SOUL: Profile of Actor Jimmy Wang Yu

Jimmy Wang Yu (aka, Jimmy Wong in TIFF's programme notes) won a Best Actor award at the 2013  Taipei Film Awards for his role in Chung Mong-Hong's Soul, a film about a young man who might be possessed, might have lost his soul or might be mentally ill and what his father, played by Wang, will do to protect him. In a way, the highly aestheticized violence hearkens back to Wang's early career.


Wang got his start in the stylized swordsman cinema (wuxia pien) of The Shaw Bros. Studio.  He became a superstar in Chang Cheh's The One-Armed Swordsman (1967). And followed it up with other Shaw Bros. films such as Chang Cheh's The Golden Swallow (1968) with Cheng Pei-Pei, the Queen of Wuxia Pien.


Wang also helped bring kung fu, aka, "open fist," cinema to the world with The Chinese Boxer (1969), ushering in the films of Bruce Lee, David Chiang and Ti Lung while revealing which martial art is the supreme. (It's kung fu. It's always kung fu).


The popularity of The One-Armed Swordsman led to innumerable One-Armed Wang Yu movies, but I have a particular fondness for his show-down with Shintaro Katsu in, Zatoichi Meets The One Armed Swordsman (1971), co-produced by Taiwan's Golden Harvest and Katsu.


He also co-starred with George Lazenby in the Australian/Hong Kong co-production, The Man From Hong Kong (1975) directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, director and Trailers From Hell commentator. This co-production didn't go so smoothly, and various members of the production reminisce not so fondly about Wang in the documentary about Australian genre film, Not Quite Hollywood (2008).



While he's made, directed, produced and/or written over eighty films, most of them were in the years between1960 and 1980. But he played the folk hero Wong Fei-Hung in Sammo Hung's Lunar New Year extravaganza, Millionaire's Express (1986) and had a role with Jackie Chan in the "ghost action nonsense comedy," aka, batshit amazing, Fantasy Mission Force (1983).  Most recently, Wang appeared in Wuxia/Dragon (2011) with Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Kara Hui (Rigor Mortis) and Let's Go! (2011) with Juno Mak (Rigor Mortis).

SOUL Screening Times:

Monday, Sept 9th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 11

Tuesday, Sept 10th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

SOUL: Press Round-Up!

The Wall Street Journal's "China Real Time Report" blog profiles director Chung Mong-Hong.

Taiwanese director Chung Mong-hong sees himself as a non-conformist.
In an era of Chinese-language romantic comedies, tear-jerkers, police dramas and lavish historical dramas, Mr. Chung says he doesn’t want to follow the crowd by making films with themes that are seen everywhere. 

The director, sitting in his studio in Taipei with a cigarette in one hand, says he draws inspiration from the works of American filmmaker David Lynch, director of Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001), and the late Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi, who thrived on dissecting sensitive and controversial subjects. 

“If you liken the movie to a house when you watch a Kobayashi movie,” Mr. Chung says, “you feel like you are inside a very serious and solemn home, and you automatically want to sit up straight at the edge of your chair.”

Exclaim.ca's Scott A. Gray reviews his film, Soul.

A uniquely moving and disturbing picture, Soul uses surreal cinematic poetry to postulate schizophrenia as a disassociation of the spirit. Taiwan's Chung Mong-Hong (The Fourth Portrait) is an accomplished visionary capable of balancing a calculated use of technical ability with instinctual artistry, as demonstrated throughout this emotionally gripping and consistently stimulating film.

SOUL Final Screening:

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

SOUL: Profile of Director Chung Mong-Hong

Chung Mong-Hong (aka, Chung Mang-Wang) has written and directed five films: Doctor (2006), Parking (2008), The Fourth Portrait (2010), and the segment, "Reverberation" in the anthology celebrating Taiwan's Centenary, 10 + 10 (2011), and now Soul.

Born in Pingtung, Taiwan, Chung studied information technology engineering at National Chiao Tung University and film as a graduate student at the Art Institute of Chicago. In an interview with Ho Yi at The Taipei Times, Chung shares what inspired him to become a filmmaker:

 I had lived in the countryside in Pingtung until high school. Going to a movie was the ultimate form of entertainment. We saw lots of Bruce Lee (李小龍) and Michael Hui (許冠文) films. I was particularly fond of the James Bond movies because they were like pornography for us kids. [He laughs.]

In high school I had a chance to see Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. There is one scene where David Bowie kisses Ryuichi Sakamoto. It got me to start thinking, “Wow, movies can show so many special things, things I don’t understand.”

He has directed over one hundred commercials, but in an interview with Ryuichi Sugiyama at the Tokyo International Film Festival's blog, he indicated a desire to move away from commercial film-making.

When shooting Parking, I had tried not to fall into the habit of making commercial films, which ended up in vain. So with that in mind, in making The Fourth Portrait, I took the utmost care in simple film making, but I don't think I am thoroughly successful in that sense. My assignment is to get rid of the habit of making commercial films....I think my experience in TV commercial making is an obstacle when making movies. The fact that most of the directors with TV commercial career are not making a big success in Taiwan might be the proof.

He told The Taipei Times that he decided to start his feature career with a documentary, Doctor, "Documentary filmmaking is the opposite of commercial filmmaking." And elaborated:

You must divide the two. Have you seen any movies made by television commercial directors? Basically they all fail. It hurts me to see my colleagues fail. The problem is if you look at a 100-minute project with an eye trained for a 30-second ad, you are bound to be crushed.

Styles and forms are not sins in and of themselves. But the most important thing is to return to the basic question: what do you want your audience to see? It would be wrong if a director plays with a [visual] style thinking, “Wow, it’s cool!” and repeats it for 100 minutes. As a commercial director, you have to give up what you excel in — images and combinations of images.

Doctor follows a Taiwanese-American doctor who loses his son to suicide and a patient to cancer.



Parking starts with a parking dispute and escalates into much more. It stars Chapman To, Chang Chen, Jack Kao and Kwai Lun-Mei and frequent Chung collaborator, Leon Dai, who also appears in Soul.



And where Parking was influenced by the paintings of Edward Hooper, The Fourth Portrait features art made by Felix, the boy who committed suicide in Doctor.



However, as Chung tells Ryuichi Sugiyama at the Tokyo International Film Festival's blog:

Doctor is a documentary, but I have a special feeling for it because it is my first feature film. It is very true that the picture drawn by Felix had a great influence in making the The Fourth Portrait, but I am thinking of saying goodbye to Felix after this film. I’ve made up my mind to get over his past and go on to a completely new direction for the next film....It is going to be a very scary horror film featuring schizophrenia.

 Make sure to read both interviews and then see what new direction Chung has taken with Soul.

SOUL Screening Times:

Monday, Sept 9th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 11

Tuesday, Sept 10th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

Trailer for SOUL: A Stylish, Unflinching Look at Demonic Possession

While working as a chef at a Japanese restaurant, the quiet, unassuming A-Chuan (Joseph Chang) abruptly, and without apparent reason, collapses unconscious. When he wakes up, A-Chuan isn't quite the same. The 2013 Festival selection Soul is an stylish, unflinching look at demonic possession by acclaimed Taiwanese filmmaker Chung Mong-Hong (The Fourth Portrait).

Below is the trailer for Soul, which plays this year's Toronto International Film Festival within the Vanguard programme.

Further information about Chung Mong-Hong's Soul can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the Soul IMDB page.

SOUL screening times:

• Mon., Sept. 9, Scotiabank 11 6:15 PM
• Tues., Sept. 10, Scotiabank 3 6:15 PM
• Sat., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 10 12:00 PM