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The Sand Pebbles
Sun, Nov 20 | 7:30pm | TMT
Robert Wise’s follow-up to The Sound of Music (1965) netted eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Supporting Actor mention for Mako’s endearing portrait of a Chinese coolie. Hong Kong and Taiwan provide the locations for this widescreen spectacle—an exotic 1920s China in revolutionary turmoil, where Chinese women are prostitutes and Chinese men are ruthless, where colonialism and mis- sionaries are the norms, and the leading man is always a white savior. The Sand Pebbles kickstarted Mako’s distinguished career in film, stage, and television, and as co-founder of the nation’s leading Asian American theater group, the East West Players, in Los Angeles. Fellow founders James Hong and Beulah Quo also appear in The Sand Pebbles .
DIRECTOR: Robert Wise.
WRITTEN BY: Robert W. Anderson.
CAST: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Mako.
1966. 155 min. USA. Color. Scope. English. 35mm. New print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
The Last Emperor
Sun, Nov 27 | 7:30pm | TMT
In 2015, #OscarsSoWhite went viral and fueled a movement that exposed the decades-long scarcity of Academy Award nominations for people of color in acting categories. In the Oscars' 94-year history, only three Best Picture winners featured mostly Asian casts, and none of these received any acting nominations: Parasite (2019), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and The Last Emperor , which won nine of nine nominations. This presentation of The Last Emperor not only celebrates the breathtaking imagination of director Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic vision of China, but also gives audiences a chance to reconsider the Academy’s omission of honors for its brilliant cast.
DIRECTOR: Bernardo Bertolucci.
WRITTEN BY: Mark Peploe, Bernardo Bertolucci.
CAST: John Lone, Joan Chen, Vivian Wu, Maggie Han. 1987. 163 min. UK/Hong Kong/ Italy. Color. English, Mandarin, Japanese. DCP.
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