. A decade of Cultural Revolution (1966–76), the great proletarian movement, was quickly followed by economic reforms that opened up China to influences from the outside world. The brutal crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen student movement dealt a severe blow to the openness, but it was followed by China’s unimaginably rapid rise that made the country the global power we know today. Sixth Generation films provide observant studies of life undergoing drastic change. Like An Estranged Paradise, other films deal with the loss and alienation experienced by the young generation, such as Zhang’s Beijing Bastards (1993) and Jia’s Xiao Wu (1997) and Platform(2000). 

Now focusing on photography and media artworks, Yang might have chosen a different path from the Sixth Generation filmmakers, but he continues to reflect on life in his country. This “little intellectual film” would set the tone for Yang to further explore the experiences of the educated class. Most notable is the work Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest (2003–07), a series of five films inspired by an ancient legend about seven intellectuals so disturbed by world politics and matters that they retreat into the woods to live a life of drinking and merrymaking. There are intellectuals who choose resignation, but Yang carries on, engaging with the evolving world through his creative work. 

Read the essay by Guggenheim curator X Zhu-Nowell on another complex and fascinating video work, Zhang Peilli’s Document on Hygiene No. 3 on the Checklist blog.

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Fans of Malayalam and Indian independent films have much to cheer about these days. Sexy Durga (2017), the third feature by Thiruvananthapuram-based director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, won the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s top honor, the Tiger Award, in January of this year, a first for an Indian film. The film subsequently made its North American premiere at New Directors/New Films, co-presented by The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. This recognition calls attention not only to an emerging talent, but also to Malayalam and Indian regional cinema.

Sexy Durga is a spine-chilling horror/thriller/road-movie hybrid with a story that unfolds on deserted highways over the course of one evening. A young woman and man, Durga and Kabeer, are running away in the middle of the night. We don’t know why, nor is it ever revealed in the film, but the young couple is obviously desperate, as they try to hitch a ride from any stranger who can take them to the nearest railway station. Their names, one Hindu and the other Muslim, perhaps suggest a prohibited love story but we never find out. 

There is nothing especially suggestive or sexy about the way Durga looks: she appears to be an ordinary young woman, like one might see anywhere on the streets of India. However, appearing in the dead of night, hitchhiking with a male companion, she is immediately seen as sexual prey, as the plot inevitably brings to mind the gruesome real-life gang rape that took place in Delhi in 2012, when a young woman was brutally raped and later died from the injuries after she and her male companion boarded a bus. Horror awaits from the very moment Durga and Kabeer get into a van. The driver and his friend waste no time in making a quick and lewd comment about Durga’s body. They continue on, sizing her up and probing intrusively into the couple’s relationship. Throughout the night, the men repeatedly subject them to psychological intimidation, and Durga and Kabeer repeatedly plead to be dropped off. For more than an hour, we sit inside the claustrophobic van with Durga and Kabeer, fearing the worst.

Director Sasidharan intercuts this nightmarish fictional road trip with documentary footage of a temple celebration in honor of the goddess Durga. While women are seen as spectators on the periphery, men, in a ritualistic procession, walk barefoot over burning charcoal and suspend themselves by metal hooks that pierce their skin. These forms of self-flagellation, acts of sacrifice to the goddess, offer an intriguing and complex juxtaposition to the terror of Durga’s experiences. Such a provocative work examines sexual violence and misogyny in Indian society today and all the contradictions between beliefs and daily life. The suspense that keeps us on edge also challenges us to question our own fears and prejudices, as we make quick judgments during the course of the film, in considering the danger the couple faces.

In a film industry dominated by commercial fare, mostly in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu languages, the international recognition of this Malayalam film, a low-budget indie work without glamorous stars, is exceptionally exciting. There is, in fact, a cinema culture thriving across India, an enormously diverse country in which many different languages are spoken. The International Film Festival of Kerala, for example, which screened Sasidharan’s previous works, has become one of the most successful festivals in India. Held each year in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala’s capital, it has drawn renowned international participants, including Werner Herzog, Kim Ki-duk, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The festival has also consistently provided a platform for Malayalam and independent films from all over India. Its twenty-first edition, which took place over eight days in December, showcased close to two hundred films from more than sixty countries for an audience of thirteen thousand. Challenges, universal to say the least, continue to exist for filmmakers seeking resources and a sustainable market for their films, but for the moment we welcome the surge of creativity and audience enthusiasm.

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