One Second by Zhang Yimou

[GeneChing]

I'm not sure that there's any martial arts in this one, but it's Zhang Yimou. I'm still eager to see Shadow.

ANNUAL TOP FILMS LISTS Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #138. One Second – Zhang Yimou
By Nicholas Bell Published on January 1, 2019



One Second
Following his well-received martial arts action comeback Shadow (2018), Zhang Yimou heads back to low-key period drama with his next project One Second. Produced by Huanxi Media, the film is headlined by Zhang Yi (who appeared in Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart, 2015). While Yimou received considerable critical backlash for his 2016 Matt Damon led Hollywood epic The Great Wall, he is still best remembered for his action epics, such as the Jet Li headlined Hero (2002) and 2004’s House of Flying Daggers. However, Yimou remains one of China’s most formidable filmmakers, a Golden Bear winner and two-time Golden Lion winner, Yimou’s early works yielded considerable accolades. Competing in Berlin four times (Red Sorghum, 1988; The Road Home, 1999; Hero, 2002; A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, 2009), he took home the Bear in 1988, the Jury Grand Prix in 2000 and the Alfred Bauer in 2002. Yimou has had his greatest success in Venice, where he won the Golden Lion in 1992 for The Story of Qiu Ju and in 1999 for Not One Less, the Silver Lion in 1991 for Raise the Red Lantern, and another competition entry in 1997 with Keep Cool. He’s competed three times in Cannes (Ju Dou, 1990; To Live, 1994; Shanghai Triad, 1995), winning Grand Prize of the Jury and Ecumenical Jury Prize in 1994 and the Technical Grand Prize in 1995. Lately, Yimou’s works have tended to be invited to out-of-comp slots, such as 2014’s Coming Home (read review) in Cannes and 2018’s Shadow in Venice.

Gist: Co-written by Zou Jingzhi, the project is set in the mid-1970s in northwestern China, concerning a movie fan in a remote farmland and a homeless female vagabond.

Release Date/Prediction: Yimou began production in Dunhuang in July of 2018. We assume One Second will appear somewhere on the festival circuit in 2019, most likely in an out-of-comp slot in Cannes or Venice and potentially with a different title.

[GeneChing]

Not an Asian Film Festival, but Zhang Yimou's international clout makes One Second worthy of note. Anyone know any other of these films?

FILM FESTIVALS JANUARY 17, 2019 5:26AM PT

Berlin Adds ‘Vice,’ New Films by Zhang Yimou and Andre Techine to Official Lineup
By ROBERT MITCHELL


CREDIT: MATT KENNEDY

Five new titles, including the latest films from Zhang Yimou and Andre Techine, have joined the official selection of this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Adam McKay’s “Vice” has also been added, but will screen out of competition.

“Vice” has already won a Golden Globe for star Christian Bale’s portrayal of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and picked up six BAFTA nominations last week, including for Bale, supporting actor Sam Rockwell and supporting actress Amy Adams. The festival screening will mark its German premiere.

The new additions to the main competition lineup include the world premieres of Zhang’s “One Second” and Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms.” Techine’s “Farewell to the Night,” which stars Catherine Deneuve, also receives its world premiere at the Berlinale but will play out of competition. Alan Elliott’s documentary “Amazing Grace,” about Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, will screen out of competition as well, receiving its European premiere.

Berlin announced the additions Thursday, finalizing its Competition and Berlinale Special sections for the festival’s 69th edition in February. The competition section features 23 titles, with 17 competing for the Golden Bear. Seven of the 17 competing titles were directed by female filmmakers, including Lone Scherfig’s “The Kindness of Strangers,” which will open the festival on Feb. 7.

The other competition titles are Marie Kreutzer’s “The Ground Beneath My Feet”; Wang Xiaoshuai’s “So Long, My Son”; Isabel Coixet’s “Elisa & Marcela”; Fatih Akin’s “The Golden Glove”; Teona Strugar Mitevska’s “God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya”; Francois Ozon’s “By the Grace of God”; Angela Schanelec’s “I Was at Home, But”; Emin Alper’s “A Tale of Three Sisters”; Agnieszka Holland’s “Mr. Jones”; Wang Quan’an’s “Ondog”; Claudio Giovannesi’s “Piranhas”; Denis Cote’s “Ghost Town Anthology”; Nora Fingscheidt’s “System Crasher”; and Hans Petter Moland’s “Out Stealing Horses.”

