Directed by Derek Jarman • 1990 • United Kingdom
Starring Tilda Swinton, Johnny Mills, Kevin Collins
Half waking dream and half fiery polemic, THE GARDEN was born of director Derek Jarman’s rage over continued antigay discrimination and the sluggardly response to the AIDS crisis (he himself he had been diagnosed as HIV positive in 1988). Starring Tilda Swinton, this uniquely kaleidoscopic film shows the filmmaker’s genius at its most coruscating, making space in its breadth of vision for an over-the-top Hollywood-style musical number, nightmare images of tar-and-feather queer persecution, and footage of the particularly menacing-looking nuclear power plant that overlooks Jarman’s own garden, the point from which his film begins and a cherished spot that he must keep tending to even as his body begins to betray him. Writhing with sorrow and anger and yet so vividly alive to the loveliness of being, THE GARDEN is a baleful and beautiful epistle from the brink of beyond.
Directed by Liu Jiayin • 2005 • China
Starring Liu Jiayin, Liu Zaiping, Jia Huifen
Daily life in an impossibly cramped Beijing apartment takes on epic proportions in this mesmerizing portrait of a working-class Chinese family. Boldly transforming documentary into narrative, Liu Jiayin casts her ...
Directed by Azazel Jacobs • 2008 • United States
Starring Matt Boren, Flo Jacobs, Ken Jacobs
Bumped from a flight back to Los Angeles and the life, wife, and infant daughter awaiting him there, Mikey (Matt Boren) returns to his childhood home, a cluttered, cocoon-like Manhattan loft presided ove...
Directed by Liu Jiayin • 2009 • China
Starring Liu Jiayin, Jia Huifen, Liu Zaiping
Breaking new ground in cinematic art, Liu Jiayin’s follow-up to her masterful debut OXHIDE turns a simple dinner into a profoundly intimate study of family relationships. Once again, the writer-director casts hers...
