Opera Jawa: Asia Society, May 20, 2007
This one might have slipped by some of the NYC film buffs: Opera Jawa, the acclaimed 2006 film from Indonesian director Garin Negroho, is screening tomorrow night at the Asia Society at 7 pm. I recently caught Negroho's previous film Of Love and Eggs, and he's definitely a stylist to watch, though I haven't got the measure of him yet. Opera Jawa was part of Peter Sellars' New Crowned Hope series, which premiered at Venice 2006.
Labels: screenings
posted by Dan Sallitt | 11:45 AM
5 Comments:
Glad to see the new blog Dan. I wasn't aware of this screening and it has only added complications to a Sunday where I have to somehow juggle seeing Fuller's PARK ROW at Museum of the Moving Image and Garrel's WILD INNOCENCE at BAM on the same day.
I'll be curious to hear what you think of this. I saw it in Rotterdam and found it tedious and kind of hard to sit through. I wanted so much to like it: an Indonesian musical and Olaf Möller was raving about it. But it came off as (slightly) more exotic Julie Taymor. A total snooze.
hope you see it Dan. Caught it in Pusan - one of my favorites of last year.
I've seen two earlier films--A Poet and Leaf on a Pillow. I like them both, both're different stylistically and substantially. He's a filmmaker to watch, definitely.
I'm in the pro-Negroho camp, even though I didn't feel a lot of cumulative effect from the film. It was almost like a demonstration of Negroho's filmmaking toolkit, and I found it super-impressive in that regard: it looked gorgeous, had a sense of rhythm and event that could absorb odd decisions, conveyed a strong sense of location, and really did a lot with color. If I never really connected with the overall mission statement, I guess that's not so surprising, given what I know about Javanese mythologies and art traditions. But I'll see anything else the guy manages to get shown here.
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