1113 Boat People

[swo17]

Boat People



One of the preeminent works of the Hong Kong New Wave, Boat People is a shattering look at the circumstances that drove hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to flee their homeland in the wake of the Vietnam War, told through images of haunting, unforgettable power. Three years after the Communist takeover, a Japanese photojournalist (George Lam) travels to Vietnam to document the country's seemingly triumphant rebirth. When he befriends a teenage girl (Season Ma) and her destitute family, however, he begins to discover what the government doesn't want him to see: the brutal, often shocking reality of life in a country where political repression and poverty have forced many to resort to desperate measures in order to survive. Transcending polemic, renowned director Ann Hui takes a deeply humanistic approach to a harrowing and urgent subject with searing contemporary resonance.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, approved by director Ann Hui, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between Hui and filmmaker Stanley Kwan, who was the movie's assistant director
• Keep Rolling, a 2020 documentary about Hui made by Man Lim-chung, Hui's longtime production designer and art director
• As Time Goes By, a 1997 documentary and self-portrait by Hui, produced by Peggy Chiao
• Press conference from the 1983 Cannes International Film Festival
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: Essays by film critic Justin Chang and scholar Vinh Nguyen

[domino harvey]

Excited about this one, been meaning to check Hui out and this is routinely cited as her best work

[yoloswegmaster]

This looks like a great release, as those 2 documentaries look tantalizing and I'm excited for the interview between Ann Hui and Stanley Kwan, though I do wish that there were more extras that were focused on the Vietnamese boat people themselves (unless one of the essays go into detail about it). I do wonder what the odds are of Ann Hui's other films getting a Criterion release, as Fortune Star/Golden Harvest have the rights to 'Song of the Exile' and Warner Brothers having the rights to 'Summer Snow'.

Also, Chris and/or Ribs, can you confirm who the licensor is for this?

[dekadetia]

Caught this on the Channel a while back, and it's both an excellent film and a great looking transfer. Very exciting addition!

[Saturnome]

Pretty great that it includes As Time Goes By, that's a very nice surprise.

[aox]

Caught this on the Channel a while back, and it's both an excellent film and a great looking transfer. Very exciting addition!

Same

This is a fantastic film and I am happy it will see a larger audience.

[Finch]

Like dom, I'm new to Ann Hui and very excited to discover her films, especially this one. What a time to be alive if you love Hongkong cinema!

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Keep Rolling is very good, and shares the shifts between joy and melancholy that characterizes much of Hui's own best work. Plus it's actually longer than the main feature. It's been all but impossible to see As Time Goes By with English subtitles (the VCD release didn't have them), so I'll second the "nice surprise" sentiment. It's regrettable that it doesn't include The Boy from Vietnam, a one-hour episode Hui did for the TV series Below the Lion Rock that in some sense picks up where Boat People leaves off—it's about a boat person's experiences upon arriving in Hong Kong—but who knows, maybe Criterion can include it on a future release of The Story of Woo Viet.

As for other Hui films Criterion could release, the underrated Postmodern Life of My Aunt recently got a digital restoration and is being sold internationally by a company called Golden Dragon Pictures, but I don't know anything about it beyond that (e.g. 2K or 4K). Keep Rolling is filled with good-quality clips of many Hui films that have only been available before in ropey DVD editions, so it seems like a lot of her filmography is HD-ready.

This looks like a great release, as those 2 documentaries look tantalizing and I'm excited for the interview between Ann Hui and Stanley Kwan, though I do wish that there were more extras that were focused on the Vietnamese boat people themselves (unless one of the essays go into detail about it).

Vinh Nguyen is a specialist on migration and diaspora communities and previously contributed a chapter on Boat People to the collection Looking Back on the Vietnam War, which usefully pushes back against the tendency to read the film as an allegory of Hong Kong's relationship with China and deals specifically with the refugee issue and its treatment in the film. I'm sure his essay will cover much of that same ground.

[yoloswegmaster]

Who has the rights to 'Story of Woo Viet'? It was released alongside 'Boat People' on Blu in France but I have no idea if they used a restored version as the source for both films.

[Michael Kerpan]

Not certain what I would pick as Hui's "best" film. possibly a tie between July Rhapsody and Postmodern Aunt -- with a shout out to her (low budget but mostly extraordinary) 2-part Romance of Book and Sword. But many wonderful films to pick from.

But very exciting to see ANY high profile releases of films by her (which mostly seem out of print in any form).

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Hui's had quite a career so Criterion would have several options I'd think if this sold well enough. I've only seen Our Time Will Come (which I liked a lot) and missed Boat People when it was on the Channel so I'm glad this is being released so soon.

