June 26, 2008: UP THE YANGTE Awards, Australian Premiere
EyeSteel Film would like to congratulate director Yung Chang on his now multi-award winning film UP THE YANGTZE.
UP THE YANGTZE premiered in Australia on Saturday 21st June as part of the Sydney Film Festival. There will be selected screenings of UP THE YANGTZE around Australia in the coming weeks. For details visit Gil Scrine Films.
Jeff is currently hard at work on the script for his first feature length film, Blood Quantum - Outside the isolated Mi’gMaq reserve of Red Crow the dead are coming back to life. Strangely, the Indian inhabitants of the reserve seems to be immune to the zombie plague. Traylor, the local tribal law enforcement, armed with nothing but a samurai sword, a hangover, and a six-pack, must protect his ex-girlfriend, pothead father, and drunken reserve riff-raff from the hordes of walking corpses.
UP THE YANGTZE opens in U.S. as top per-screen film!
Last weekend, UP THE YANGTZE was the top grossing film in the United States in per-theatre-average! If you haven't seen it yet we wanted to let you know that we have new showtimes starting today which are listed below, and please pass on this email to your friends.
This week marks another a wonderful milestone: UP THE YANGTZE becomes one of only 3 English Canadian documentaries to gross over $500,000 at the Canadian box office, joining only The Corporation and Sharkwater!
Also this week, director Yung Chang won the Don Haig award at the Hot Docs film festival, as well as Best Film and Best Cinematography at the River Run festival.
"A POTENT INDICTMENT OF THE DAM-AGE DONE! Says more about what's being lost--culturally, geographically, morally-- than any parade of talking heads ever could." -Time Out New York
UP THE YANGTZE IS NOW PLAYING AT: IFC CENTER 323 Sixth Avenue, New York New Showtimes: 11:15am 1:00 · 3:05 · 5:15 · 7:25 · 9:35 Buy tickets: http://www.ifccenter.com/film?filmid=61174
January 17, 2008: ZEITGEIST ACQUIRES ‘UP THE YANGTZE’, SET FOR SUNDANCE
Zeitgeist Films has acquired UP THE YANGTZE, which will be premiering in the U. S. Friday in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
UP THE YANGTZE is the first feature-length documentary directed by Yung Chang. It was produced by Mila Aung-Thwin, John Christou and Germaine Ying Gee Wong. A late April 2008 release is planned.
Filmmaker Yung Chang goes back to the Yangtze River where his grandfather grew up and documents the end of a way of life. Chang takes viewers on a cruise ship which offers farewell tours of the about-to-be-flooded river. In Upstairs-Downstairs style, the comfortable lives of the perhaps well-intentioned but oblivious western passengers are contrasted with the difficult lives of the young Chinese crew. Back on land Chang’s camera gives viewers remarkable access to scenes including a demonstration against the government’s relocation policy, and a family assembling their humble possessions as the floodwaters rise.
Variety’s John Anderson calls UP THE YANGTZE “A gloriously cinematic doc. Chang's gorgeous meditation is more concerned with the project's collateral human damage: old farmers evicted, young people in servitude to Western tourists, all brought about by an endeavor whose collective weight may ultimately tilt the Earth's axis.”
Zeitgeist’s Co-President Nancy Gerstman said “We are so proud to be distributing this stunning and heartbreaking true epic of life inside modern China. Like the rest of the world we’re fascinated and horrified by the destruction caused by the Three Gorges Dam, and UP THE YANGTZE gives an insiders’ perspective, with compassion and dark humor.”
“UP THE YANGTZE is part of the growing body of work at the National Film Board of Canada offering an astonishing look at the changing face of our planet. We’re proud that it has joined another acclaimed NFB co-produced documentary, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, in the Zeitgeist roster” said Sayedali Rawji, Interim Director General of NFB English Program.
In 2007 Zeitgeist released Philip Groening’s INTO GREAT SILENCE and Jennifer Baichwal’s MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES. Along with UP THE YANGTZE, Zeitgeist’s 2008 releases include several other films by first-time filmmakers: Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret’s Camera d’Or-winning JELLYFISH and Guido Santi and Tina Mascara’s Telluride Film Festival hit CHRIS & DON: A Love Story.
January 10, 2008: THE COLONY is a QUEBEC GOLD SHORT
The award winning short film THE COLONY by Jeff Barnaby is playing EVERYDAY at 14h45 and 21h30 at the Ex-Centris from January 11th to the 17th as part of a selection of the most celebrated and award winning short films from Quebec.
Best Short Film at the Whistler Film Festival Best Canadian Short at imagineNATIVE Best Short Film at Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival
December 11, 2007: TIFF's Top Ten Canadian Films: EyeSteelFilm has two!
EyeSteelFilm congratulates our directors Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze) and Jeff Barnaby (The Colony) on being named to the Toronto International Film Festival Group's annual Top Ten Canadian Film list!
Yung Chang’s luminous documentary focuses on the people who live alongside China’s Yangtze River, many of whom are being uprooted as a result of the Three Gorges Dam project. Hauntingly photographed by Wang Shi Qing, the stories are simultaneously heartbreaking and affirming.
Panel Statement: Visually engrossing, storytelling which presents the micro and macro aspects of our time, Up The Yangtze works on every cinematic level. - Terrance Odette
Playing next at the Sundance Film Festival, the film will be released in North American theatres in early 2008.
Following his award-winning film, From Cherry English, Jeff Barnaby’s second short is a gritty depiction of deception, desolation and decay. Born of an imaginative script and proficiently executed, this powerful film witnesses cockroaches and chainsaws wreak havoc during one man’s descent into madness.
Panel Statement: The Colony is very dark, taking a long look at some serious issues in the lives of its' characters. Jeff Barnaby is not afraid, however to make light of interpersonal relationships or to press on the extremes of horror-film gore. It really is a lot to consume in one short film... ... ... but well worth the ride. - Jeph Scanlon
Next festival, Clermont-Ferrand.
December 6, 2007: OpenSourceCinema.org remix on Pitchfork
Pitchfork ran a great mini review on the OpenSourceCinema "GirlTalk remix contest", where a class of Concordia University kids rotoscoped a scene from our doc. Check it out here. For those of you who don't know, OpenSourceCinema is a website that remixes, distributes films created by EyeSteelFilm's Brett Gaylor. We're using it as a tool to make Basement Tapes, a feature documentary about the battle over copyright in the music industry. Go to the site and give it a try. It's about booty shakin', not couch potatin'.
December 1st, 2007: UP THE YANGTZE SELECTED TO SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL!
UP THE YANGTZE, director Yung Chang's documentary tribute to the the Three Gorges Dam, has been selected to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The feature length doc will also be released theatrically in North America in spring 2008. Screening dates coming soon!
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