Wagner Moura’s “Marighella,” Agnes Varda’s documentary “Varda by Agnes,” and Yuval Adler’s “The Operative” all receive out-of-competition screenings alongside “Vice,” “Farewell to the Night,” and “Amazing Grace.”

Three titles have been added to the Berlinale Special program, including the world premieres of new documentaries by Jean Michel Vecchiet (“Peter Lindbergh – Women Stories”) and Cordula Kablitz-Post (“You Only Live Once – Die Toten Hosen On Tour”). Also added to the section is Ritesh Batra’s “Photograph,” which receives its European premiere in Berlin.

The 69th Berlin Film Festival runs Feb. 7-17.

[GeneChing]

Now I really want to see it.

FEBRUARY 11, 2019 10:00PM PT
Banned in Berlin: Why China Said No Go to Zhang Yimou
By PATRICK FRATER
Asia Bureau Chief


CREDIT: MARIA LAURA ANTONELLI/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Chinese executives and international film festival programmers are scratching their heads to understand why Zhang Yimou’s “One Second” was withdrawn from the Berlin Film Festival’s main competition just days before its premiere.

The Berlinale echoed the film’s official social media site Monday in saying that the highly anticipated film was being withdrawn for “technical reasons.” Zhang’s color-drenched martial arts film “Hero” from 2002 will takes its slot on Friday evening, but will play out of competition.

The phrase “technical reasons” is both a euphemism and a reality for Chinese filmmakers, none of whom can ever be said to have completed their movie until regulators sign off on every detail. No Chinese director or producer, however skilled, acclaimed or wealthy, has final say over his or her movie. That rests with the Chinese government.

In the case of “One Second,” it is possible that the subject matter, rooted in Mao Zedong’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, was the problem. The ruling Communist Party has acknowledged that the period was an economic and social disaster. But it remains a highly sensitive subject.

Zhang’s movie depicts an escaped prisoner and an orphan girl who has stolen a newsreel containing the one second of footage that the man desperately wants to see. Zhang had framed the story as his tribute to cinema.

The film’s historical setting and storyline must have been known to film industry regulators several months ago, when “One Second” cleared its first step, script approval. The question now is what happened to spark the embarrassing last-minute withdrawal from the Berlin fest.

One potential reason is administrative. The so-called “Dragon Seal,” a title card shown ahead of every film confirming that it has cleared all local and national censorship processes, may no longer be enough on its own for a film to premiere at a foreign festival. The film must receive an additional travel permit. Once that is granted, the film’s length and dialog cannot be changed, and additional producers and investors cannot come on board.

This process is understood to have been introduced in 2017, as part of China’s Film Industry Promotion Law, but only to have been strictly applied from this year. It’s believed that the Wang Quan’an film “Ondog,” which played in competition in Berlin on Friday, and the Wang Xiaoshuai film “So Long, My Son,” which premieres in Berlin on Thursday, both obtained exit permits. It’s not clear that “One Second” had completed that extra step.

Other reasons are political. Responsibility for the entertainment sector in China shifted last year from the State Council to direct control by the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department. That has meant a tightening of ideological oversight.

Presenting his own potentially inflammatory film depicting rioting, corruption and murder, director Lou Ye revealed that getting “The Shadow Play” approved had taken two years of negotiation with censors. The film plays in Berlin’s Panorama section.

“This was the most complicated material I’ve ever presented. And it was the most difficult censorship process I’ve ever lived through,” he said Monday at a Berlin press conference. “Over the past 10 years, I’ve been asked about censorship more than any other topic. My position on censorship has not changed: Film should be free.”

In the past, both Zhang and Lou have been considered by authorities as troublemakers. Zhang, who was sent for re-education during the Cultural Revolution, saw his 1994 epic “To Live” banned in China, despite winning awards in Cannes that year. Though Westerners may not understand the message, Zhang’s “Hero” was criticized in some quarters for an ending that in some eyes supported the Communist Party narrative.

Zhang was only fully rehabilitated in 2008 when he choreographed the opulent opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing that year. In 2015, Zhang was fined over $1 million for violation of China’s one-child policy, which the government officially dropped the following year.

But if Zhang himself is the problem, why was his last film “Shadow” allowed to play at both Venice and Toronto, seemingly without problem?

“One Second” is the second mainland Chinese film to be withdrawn from the Berlinale in the space of a week. On the eve of the festival, it was announced that youth film “Better Days” would also not be able to play. Sources have told Variety that the reason was censorship-related.

While the fate of Zhang’s picture remains a mystery, one thing is for sure: Festival programmers selecting Chinese movies need to have contingency plans.

[GeneChing]

Cannes: The Buzz Films That Won't Be at the Festival
4:22 AM PDT 4/18/2019 by Scott Roxborough


Andrew Cooper
Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' will not be ready for Cannes, the festival said.

There will likely be no Quentin Tarantino on the Croisette, even though the festival says his latest film could still make the cut if the director finishes it soon, with high-profile omissions from the lineup including Ari Aster's 'Midsommar,' Benh Zeitlin's 'Wendy' and Hirokazu Kore-eda's 'The Truth.'

Cannes, once the undisputed heavyweight champion of international film festivals, has been on the ropes of late.

Last year's lineup included some impressive titles — Palme d'Or winner Shoplifters and Alice Rohrwacher's Happy as Lazzaro were two standouts — but the buzz and awards attention were elsewhere, thanks in part to the festival's ongoing spat with Netflix, which sent Alfonso Cuaron's Roma to Venice for its world premiere.

Netflix is skipping Cannes again this year, so the French festival will have to do without such potential awards contenders as Martin Scorsese's mob epic The Irishman, Meryl Streep starrer The Laundromat from director Steven Soderbergh and Noah Baumbach’s period drama The King, starring Timothee Chalamet.

But Netflix's absence was expected. More surprising were the high-profile omissions from the 2019 lineup that many had predicted were sure things for the Croisette this year.

Top of the list is Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, which looked like a lock for the 72nd edition of the Cannes festival. But the feature — which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Timothy Olyphant —wasn't ready in time, the festival said Thursday. Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux said the post-production on the film, which Tarantino shot in traditional 35 mm, has been particularly time-consuming and he was “in a sprint” to finish it in time for its scheduled release this summer. Fremaux did hold out a smidgen of hope that the movie could still be a late addition to Cannes, should it be ready before the festival kicks off on May 14.

Another surprising absence this year is The Truth, Hirokazu Kore-eda's follow-up to Shoplifters, which won Cannes' Palme d'Or just last year. Sources near the Japanese filmmaker said Kore-eda had been angling for a Cannes opening- night slot — the film is his first feature shot outside Japan and features French stars Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. Cannes said the movie was not ready in time. The Truth will now likely premiere in Venice instead.

One Cannes regular who won't be making the trip this year is James Gray, whose Ad Astra was not among the 19 competition titles announced Thursday. The American auteur has bowed four of his past five films in Cannes and, with Fox setting a May 24 release date for his new sci-fi picture starring Brad Pitt and Ruth Negga, most expected Ad Astra to touch down on the Croisette. It was not to be.

Ad Astra was just one of several hotly-anticipated U.S. features that were tipped for Cannes, but will be missing the fest. Midsommar, Ari Aster's follow-up to Hereditary, will not be scaring folks on the French Rivera this year. Fans of Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild will have to wait a bit longer for his second feature, Wendy, about two children from different worlds stranded on a mysterious island where aging and time have come unglued. And First Cow, indie film heroine Kelly Reichardt's adaptation of Jonathan Raymond’s The Half-Life: A Novel, a period drama set in the 1820s Pacific Northwest, will also not be making the trek to Cannes.

