@ Filmhuis Cavia Amsterdam

@ Focus Filmtheater Arnhem

AMN Seasonal Festiva - Spring 2023
Songs of Mourning

In this beautiful spring, let’s talk about death. Yes, death.

Though we rarely put its name in our mouths, it follows closely behind our every mundane action, in the news, on our table, the edges of our bodies, as an inseparable part of life.

How do we encounter death?

In this year’s opening programme Songs of Mourning, Asian Movie Night presents four films that take us on a poetic journey into questions that art has been trying to grasp since the beginning of time, meditating on death, mourning and loss, or even healing, strength and joy,  each in its own unique tune.

In the magical realist short Together Apart (2019, CN), a woman finds her husband wandering around their house soon after his funeral. In the feature film Ode to Nothing (2018, PH), we follow an embalmer and her unusual encounter with an older woman’s corpse. -1287 (2014, JP) is a moving documentary that follows Kazuko as she comes to terms with her oncoming death and her thoughts on life, love, and money. Finally, Jinpa (2018, CN) is a Tibetan-language film on a stoic truck driver and his fateful encounter with a goat and a hitchhiker on a morbid mission. The four selections encounter death in the face of diverse cultural contexts and narratives, going beyond the taboo.

The four films will be screened in Amsterdam’s Filmhuis Cavia on May 19th and 20th and in Arnhem at Focus Filmtheater on May 31st.

Join us after the screening of  -1287 in Amsterdam on May 20th, where there will be an after-talk with Mourning School’s initiator Lucie Gottlieb,  as well as in Arnhem on May 31st a talk with artist G alongside films Together Apart and Ode to Nothing.


PROGRAM of CAVIA AMSTERDAM
Friday 19.05.2023
20:30 Short introduction
20:05 Screening starts
21:20 End of Screening

Saturday 20.05.2023
20:30 Short introduction
20:05 Screening starts
21:20 End of Screening

TICKETS
€5,- / Cineville card free
It’s not possible to make reservations. Tickets can be bought at the bar half an hour before the film starts.

Filmhuis Cavia


PROGRAM  of FOCUS ARNHEM
Wednesday 31.05.2023
19:00 Short introduction
19:05 Screening starts
20:20 End of event

TICKETS
€9.50 (Korting €7.50, Student €7.00)
Cineville card free 

Focus Filmtheater

FILM PROGRAMME

Together Apart

Qu Youjia | 2020 | China | 45’ | EN subs
Chinese funerals require much preparation: a three-day wake and various rituals precede the cremation. In the opening shots of this magical realist film, the widow returns home drained and starts tidying up the house, only to encounter her deceased husband casually sauntering down the stairs. She soon readopts a familiar routine: dressing him warmly, measuring his blood pressure and bickering with him. This absurd premise soon develops when visitors from the afterlife are expected and the daughter starts getting involved. As she seeks to solve the impossible situation, grandson Jiajia seems to be the only one unquestioningly embracing grandad's return. All shot in long, composed takes, replete with understated humour and tender reflections on family, loneliness, memory and the passing of time.

Jinpa

Pema Tseden | 2018 | Tibet | 86’ | EN subs
On an isolated road passing through the vast barren plains of Tibet, a truck driver, who has accidentally run over a sheep, chances upon a young man, who is hitching a ride. As they drive and chat, the truck driver notices that his new friend has a silver dagger strapped to his leg. He comes to understand that his man is out to kill someone, who wronged him earlier in life. As he drops the hitchhiker off at a fork in the road, little does the truck driver realize that their short time together has changed everything, and that their destinies are inexorably intertwined.

-1287

Ian Thomas Ash | 2014 | Japan | 70’ | EN subs
During deeply intimate conversations with the filmmaker after she learns she is going to die, Kazuko challenges cultural and social norms speaking candidly about her own life and death while she grapples with what it means to be honest and live happily. As she nears the end of her life, through observations about love, money, marriage and death, Kazuko develops a deeper intimacy both with herself and the filmmaker, while inviting the viewer to deeply consider their own life. And death.