Mountain In The Hallway

Filmmaker Karen Cho travels from Montreal to Vancouver to uncover stories from the last survivors of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act, a set of laws imposed to single out the Chinese as unwanted immigrants to Canada from 1885 to 1947. Through a combination of history, poetry and raw emotion, this documentary sheds light on an era that shaped the identity of generations.

It's 1922. A weather observer and his wife live in a remote cabin high in the Swiss Alps. As this drama begins, they are being joined by a third person, an Austrian who coveted the job the Swiss man had won in this bleak location. Not only that, but he also has his eyes on the Swiss man's lovely wife. The Austrian has charm, so he wins some hospitality from the couple. The three live together for a little while, but the rivalry between the two men soon erupts with tragic consequences.

Meongjin and Inho went separate ways after their breakup. Meongjin became a fake shaman, while Inho started a family. Twenty years later, they unexpectedly reunite to predict Inho’s daughter’s college entrance exam results.

Moriyama Kosaku is released from a Hokkaido prison on parole. After he salutes the prison officers, he approaches a car that is stopped nearby. A mysterious woman Kana is waiting in the driver’s seat. Meanwhile, Kazami Tamiko’s aunt Suzue visits her ranch in Nakashibetsu and laments about the changes in Tamiko’s only son Takeshi. Five years ago, Kosaku was arrested right in front of the boy. That episode caused Takeshi to turn into a completely introverted and eccentric youth who obsessively plays the piano. Furthermore, Abuta comes over and expresses concern about junior high school music teacher Nishikawa’s frequent visits to the Kazamis. He proceeds to inform Tamiko that Kosaku has been released from prison. Even though Tamiko had attempted to forget Kosaku who never replied to any of the letters that she sent to the prison, the news makes her heart stir all of a sudden.

Each story is based on a strange tale from an ancient Chinese text.

The structures of our thought filter what we see, and in fact there is no seeing apart from those structures. This film is part of an ongoing project to show where I am in a (here, natural) landscape in a way that reflects those structures of thought. It is "hypnogogic," not so much perceptually (although to some extent that too) as conceptually. Our eyes see constantly, but what do we actually notice? That vision is excessive, wasteful, even; in paring down, it becomes both more spare and more concentrated. It is also a meditation in process of how my marvelous son Marcus has changed my life and my way of being in the world, recoloring a place where I was already.

This program was nominated for an ACE award and aired on The Learning Channel and on PBS as part of the Spirit of Place Series. This timeless production captures an intimate portrait of the traumatic consequences of relocation on one Navajo family. Through Katherine Smith’s eyes and words, as a Navajo matriach, the viewer feels the connection to the land on one of the most remote and traditional places in Indian Country – Big Mountain, Arizona.Broadcast on PBS in ’80.

During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her.

His mother entrusted him with obtaining the Martial God's Hammer, but young Xi Zitang wasted ten years trying to lift it and gained superhuman strength instead. Ten years later, he returned with the hammer, forging a path of supremacy while gaining the favor of many beauties!

In a French thermal town, a man is found poisoned. His ex-girlfriend is arrested for the murder but her estranged cop daughter tries to prove her innocence which leads her much further than she could have ever imagined.

Hong Sang-soo's Lost in the Mountains depicts Mi-sook's suffering when she discovers her friend Jin-young has been secretly sleeping with her lover.