| China jails Tibetan filmmaker Dhongdup Wangchen sentenced to six years after making documentary highlighting Tibetan anger with Beijing policiesA Chinese court has jailed a Tibetan filmmaker for six years after he made a documentary critical of Beijing's policies, friends and campaigners said today.Dhongdup Wangchen and his friend Golog Jigme, a monk, were detained shortly after completing Leaving Fear Behind, which highlighted Tibetan anger with Chinese policies before the Olympics. The tapes had already been smuggled out of the country.The films featured interviews with ordinary Tibetans who expressed their love for the Dalai Lama, their exiled spiritual leader, and said the Olympics would do little to improve their lives. "The Chinese say they have made improvements in Tibet. But we don't see any improvement at all," Wangchen said in the documentary. "The truth is that Tibetans are not free to speak of their suffering."A statement placed on a website promoting the film said the 35-year-old filmmaker was sentenced on 28 December in Xining, provincial capital of Qinghai, where there is a large Tibetan population. His family said he was jailed for subversion. They found out about the sentencing only recently, Wangpo Tethong, a friend living in exile, told Associated Press.Calls to the Xining Intermediate People's Court were unanswered.Li Dunyong, a lawyer hired by the family but replaced with a government appointee by authorities, told AP the filmmaker had appealed. In a statement posted on the film's website, Wangchen's wife, Lhama Tso, who is living in exile in India, said: "I appeal to the court in Xining to allow my husband to have a legal representative of his own choosing."My children and I feel desperate about the prospect of not being able to see him for so many years. We call on the Chinese authorities to show humanity by releasing him. My husband is not a criminal, he just tried to show the truth."Wangchen was arrested in March 2008, shortly before riots erupted in Lhasa and spread across other Tibetan areas outside the autonomous region.A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said that while she had not heard of the case, all Chinese citizens enjoyed basic rights, including freedom of speech. She told a news briefing in Beijing: "You will only be punished if you break the law."ChinaTibetDalai LamaDocumentaryTania Braniganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
A Biggest Loser will die, stars fear TRAINERS Jillian Michaels and Michelle Bridges tell of their fear someone will die on the show. news.com.au |
Infinite Jest goes on (to the screen) Columbia University has had the bright idea of commissioning film-makers to realise the works of James Incandenza, hero of David Foster Wallace's magnum opusHow surreally wonderful to discover that an entire exhibition devoted to the "works" of David Foster Wallace's fictional creation James Incandenza is set to open later this month. A cult filmmaker, Incandenza is the star of Wallace's seminal novel Infinite Jest (the 1,000-page book centres on the missing master copy of his film of the same name, so entertaining it renders spectators incapable of doing anything other than watch it).As was his wont, Wallace included a footnote in the novel about the filmography of Incandenza, and now using the author's "detailed list of over 70 industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic non-commercial, and non-dramatic commercial works", Columbia University's Neiman Centre has commissioned artists and filmmakers to make the movies. They don't appear to be taking on the Infinite Jest movie itself – creating something that renders an audience catatonic with pleasure would be something of a challenge, I suppose.Wallace is, of course, an author who inspires this sort of obsessive devotion – and his own extensive footnoting (Infinite Jest contains almost 400) means there's plenty of material to explore. But there must be lots of other fictional creations that deserve a life outside the page – David Barnett pointed last year to a trend for novels by fictional characters, but are there any other fictional filmmakers whose work you'd like to actually see? Artists? Musicians? I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing the paintings of Elaine Risley, she of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, I'd love to read the children's stories of AS Byatt's Olive Wellwood from The Children's Book, and perhaps it's only because we saw him in the office on Monday, and got somewhat overexcited, but wouldn't it be great if an artist recreated the illuminations from Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red? Please share your own ideas – and maybe we can inspire someone to take the projects on.David Foster WallaceFictionAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Hairy moment for Golden Globes winner GOLDEN Globe winner had more important things on her mind than shaving her legs before awards. news.com.au |
Trailer Trash Why hasn't Bafta done more to give back the British film industry its self-esteem?The Brits aren't comingAs Avatar nudges box office history, British films are having a tough time at home. Despite warm reviews and wide media coverage, films such as Me and Orson Welles, Nowhere Boy, Fish Tank and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll have returned frankly rubbish UK audience figures. But is this any surprise when our own awards body relegates British film to its own sub-ghetto? Don't last week's Bafta nominations basically suggest that British film is a weedy cousin to Hollywood, not worthy of playing with the big boys but allowed instead a tiny playground category of its own? British film cannot possibly grow in confidence and ambition when it receives such limiting knocks from its compatriot peers. The message it sends out, to both audiences and film-makers here, is thus muddied and unhelpful. In this most mediocre of awards seasons, this was a perfect opportunity for Bafta to do something different and pit films on a level playing field by mixing, say, France's A Prophet in there with The Hurt Locker and, if one must, An Education, or, preferably, In the Loop or Moon. Bafta did brilliantly in shifting its date to become part of the pre-Oscar circus, but it is now time to forget the glamour factor, get bolder and do something unique for the good of film.Mixed blessingsTrash was, at least, delighted by Andy Serkis's Bafta nomination for best actor and the Blockheads' Chaz Jankel's nod in the music category, both for Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. But among An Education's eight nominations, how come the splendid supporting turn of Rosamund Pike was about the only category on which the film missed out? My particular thrill was to see a nomination for the short film Mixtape, directed by 23-year-old Luke Snellin. I saw this as part of a Virgin Media competition (you can still see it on www.virginmediashorts.co.uk) and was immediately charmed by its retro story of a boy who makes a cassette of songs for the girl next door. Its fine young star is Bill Milner, from Son of Rambow and currently excelling in… Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.Heroes for hireIrish director Jim Sheridan is now working in Hollywood, exporting the Irish experience. His latest film Brothers stars Tobey Maguire, and he's currently shooting in Toronto on a film called Dream House, with Daniel Craig. The irony of these two stars' iconographies has not escaped him. "I got Spider-Man and James Bond on their days off," he laughs. "Yes, as a director you have to be aware of how audiences see them, so you try to do something different with them. You don't get those roles without being a very good actor, so they are usually keen to experiment a bit anyway." In Dream House, Craig heads a family (Irish-American, of course) who move into a lovely new home only to find it haunted by previous occupants. Licensed to exorcise, perhaps?Daniel CraigIan DuryBaftasJason Solomonsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |