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Excursion of Essential Cinema

Project 2 video:

https://youtu.be/tSC1RZtXUnc

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YEELEN

The movie Yeelen, which means brightness, is an all time African Classic and a fantastic use of cinema from an African point-of-view. Souleymane Cisse wanted to make movies that are uniquely African in style, rather than imitating western films. Yeelen is a good example of this, as it tells us a rich story of a warriror having to battle an evil sorcerer who is also his dad.

Most of Cisse’s stories rely on true and mythical stories pass down by African men from generation to generation.

Yeelen takes us on an exciting journey of the meaning of initiation and provides a deeper meaning in a not-so-primitive society. He is a boy in fear of his father in the first scene; he then takes a long journey to find his path and defeat his father and face his fear of him; then lastly he kills his dad and becomes the new head man in his family.

What truly blows me away is the unique overall tone and style of the movie and how it captures the tribal African life style. The Use of camera work is done well to capture, not only the beauty of Africa landscapes, but to also capture the beauty of African traditions (ie. Clothes, rituals, etc.). The lack of music (or very little music) helps emphasize the wide open spaces of the African desert. The African style cinema that Cisse portrayed, is one that isn’t driven by long chattering dialogue, but one that captures everything through use of visuals and sounds. The importance of visual and sounds in the film are used effectively, and even though the film shows African life style, Cisse also used a lot of special effects in the movie to portray the mythical tales told and uses it effectively enough that for me it’s the most impressive considering that the movie was made back in 1987. Overall, a very powerful and impressive film that captures traditional African cinema with a little spice of magic.

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TOKYO STORY

Tokyo Story is a film directed by Yasujiro Ozu about an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to meet their grown children. It is rated 8.2 on IMDb and 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, so we can clearly say that it was a success.

In Tokyo Story, Ozu’s techniques and styles are shown clearly and beautifully. Ozu wanted to capture the cinematic quality of life. Majority of the time he only uses 50mm lenses because it’s the closest thing to human’s natural sight. I didn’t even know that until yesterday. This was just one of the many ways how he cinematized real life. And with his calm tones and uneventful stories, he made cinematic daydreams. One thing that I love about Tokyo Story is the emphasis of image organization. I LOVE when objects or characters are strategically placed within a frame in order to create shapes that not only makes the shot look more aesthetically pleasing, but it also gives the image structure. With Ozu, composition takes centre stage. Ozu uses subject placement on screen that geometricizes with his scenes. Ozu also used lines as a strong way to create partitions in order to dissect an image, and give it some special divide. Ozu was obsessed with making sure that the subject be places within frames and that all characters that need to be seen on screen is seen without having to move around too much or having to move the camera (as seen in the image). Frames could either be created with walls, objects, and even people. Creating frames within a frame is one of the ways in which Ozu partitioned his shots. Ozu never really moved the camera either, and mostly used static shots. When he did move the camera, it was very subtle and still kept the subject(s) within the frame, so it’s like they’re not moving around. The beauty of Ozu’s geometrically planned shots with no movement  displayed more like a painting than a film. The Simplicity in Ozu mixed with his beautiful art and talent is what makes him a legendary film maker.

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Try to engage in lucid dreaming

Speaking of training the mind, I really was excited to get started with this challenge. Now I had no idea where to even start this challenge because I NEVER know when I’m dreaming and I never think anything is weird in my dream because I’m extremely naïve in my dream state.

So I googled ways to trigger my lucid dream state. It came up with a lot of sounds that can trigger your lucid dreams. So I decided to take the 3 with the most views on youtube. Each were about 3-5 hours long. On the internet, it told me to play the music before I sleep and I must sleep with the music in the background. This helped me “stay conscious” from my awake state into my dream state.  Long story short, I tried those 3 and another 2 until I just gave up. NONE of them worked at all. I slept straight through the music.

So then I tried another method. This method suggested that one cannot tell the time in their dream. SO, it told me to keep checking the time throughout the day and to say the time out loud. I must keep doing this and get into the habit of always looking at the time, so that when I’m in the dream state, I’ll hopefully repeat that habit, check the time, and become aware that I’m dreaming. So I did this for a week straight. I did not check the time ONCE in my dreams. I checked the time so many times in that week, because I had the assignment as my wallpaper, and I still didn’t do it once in my dream.

