I have since took it upon myself to read the Christopher Isherwood novel A Single Man countless times, and match passages with stills from Tom Ford’s adaptation of the same name. Stay tuned for that, awesome novel and an awesome film. (Check it out if you haven’t yet)
Inspired by another post here on Tumblr, I decided to look into the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong a bit more, it truly was one of the most amazing and terrifying places on earth. Being slightly smaller than an NFL stadium, the structure was built of 350 smaller interconnected buildings and hosted, at it’s peak, a population density of 5 million people per square mile.
To put those numbers in perspective, this would be like taking the entire population of metro Philadelphia, the 4th largest in the US, and putting it in 1 square mile instead of 1,744.
The area was also largely ungoverned and unregulated. Factories, apartments, schools, temples, churches, shops, cafes, hotels and almost anything else one could imagine were housed within the structure that never had a full blueprint of it done. Buildings were built onto buildings, expanded, rebuilt, and re-purposed as needed without a central authority of any kind.
Within the structure, natural light was almost non-existent, and an unknown number of miles of jury-rigged wires provided electricity to everything. Water constantly dripped down to the lower levels from both rain and leaking pipes, while garbage filled every passage. A constant yellow haze filled the structure and there were never any government safety inspections.
The Kowloon Walled City was demolished in the early 1990s as part of the deal that returned Hong Kong to the Chinese from the British. The entire area is now a park.
I find places like this fascinating, it is just incredible what we, humans, build and live in. This, hive, for lack of a better term, was one of the most interesting structures I’ve yet looked at.
For a documentary shot inside of the Kowloon Walled City, check here:
^ Amazing. Kowloon was a densely populated, ungoverned settlement in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Originally a Chinese military fort, the ‘Walled City’ became an enclave after the New Territories were leased to Britain (1898), and populations increased during WW2. From the 1950s to the 1970s, it was controlled by Triads, and had high rates of prostitution, gambling and drug use.
Being a Film major I absolutely love watching HK films from this period for Kowloon appearances….. Films include Van Damme’s 1988 Bloodsport, and lesser known 1984 Hong Kong movie, English title Long Arm of the Law, which was shot in the walled city.
(via shacknoir)
…. 1979 British film of the same name is also based off of this album, directed by Franc Roddman, stars Phil Daniels and Leslie Ash…
Success! I ended up finishing my graduate prep course with an A, it’s clear to assume I will be continuing my studies after my undergrad is completed. Into what, I’ve yet to fully discover myself. I absolutely beheaded my final paper on the use of sound in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. I spent four intense weeks watching and re-watching, graphing dialogue shots, action shots and singing shots and went as far as differentiating between dubbed and synchronous sound. ‘
Yeah — I watched the film over sixty times in a month and could, quite honestly, re-watch it in my head right now if I wanted to. But it was all worth it.
Garden State, but it’s kind of obvious.
West Side Story falls in this same category. I want a film I can watch 50-60 times, get the queues right and be completely enthralled for the next three months cutting it up and working on my dissertation.
Maybe some Bresson?… The Devil, Probably
David Lynch?
anyone?
obtained, done, or made by stealth, secret or unauthorized.
Used in a sentence: Blackmail began production as a silent film. To cash in on the new found popularity of talkies the film’s producer, John Maxwell of British International Pictures, gave Hitchcock the go-ahead to film a portion of the movie in sound. Hitchcock thought the idea absurd and surreptitiously filmed almost the entire feature in sound along with a silent version for theatres not yet equipped for talking pictures.
… I found an original Cine-Kodak 8mm film camera with original box and instruction manual in MINT CONDISH. In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, this is a camera used and produced in the 1930s — I also somehow managed to get an Eastman Kodak film canister from the same period…
I am kind of freakin’ out.
Yesterday I watched a film called Sans Soleil, a 1983 film (or rather, film essay) by Chris Marker. Throughout the theme of the subjectivity of memory was discussed at length.. and while I did find the film stagnant at some points, overall I appreciated and could relate to the filmic message. My point is memory IS subjective… I’ve always felt cheated in life because we have such a short time here and our view is SO limited. Margaret Atwood, through her writing, has posited doors of perception and in doing so, she comments on the fact that one of the only truly unknowable things is another person’s mind. (She wrote The Penelopiad, Homer’s epic but told in the view of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, and her twelve hand-maids who hang themselves upon Odysseus’ return). And I can’t help but agree.
Not only does memory have to contend with subjectivity, but throw time in the mix and we have a whole new ball-game. Through the passage of time we see things change, people change… perhaps the thing we wanted last year isn’t necessarily the first item we would catalouge on our birthday or Christmas lists. Maybe it is. All I know is, what I know is — and isn’t that the fundamental anxiety of life?