Fans of Justin Kurzel — many of whom discovered him in Cannes, where he premiered both The Snowtown Murders and Macbeth — hoped the Australian director would return to the festival with The True History of the Kelly Gang, an adaptation of the Peter Carey book starring Russell Crowe, Nicholas Hoult and Charlie Hunnam. But the film didn't make the 2019 cut. Perhaps the movie is a bit too mainstream for Cannes' liking. Or maybe the festival is still recovering from Kurzel's video-game adaptation Assassin Creed.

On a more serious note, Zhang Yimou's One Second will also not screen in Cannes. The drama was slated to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival before being ignominiously yanked at the last minute, officially for “technical reasons.” It is widely assumed Chinese censors have blocked the movie, which is set during the politically sensitive period of China's Cultural Revolution. There had been hope that a version of the film would be available for Cannes. Now it is unclear if the movie will be seen at all.

Cannes Film Festival poster 2019

SCOTT ROXBOROUGH
Scott.Roxborough@THR.com
sroxborough

THREADS
Cannes
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
One Second by Zhang Yimou

[GeneChing]

Nov 10, 2020 8:39pm PT
Zhang Yimou’s Censored ‘One Second’ to Debut at Government-Run Golden Rooster Festival

By Rebecca Davis


Photographer:BAIXIAOYAN

Zhang Yimou’s censored film “One Second” apparently now finds itself in the Chinese government’s good books: it has been given pride of place as the opener at the government-run Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival.

The film was initially set to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2019. But its treatment of the still sensitive Cultural revolution period is believed to have been its undoing. It was abruptly pulled from the festival due to “technical reasons,” a common euphemism for censorship, in one of the highest profile cases of Chinese state intervention seen abroad in recent years.

Now, after apparent reshoots and, at long last, government approvals for a Nov. 27 commercial theatrical release, it is set to debut at the festival in Xiamen city on Nov. 25.

Zhang’s premiere likely seeks to add glitz and a bit of legitimacy to the Roosters, which critics have historically scoffed at as a propagandistic affair of little relevance outside of China, and focused more on political bona fides than artistic merit.

The 33rd iteration of the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival and its accompanying Golden Rooster Award ceremony will run from Nov. 25 to 28. It seeks to rival the Taipei-based Golden Horse Awards, which have historically been the most prestigious awards issued to Chinese language cinema.

The Taipei event had angered Chinese authorities in 2018 by issuing a prize to a pro-Taiwan independence filmmaker who expressed her views on stage during an acceptance speech, causing retaliation from China.

Last year, Beijing scheduled its Golden Rooster Awards for the same day as the Golden Horse ceremony and banned all mainland industry players from attending. It also announced that the Golden Rooster festival will now take place annually instead of bi-annually, as it had been since 2005, and gave the event a permanent home in the coastal Xiamen, which lies just half hour ferry’s ride away from Taiwan’s Kinmen island.

The festival portion of the mainland event is broken into two sections, with one showcasing around 20 local mainland productions and the other exhibiting around 40 international films, including ones from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Founded in 1981, the Golden Rooster Awards honor films “that have been reviewed and approved by the National Film Bureau” — that is, passed official Chinese censorship — between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020 according to the official Xinhua news agency. It is sponsored by the China Film Association and China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and operates “with the approval of the Central Propaganda Bureau,” the agency added.

This year, prizes will be given out across 18 categories. The youth drama “Better Days” is the most nominated film, with 11 nods. Volleyball drama “Leap” and crime thriller “Sheep Without a Shepherd,” a remake of the 2013 Indian film “Drishyam,” come in second with eight nominations apiece.

(Although “Leap” was scheduled to premiere in January, it didn’t end up hitting cinemas until Sept. 25 due to COVID-19 theater closures, and is likely the reason why this year the event specify that titles approved but not necessarily screened within the year-long time frame are eligible for prizes.)