[tenia]

Who has the rights to 'Story of Woo Viet'? It was released alongside 'Boat People' on Blu in France but I have no idea if they used a restored version as the source for both films.

Both were sourced from clearly dated masters.
Boat People :



Woo Viet :

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Who has the rights to 'Story of Woo Viet'? It was released alongside 'Boat People' on Blu in France but I have no idea if they used a restored version as the source for both films.

tenia covered the French releases (which, besides being old masters, ran at 50i/25fps). The Hong Kong Blu-ray of Woo Viet looks about the same as the French release, but it runs at the correct speed and is inexplicably missing eight minutes of footage. It was released by CN Entertainment, who in my understanding handles titles on behalf of other companies (most notably Mei Ah) and doesn't have its own library. The back cover mentions a company in Beijing called Star Alliance Movies, so maybe they own it now.

[FrauBlucher]

Beaver

[Michael Kerpan]

Wow -- looks a lot better than thee DVD I got long ago....

[CriterionPhreak]

It's regrettable that it doesn't include The Boy from Vietnam, a one-hour episode Hui did for the TV series Below the Lion Rock that in some sense picks up where Boat People leaves off—it's about a boat person's experiences upon arriving in Hong Kong—but who knows, maybe Criterion can include it on a future release of The Story of Woo Viet.

"From Vietnam" is included on this 2005 Hong Kong-made DVD set and it has nice English subs. The set also includes 3 other shorts by Ann Hui, all about grass-root ordinary people that was the focus of the "Below the Lion Rock" series. The DVD has long been out of print and hard to find. I bought it when it first came out and it only cost $22. Here is a bootleg YouTube upload of "From Vietnam" but it has no subs. One of the shorts on this DVD, titled "Bridge," is about a foreign correspondent and his encounters, a similar premise to that of "Boat People."

"Below the Lion Rock" was really the progenitor of a film like "Boat People." The social commentary and the feel of documentary realism are both trademarks of the landmark TV series. It ran for years, and had storylines ranging from corruption, domestic abuse, prostitution, crime, etc. Its most famous and controversial episode is probably "Ode to Un Chau Chai," about a different kind of boat people -- a fisherman and his family who endure unlivable living condition as they can't afford to live on land. This episode got the attention of the British government, which later arranged housing for these people. An Eng-subbed DVD, now OOP, has been made for it too.

In the same year "Boat People" was released, another landmark Hong Kong film with social commentary and documentary realism was released, called "Lonely Fifteen" (trailer), about a group of wayward teenage girls.

[Michael Kerpan]

So much important stuff currently unavailable...

[therewillbeblus]

This blew me away, upending the expected straightforward melodramatic narrative from similar-on-paper postwar journalism films in favor of a deliberately textured kaleidoscopic vision, without sacrificing the weight of melodrama or sociopolitical urgency. The film is measured with an unassuming throughline structure, yet is strangely poetic and singular in its application of powerful imagery and narrative, even during banal moments that play very different from their rote counterparts in other films. In an eccentric move, I found the most "poetic" scenes to be the most grisly and violent ones, combining a force of stark transparency of ruthless death with an atmospheric flavor of immense gravity as durable as a human life, pulsating around this tangible intrusive action. This juxtaposition colors the events' shades with the multidimensional spirit these human souls demand to be seen as when taken, while never shying away from exposing the raw nature of these acts of violence. Like most lyrical cinema, I don't have much to analyze, but I sure felt a lot of rare sensations along the trajectory of a familiar beam, and that's enough to give the film a resounding recommendation and watch it several more times with the context of the supplements to hopefully lend deeper, layered readings in the future. I'm definitely interested in exploring more of Hui's work, and it looks like some recommendations were already cast here, so many thanks! This is what the company is all about

[Michael Kerpan]

I find Ann Hui's films somewhat variable -- but have rarely been seriously disappointed -- and have loved many of her films. Unfortunately, most of these I have in very low-quality form (VCDs -- and really poor DVDs). Definitely not much interest in her work here in the USA -- maybe this release will help get more attention for her. I wonder if her career is effectively over -- given recent developments in China and Hong Kong. (Ditto for my other HK favorite -- Johnnie To).

[FrauBlucher]

This was a blind buy for me. This was totally worth it. What a great film. Deeply moving. I can't wait to dig into to the extras.

The back story sounds intriguing, that it being pulled from Cannes competition for political reasons.

[knives]

Boat People reminded me a lot of The Year of Living Dangerously with its foreigner struck and exhausted by horrors that have a mundane quality for those native to the situation. Hui limits the amount of additional drama compared to Weir, but I think to lesser success. I simply wasn’t as enraptured by who the film was depicting and am used enough to depictions of what that I packed a necessary shock factor. Even with those limits though it is a good film that I was always engaged by.