Browse Titles - 2 results
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The Good Woman of Bangkok
directed by Dennis O'Rourke, 1945-2013; produced by Dennis O'Rourke, 1945-2013 (Cairns, Queensland: Camerawork Pty, 1991), 1 hour 22 mins
The Good Woman of Bangkok is a no-holds-barred look at the profession of prostitution and is filmed by legendary documentarist Dennis O'Rourke. He turns the camera on a young woman named Aoi, who allows O'Rourke to both film her and be her paid lover, in one of the most personal and multi-layered documentaries of...
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directed by Dennis O'Rourke, 1945-2013; produced by Dennis O'Rourke, 1945-2013 (Cairns, Queensland: Camerawork Pty, 1991), 1 hour 22 mins
Description
The Good Woman of Bangkok is a no-holds-barred look at the profession of prostitution and is filmed by legendary documentarist Dennis O'Rourke. He turns the camera on a young woman named Aoi, who allows O'Rourke to both film her and be her paid lover, in one of the most personal and multi-layered documentaries of O'Rourke's canon. Born in a small Thai village and responsible to support her family, Aoi was drawn to prostitution as a source of inc...
The Good Woman of Bangkok is a no-holds-barred look at the profession of prostitution and is filmed by legendary documentarist Dennis O'Rourke. He turns the camera on a young woman named Aoi, who allows O'Rourke to both film her and be her paid lover, in one of the most personal and multi-layered documentaries of O'Rourke's canon. Born in a small Thai village and responsible to support her family, Aoi was drawn to prostitution as a source of income. Her career choice has an undeniable impact on her self-esteem and her outlook on life and love, and she candidly addresses both, lending the documentary a raw and authentic voice. O'Rourke is never seen on camera, but is the voice interviewing Aoi through the film, and she addresses him on-screen many times, adding a complex layer not typically seen in documentary film. Further blurring the lines of documentarist and participant, O'Rourke offers to buy her family farm, freeing her from the economic necessity to prostitute herself, but in a postscript to the film, O'Rourke returns a year later, and Aoi is still working in a massage parlor, denying herself and the film of a Hollywood happy ending. O'Rourke himself described the film as "...a metaphor for capitalism, here played out across the borders of race and culture, and about prostitution as a metaphor for all relations between men and women." He addressed his involvement in the film by saying, "I have exposed myself in order to force the audience to reconsider the whole nature of documentary film practice. Under the thrall of our separate desires, we are all implicated in some way."
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Field of Study
Anthropology
Content Type
Documentary
Contributor
Dennis O'Rourke, 1945-2013
Author / Creator
Dennis O'Rourke, 1945-2013
Date Published / Released
1991
Publisher
Camerawork Pty
Topic / Theme
Prostitutes, Prostitution, Thai
Copyright Message
Copyright © 1991 by Camerawork Pty Ltd
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Water Puppetry in Vietnam: An Ancient Tradition in a Modern World
directed by Sam Pack, fl. 1999-2012; produced by Sam Pack, fl. 1999-2012 (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Media, 2012), 32 mins
The ancient tradition of water puppetry has gained worldwide attention in recent years for its lively and unique reflection of agrarian life in the wet-rice villages of northern Vietnam. As water puppetry has grown in popularity among tourists, modern practitioners have altered key components of their performances...
Sample
directed by Sam Pack, fl. 1999-2012; produced by Sam Pack, fl. 1999-2012 (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Media, 2012), 32 mins
Description
The ancient tradition of water puppetry has gained worldwide attention in recent years for its lively and unique reflection of agrarian life in the wet-rice villages of northern Vietnam. As water puppetry has grown in popularity among tourists, modern practitioners have altered key components of their performances in terms of both content and format in order to appeal to Western tourists. This insightful and original ethnographic documentary expl...
The ancient tradition of water puppetry has gained worldwide attention in recent years for its lively and unique reflection of agrarian life in the wet-rice villages of northern Vietnam. As water puppetry has grown in popularity among tourists, modern practitioners have altered key components of their performances in terms of both content and format in order to appeal to Western tourists. This insightful and original ethnographic documentary explores the complex interplay between the rise and development of the international tourism industry and the production of culture in the performance of Vietnamese water puppetry. The film, in the words of Prof. Lauren Meeker, of SUNY New Paltz, 'addresses important issues in cultural heritage, tourism, reflexivity, and collaborative filmmaking. It sets up a contrast between the extractive process of 'collecting' heritage on film in which the finished product is not shared with the film subjects, and a collaborative filmmaking process in which the subjects are given the chance to comment upon academic films that have been made about them and then to represent their own culture by making their own short films.' The objective of the Water Puppetry filmmaking team was to return a series of government-made films about the ancient tradition of water puppetry to the village of Bao Ha in the Red River Delta in order to make this invaluable cultural heritage available to the very community recorded in the films. A community screening of these original films was organized and villagers were encouraged to express their opinions about them. Five villagers were subsequently selected and trained to make films of their own about water puppetry. The filmmaking team then organized a second community screening, but this time, the featured films were made by community members themselves. In a powerfully symbolic way, this second set of films represents the process of digital repatriation traveling full circle. The hope was that this collaboration would serve as a model for ethnographic filmmaking, as more and more historically marginalized peoples gain the skills, technology, and need for a fuller understanding of their own past as well as a means to articulate their present and future.Water Puppetry in Vietnam is a rich, complex, and thought-provoking work that will captivate students and generate discussion in a wide variety of courses in cultural anthropology and ethnography, Asian studies, and development and tourism studies. It was produced and directed by Sam Pack, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kenyon College.
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Field of Study
Asian Studies
Content Type
Documentary
Contributor
Sam Pack, fl. 1999-2012
Author / Creator
Sam Pack, fl. 1999-2012
Date Published / Released
2012
Publisher
Berkeley Media
Topic / Theme
Tourism industry, Agrarian life, Puppets and puppet shows, Vietnamese
Copyright Message
Copyright © 2012 Berkeley Media
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