TRIP TO ASIA: QUEST FOR HARMONY

108 minutes
GERMANY 2008
Dir: THOMAS GRUBE
The Berlin Philharmonic, under Conductor Sir Simon Rattle, and with award-winning cameraman/director Thomas Grube (“Rhythm Is It” audience winner here, 2006), offers an electrifying, panoramic look at Asia’s pulsating metropolises—Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei—to the rhythms of Beethoven & Richard Strauss gaps (e.g., “Eroica” and “A Hero’s Life).

GETTING HOME (Luo Ye Gui Gen)

101 minutes
CHINA  2007
Dir: ZHANG YANG
A middle-aged construction worker Zhao struggles to return a fellow worker’s body across thousands of miles for burial in the Three Gorges countryside, amid colorful, humorous encounters. [Global Lens Series]
(In Mandarin; English subtitles)

BIGGEST CHINESE RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD

80 minutes
CHINA 2008
Dir: WEIJUN CHEN
A delightful tale of the 5,000-seat and 1,000 waiter employed West Lake restaurant in the city of Changsha, owned and operated by a former -Bronx family, with unstoppable drive, going truly international in boom time China. (in Mandarin; English subtitles)

Short Doc: COLD MOUNTAIN

28 minutes
USA 2009
Co-Dirs.: MIKE HAZARD & DEB WALLWORK
Portrait of the Tang Dynasty Chinese poet Han Shan. A man free of spiritual conceit, it is unclear whether he was a monk, was Buddhist or Taoist, or both. It is not even certain he ever lived, but the poems do. Former Beat Generation poet and translator Gary Snyder travels with local author Jim Lenfestey and Han Shan acolytes Red Pine, Burton Watson to China’s backroads, cofilmmakers Mike Hazard, Deb Wallwork in hand, to find the hallowed poet’s cave, now occupied by a mute hermit.

WHAT REMAINS OF US

76 minutes
TIBET  2004
DIRS: FRANÇOIS PRÉVOST / HUGO LATULIPPE
What Remains of Us reveals clandestine footage shot between 1996 and 2004 about Tibetan refugee from Canada carrying secret message from the Dalai Lama. [Global Lens Series] (In Tibetan: English subtitles)

http://www.mspfilmfest.org