Talkback
What do you think about the blurred lines between the real and the imaginary in HOW IS YOUR FISH TODAY? Share your response and your reactions to the film.
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To Max:
The film mentioned in 'How Is Your Fish Today?' was Eric Rohmer's 'The Green Ray' aka 'Summer':
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091830/
I was ready to go to bed when."How was Your Fish Today" came on...I could not leave this compelling story of modern China. I have traveled throughout the PRC and many of the places in the film. I've experienced the culture first hand. I enjoyed the story and my favorite scene was the fish dinner in Mohe. It reminded me of the many times I've seen people relishing the fish head. Thank you and want to say we must all tell congress to fund PBS and NPR it is a valuable resource for our country.
It has captivated me and I cannot get it out of my mind. I could not avoid reevaluating my passion for the Faroe Islands... so similar to his fascination with Mohe... it evoked in me very powerful feelings of invalidity and disillusionment..
Thank you for the outstanding film, "How's Your Fish Today?". It was a truly beautiful insight into the life of Chinese writers. The cinematography was excellent and brought back memories of when I lived in Beijing.
Thanks again.
"How Is Your Fish, Today?" is about a journey for a modern Chinese Lin Hao to Mohe from his home in Southern China to China's most northern tip, Mohe; where one can see the Northern Lights. This journey reveals modern China.
"The screeplay for "How is your Fish, Today?" I thought was good because of the story line it followed. I learned a lot about China today in this film.
This film is a revelation. Defying conventional classification, it is a brilliant, stunning and profound pasticcio, an inspired collision of scripted dramatic fiction and naked documentary, of existential meditation and mood, soaring imagination and searing observation.
Xiaolu Guo is as assured and fluid wielding the tools of filmmaking as the past masters of European cinema from whom she clearly learned and assimilated them, having studied and taught at the Beijing Film Academy for some eight years. Like the Cahiers du Cinema critics who consumed and digested American movies, then deconstructed and transformed them into a new and original body of French film art in the 1960’s, the New Wave, Guo’s alchemy on the work of seminal European film artists of past generations is just as unexpected, astonishing and original.
A very close friend of mine from Xi'an introduced me to Xiaolu Guo's dictionary novel, and after reading Village of Stone, I am a big fan of her art forms. I just happened to return from China on Feb 1st and not being able to sleep, flicked on PBS and without knowing who produced this film, I was immediately captivated by the imagery of this story of a young man and what he would do to avoid boredom. When the credits came up and Xiaolu Guo was listed as director and producer, it became obvious why the film felt so familiar, like a friend. Her style of filming and telling the story feel the same as her style of writing novels.
Each of my exposures to Guo, through the 2 books of hers that I have read, and now this film, leave me sad but reflective. They expose and explore the realness of life, but she digs much deeper and provides the dialog that is constantly running through our mind, yet we never seem to acknowledge.
I'm really very, very grateful to my friend Ann for introducing me to Xiaolu Guo, and doing it as a way of helping me understand the cultural differences that occur with living in a 'gap'. I'm grateful to Xiaolu Guo for being so honest in her writings and film making, and will follow her journey, which now seems to be mine.
I just caught the last 30 minutes of this film. I am thinking of ordering a copy so that anytime I start feeling dissatisfied or depressed with any part of my life, I just have to play five minutes of this video and I will be filled with immense gratitude for my freedom of worship, my heated and air conditioned apartment, and all the beauty I have all around me, even on a cold, wet, dreary day. I didn't see any blurred lines between the real and the imaginery. The only time I became aware that there may be some fiction being told here was when I saw Lin lying on the ice "breathless". But everything else was real, real, real. That short film said more to me about life in China for average person than anything I was ever told,read or viewed on tape, film or in National Geographic.
I thought this film was fantastic in many ways. It was clever and beautiful.
But PBS managed to ruin the experience of watching it by having ugly red banners periodically appear across the bottom of the screen declaring what program was coming up next. How irritating. If I were the film maker, I would have been furious.
Captivating if somewhat confusing--maybe because I came in as a viewer in media res. Worth watching however.
I found it particularly interesting that most of the villagers in Moshe went to church every night--was this true faith or a sign of nothing better to do??
wow.. this was the first film of china that has really put me back there again, from the streets to the countryside with all the people in between.
it blurs the line between the real world and the virtual ones we create, whether those be in our minds, upon paper, or in a more digital way. it is very much in line with other media we see today, but unique in its approach.
this film, with subtle force, makes real the fantasy that we all find ourselves engaged in on an almost daily basis - our minds narrating an imagination running wild with thoughts of the daring and brash better version of ourselves, played out as a movie-like projection. 'if only i could do that!' we say into the mirror. ms guo has made it so.
I was flipping between channels on the t.v. I have came across this small film. I was very surprised at the unity of people in this small chinese village. I feel that this unity is very rarely in small towns and cities in our country. I had wished to watch the whole film for the beginning.
I am stunned. For one thing, that such places are still even possible to unveil with a camera without any evidence of some degree of artifice to enhance our sense of downward primitivizing, and, secondly, to so conveniently have a chance to join the photographer and imagine these scenes so intimately, scenes virtually carved from the rich micro intensity of the Chinese artistic heart. By co-incidence, wind chills here are 30 below this evening, which gives the total effect no small advantage.
Val
the National Endowment for the Arts