The five nominees for best narrative feature film include three directed by helmers from outside the mainland. They include: “Leap”, from Hong Kong’s Peter Chan; Hong Kong director Derek Tsang’s youth drama “Better Days”; “Sheep Without a Shepherd” from Malaysia-born director Sam Quah; Mongolian language film “Chaogtu with Sarula,” which won the best artistic contribution award at the Tokyo Intl. Film Festival last year; “Spring Tide,” a family drama from female helmer Yang Lina; and — no surprise — propagandistic National Day film “My People, My Country,” created as a tribute to the ruling Communist Party.

There are six nominees for best director: all the helmers of the five above titles, plus the duo Shen Zhou and Liu Lu for their film “Almost a Comedy, which grossed just $28 million.

Best actor nominees include TFBoy boy band idol Jackson Yee (“Better Days”), Da Peng (in rom-com “My Dear Liar”), Xiao Yang (“Sheep Without a Shepherd”), Wu Yuhan (“Almost A Comedy”), and Huang Xiaoming (“The Bravest”).

Best actress nominees include Zhou Dongyu (“Better Days”), Tan Zhuo (“Sheep Without a Shepherd”), Ren Suxi (“Almost a Comedy”), Liu Yan (“My Dear Liar”), and Zhu Xijuan (“The Empty Nest”).

There are only four nominees for best screenplay, a category that encompasses both original and adapted works. They are the writers of “Sheep Without a Shepherd,” “Leap,” “Better Days,” and “Almost a Comedy.”

Threads
Asian Film Festivals and Awards
One Second

[GeneChing]

Mubi Buys Zhang Yimou’s Toronto Fest Closer ‘One Second’ for Multiple Territories (Exclusive)
The Cultural Revolution-set drama from China's most celebrated filmmaker was the subject of controversy after it was pulled from the 2019 Berlin Film Festival due to censorship objections from Chinese authorities.

BY ALEX RITMAN

JULY 27, 2021 4:00AM

'One Second' COURTESY OF NEON
Mubi’s spending spree is rolling on.

The art house film streaming platform and theatrical distributor has added yet another buzzy title to its library following a very active few months, buying all rights for renowned Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s period drama One Second, this year’s Toronto Film Festival closer, for the U.K., Ireland, Germany and Turkey.

The Cultural Revolution-set film, written by Zhang — best known for films such as Raise the Red Lantern, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers, and the the first Chinese filmmaker to receive Oscar recognition (for 1990’s Ju Dou) — along with Zou Jingzhi and based on the novel by Yan Geling, centers on rural Chinese village that comes together to restore a destroyed film reel. Among them is an escaped prisoner, a young vagabond scheming to steal the reel away and a projectionist known as Mr. Movie. Starring Zhang Yi, Liu Haocun, and Fan Wei, the film was shot in and around the small Chinese town of Dunhuang, known for its evocative, sand dune-swathed landscape.

One Second — which Neon recently acquired for North America and will close Toronto on Sept. 18 — became the subject of intense controversy in 2019 after its world premiere was pulled at the last minute from the Berlin International Film Festival, widely acknowledged to be due to censorship objections from the Chinese government. A year-long struggle with authorities ensued, with Zhang and his actors returning to the Gobi desert in China’s Gansu Province for reshoots, before Beijing regulators finally approved it for release in late 2020.

The film now joins a bumper lineup of recent additions for Mubi, which spent the Cannes Film Festival cherry picking some of the hottest titles from the official selection, acquiring rights to Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner Titane, Andrea Arnold’s Cow, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island, Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Lamb, Leos Carax’s Cannes opener Annette, Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta, Sebastien Meise’s Great Freedom, Kira Kovalenko’s Un Certain Regard winning Unclenching the Fists, Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, Tatiana Huezo’s Prayers for the Stolen and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Lingui, The Sacred Bonds.

Other upcoming theatrical releases for Mubi include Ben Sharrock’s BAFTA-nominated Limbo, Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure, Andreas Fontana’s Azor, Alexandre Koberidz’s What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? and Céline Sciamma’s latest feature Petite Maman.

One Second is a Huanxi Media Group Production and produced by William Kong, Ping Dong, Liwei Pang and Shaokun Xian. Wild Bunch International is handling international sales.

Nothing sells like censorship