Lesson learnt: try out things even if you don’t think they will work.

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Achieve a goal

This challenge is the biggest for me. I’ve been doing karate for the past 14 years and have never won anything greater than a South African championship. This year was my first year back in 5 years, my brother dropped out of his team for work reasons, and so they asked me if I would like to replace him. Of course I had to say yes.

for the past 9 months, we worked tirelessly on perfecting our karate and getting into unison as closely as we could. we trained 4 times a week for 2 hours a session.

There were times were I just didn’t feel like working and thought: “ we are already so good, why do we need to train today”. But I kept a quote on my bathroom mirror and my phone screen saving saying: “you won’t achieve your goals if you only work on the days you feel good”. I followed this quote through the entire process and fought through those days i wasn’t feeling good. When I felt like I wanted to give up, I just thought about how happy I’ll be a few days from now if I just don’t give up. It was extremely hard for me specially because our dojo is in Johannesburg and I was always in Centurion for varsity, so the traveling really took a toll on me. But I knew the reward was going to be worth it.

All was going well, until 3 weeks before the competition, I tore a ligament in my wrist. This was unbelievable pain and it could have not come in the worst of times. for those 3 weeks I was not training for the competition at all. The only thing I could do is sit back and heal my wrist until the competition. Without the training, I started to have some doubt in myself.

Competition day comes and my wrist still isn’t fully healed. We went out there and I put it all on the line and made sure I ended my day knowing that all that hard work wasn’t for nothing. I prayed, we performed, and we’re now known as the NEW Africa Cup champions of JKA Karate.

Lesson learnt: train the mind, and the body will follow.

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Disrupt the status quo

So for this challenge, I thought that since people I actually hang out with have different hobbies that I’m not so fond of, then maybe people I don’t usually hang out with might have some hobbies that we have in common.

The type of friends that I hang out with, if they were to be classified, are jocks. People who are very sporty or know a lot about sports. So I decided to go with a new group of people that were more of the “nerdy” and quiet side.

I found some of my class mates who, from judgement of their appearance, were the type of people I was actually looking for. I walked up to them and greeted and asked what they were doing. To my LUCK, they were playing Dungeons and Dragons. Now for grown men to be playing this game at varsity, is VERY much a “nerdy” things, but I’ve heard about this game so much and I was so interested in the role playing, that I just had to play.

I thought to myself: “Am I seriously going to play DND, and at varsity?”. Long story short I played.

In this time, i found it a little hard to communicate with them at times, considering a lot of jokes that I think are funny are sports related or dark humour, and theirs is about anime that I don’t even know about. So when communication happened, i didn’t really feel a bonding connection with them, but during game time, I felt that we all enjoyed what we were playing and we were actually becoming good teammates in a sense of action.

I think disrupting the status quo is a thing that should be done, solely for the purpose that there are some interests that others have in common to you, that your squad doesn’t have and you could find another joy in that experience.

there was one guy who took the game way too seriously and fought against every decision against us. He was very competitive and took things over board, but in the end, we couldn’t have won the game without his dedication and strong will. Stood out a lot for me.

Lesson learnt: through dedication and strong will, you can succeed.

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Do something you have no interest in doing

So on this day, we went camping/fishing for the weekend. Me, my cousin, and 3 other friends. My two friends invited us all for a routine men’s camping trip consisting of boozes, legal drugs, and fishing. I’ve never been camping OR fishing, so I was pretty excited to try it out. I’m more of an indoors, living in the future with technology kind of guy, but I was open to the new experience.

The first day/night was HECTICALLY windy to a point where we weren’t even able to put our tents up because they kept blowing away every time we try putting the spikes in. So we had no tents for the first night and it was FREEEEEZING cold. My friends didn’t warm us about the icey nights at the Vaal, and we did not come prepared. One of thee coldest nights out of my life. we slept in our cars and it was so uncomfortable.

the next morning was sunny out and we all around just had a great day drinking, braaiing, and fishing. I wasn’t too fond of the fishing part, soley for the fact that it too longer than I expected to hook up the bait (professionally), and waiting around for the fish to come to you (like Pokemon Go) was just too much waiting for my liking.

