Asians are conquering Hollywood and Cannes!
March 12, 2006 | 12:00am
Congrats to Ang Lee, the first Asian director to conquer the turf of Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta Jones, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Steven Spielberg! Congrats for winning the Oscar Award for Best Director!
It is not impossible for this ethnic Chinese writer and aspiring future novelist born and raised in the exotic and dramatic setting of the Philippines to have illusions of grandeur. Why not someday dream of conquering the global market for imagination as the Southeast Asian version of American author Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code, British creator of Harry Potter J. K. Rowlings, Chinese immigrant and US’ award-winning novelist Ha Jin and Colombian Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Perhaps even as the first Southeast Asian Ang Lee or Steven Spielberg?
If Colombia has for generations been dominated by corrupt politics, violence and social upheavals ideal for Marquez to create his incisive satires and breathtaking novels in the fantabulous "magical realism", then this beautiful archipelago of the Philippine Islands that was a former Spanish and American colony in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and near booming East Asia can be a much more fascinating tableau for great novels and epic movies that should move the rest of the world into awe or tears. A lot of the great and perceptive novelists in America like Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow or in Europe like Franz Kafka are from ethnic Jewish minorities, thus providing unique, critical and even tragic-comic perspectives to their societies.
The recent victory of 52-year-old Taiwanese director Ang Lee of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon films in Hollywood is a source of pride and inspiration not only for all ethnic Chinese, but for all Asians. If Ang Lee can do it, perhaps Lee Flores too, and all others who dare daydream and work at it!
Next to bring glory to Asia as a world-class artist will be Shanghai-born director Wong Kar Wai who gave us films such as Hong Kong’s wonderful masterpiece In the Mood for Love, for he will be the chairman of the board of jurors in world’s most prestigious Cannes Film Festival from May 18 to 27. Wong will be following the footsteps of such great directors as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and David Cronenberg.
Wong Kar Wai told the world media: "There is an old Chinese saying: One can never expect the wind, but should always keep one’s window open. Along with my fellow jurors, I look forward to sharing the dreams created by some of the gifted talents in contemporary cinema. And our goal is to keep our windows open as wide as possible."
One of China’s top directors, 53-year-old Chen Kaige, hailed the victory of Ang Lee in the Oscar Awards and said: ""I don’t think there’s a big difference between Chinese and Taiwanese filmmakers. We have the same cultural roots, we feel like we are brothers…He’s someone we can learn so much from. He can combine beautiful Chinese culture with western spirit. I respect him a lot."
Chen Kaige is the guest of honor at this year’s Asian Film Festival in the chic French seaside resort of Deauville, and has also won Best Director and Best Film awards internationally. His masterpiece Farewell My Concubine was an epic tale about the lives of two Beijing opera performers and it won the prestigious Palme D’Or Best Film Award at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Although Ang Lee has won Hollywood accolades, Wong Kar Wai is now tops in Cannes and Chen Kaige and others are high-profile in Western cultural circles nowadays, my No. 1 favorite Chinese film director is still Zhang Yimou who gave us such unforgettable film masterpieces as To Live, Raise the Red Lantern, Not One Less, Hero, Red Sorghum, The Long Road Home, and many others.
No kidding. There’s no harm in us daydreaming of attempting at this boundless enterprise of creativity, so that we Asians will not just be world-famous for exporting TV sets, computers, DVD players, stuffed toys, jeans or rubber shoes. My late educator mother used to remind me that I should try to be a world-class novelist like her childhood idol Ba Jin and others, but she never knew that I’d settle to be a columnist of a great newspaper (but Ma, that’s better than being a calumnist!). A Shakespeare and Mozart of Southeast Asia in the making (even if just still in our reveries for now), why not try? If I can’t become a taipan of business or a billionaire tycoon (though this dustpan will not give up in trying), then perhaps a future typhoon in art and creativity?
Thanks for all your messages. Comments, suggestions, jokes and even criticisms are welcome at wilson_lee_flores@yahoo.com or wilson_lee_flores@hotmail.com.
It is not impossible for this ethnic Chinese writer and aspiring future novelist born and raised in the exotic and dramatic setting of the Philippines to have illusions of grandeur. Why not someday dream of conquering the global market for imagination as the Southeast Asian version of American author Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code, British creator of Harry Potter J. K. Rowlings, Chinese immigrant and US’ award-winning novelist Ha Jin and Colombian Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Perhaps even as the first Southeast Asian Ang Lee or Steven Spielberg?
If Colombia has for generations been dominated by corrupt politics, violence and social upheavals ideal for Marquez to create his incisive satires and breathtaking novels in the fantabulous "magical realism", then this beautiful archipelago of the Philippine Islands that was a former Spanish and American colony in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and near booming East Asia can be a much more fascinating tableau for great novels and epic movies that should move the rest of the world into awe or tears. A lot of the great and perceptive novelists in America like Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow or in Europe like Franz Kafka are from ethnic Jewish minorities, thus providing unique, critical and even tragic-comic perspectives to their societies.
The recent victory of 52-year-old Taiwanese director Ang Lee of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon films in Hollywood is a source of pride and inspiration not only for all ethnic Chinese, but for all Asians. If Ang Lee can do it, perhaps Lee Flores too, and all others who dare daydream and work at it!
Next to bring glory to Asia as a world-class artist will be Shanghai-born director Wong Kar Wai who gave us films such as Hong Kong’s wonderful masterpiece In the Mood for Love, for he will be the chairman of the board of jurors in world’s most prestigious Cannes Film Festival from May 18 to 27. Wong will be following the footsteps of such great directors as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and David Cronenberg.
Wong Kar Wai told the world media: "There is an old Chinese saying: One can never expect the wind, but should always keep one’s window open. Along with my fellow jurors, I look forward to sharing the dreams created by some of the gifted talents in contemporary cinema. And our goal is to keep our windows open as wide as possible."
One of China’s top directors, 53-year-old Chen Kaige, hailed the victory of Ang Lee in the Oscar Awards and said: ""I don’t think there’s a big difference between Chinese and Taiwanese filmmakers. We have the same cultural roots, we feel like we are brothers…He’s someone we can learn so much from. He can combine beautiful Chinese culture with western spirit. I respect him a lot."
Chen Kaige is the guest of honor at this year’s Asian Film Festival in the chic French seaside resort of Deauville, and has also won Best Director and Best Film awards internationally. His masterpiece Farewell My Concubine was an epic tale about the lives of two Beijing opera performers and it won the prestigious Palme D’Or Best Film Award at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Although Ang Lee has won Hollywood accolades, Wong Kar Wai is now tops in Cannes and Chen Kaige and others are high-profile in Western cultural circles nowadays, my No. 1 favorite Chinese film director is still Zhang Yimou who gave us such unforgettable film masterpieces as To Live, Raise the Red Lantern, Not One Less, Hero, Red Sorghum, The Long Road Home, and many others.
No kidding. There’s no harm in us daydreaming of attempting at this boundless enterprise of creativity, so that we Asians will not just be world-famous for exporting TV sets, computers, DVD players, stuffed toys, jeans or rubber shoes. My late educator mother used to remind me that I should try to be a world-class novelist like her childhood idol Ba Jin and others, but she never knew that I’d settle to be a columnist of a great newspaper (but Ma, that’s better than being a calumnist!). A Shakespeare and Mozart of Southeast Asia in the making (even if just still in our reveries for now), why not try? If I can’t become a taipan of business or a billionaire tycoon (though this dustpan will not give up in trying), then perhaps a future typhoon in art and creativity?
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