On the last day, we braaied a little bit and fished until early afternoon just to finish off the weekend before we left to go back home. Long story short, I think that’s the last time I ever go fishing again.

Lesson learnt: Just because we’re friends, doesn’t mean ALL our interests are common interests.

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Try out a new class or hobby

So by opening up my mind to new experiences, I thought of trying out a new class. I’ve always wanted to do yoga, but never really actually did it.

So, my friend Danielle helped me out here. She is a yoga instructor and so I attended one of her classes that she hosts at the Oval in Centurion. I found it quite interesting, specially because I didn’t REALLY know what yoga was about.

The amount of flexibility and core strength needed to do yoga is underrated. We started off with a light yoga warm up (because I was new to the class and she didn’t want to scare me away), but then it all turned into so real hardcore shizniz.

As in the picture, you can see that I am far away from being even close to perfect, but I keep on trying. After trying out that new class, I enjoyed it so much and found so many benefits that I now do yoga every week as an extra mural. I would have never have found this joy if I did not try out something that I just didn’t have the time and energy to do.

Lesson learnt: Don’t shy away from new experiences.

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Communicate without words for a day

So with the last lesson being: “bonds become stronger with interaction”, I decided to take it one step further and took up the challenge that would make this concept a little harder, but interesting.

So the girl in the picture is my friend, Danielle, and she agreed to take up the challenge with me and see what it entails. So we started off at her place. I rang her gate bell in a secret tone to let her know that I’m outside. She came outside and we both just knew that this was going to be a long and tough day.

But we thought: “let’s do this shit”.

So we went to the Dairy farm 1st to go look at the cows because shes’s always been telling me about that. No one even came up to us at all, so not talking wasn’t much of an issue.

next I took Danielle to the TUKS lake. Over there we had a little picnic, played some music, had Uno out to play, and smoked a little bit. that killed most of our time because even though we weren’t talking, everything was still pretty fun.

it came around early night, so we decided to go to the movies. We ordered our tickets online so that we wouldn’t have to ask for a ticket... But then we got to the snack bar. For a second, I low-key panicked on how we were going to order our snacks, so I just said “f***k it” and acted like I was deaf. I told this lady I want 2 no.4s and pointed to every single thing I had to make a selection on, while walking across a few counters because I couldn’t get close enough. It was pretty horrible without the verbal communication.

After the movie, it was still pretty early in the night, so we decided to go get some coffee. We still had our popcorn from the movie, so every time the waiter came to take our order, I always just stuffed my face with popcorn, and acted like I couldn’t talk because my mouth was full and just ordered our stuff with pointing and number signs with my fingers. The whole time we were just pulling funny faces and doing stupid things with our popcorn and coffees. For some reason, we found it so hilarious.

After coffee, we walked to my car and call it the end to a crazy day, then suddenly - we walk into a close friend priest of Danielle’s mother. So this man calls Danielle from a distance, we both look at each other and she gives me the “Oh f***k” look. We both walk over to this man and his friend and he greets Danielle. She’s silent. She signals that her lips are sealed and joins her hands in a prayer position and bows to the priest. He then asks: “Oh, have you taken a vow of religious silence?”. She looked at me, then nods to the priest. He then greets me, and I’m silent. He asked if I’m doing the same thing. I look at Danielle, and nod. I almost DIED OUT with laughter. The way we had to hold it in was extreeeeeeme self control.

Lesson learnt: self control can come a long way and open up new experiences.

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Spend an evening without electricity or phone

So since we aren’t taking anything for granted, we decided to enjoy the nature life that we can’t fully appreciate while we’re always indoor with our technology (because that’s probably 90% of my life).

So on today we decided to take Magic Mushrooms and go to the lake. Firstly the shroomz were magnificent, but also we could not have picked a better spot. The view was insane. How I knew I’ve been missing out on nature is that the sounds were so charming. I couldn’t get enough of being our there. So it’s me and 3 of my best friends. I couldn’t have chosen a better squad to do this challenge with. The amount of jokes we had that day was insane.

We started off just enjoying the view, smoking a hubbly, and having a few drinks, then late afternoon came and we started braaiing. The food was SO GOOD. Then we ended the night back at my place and some greens in the hubbly.

Lesson learnt: enjoy the world and use technology less. Bonds become strong with interaction.

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Let something go

So after learning that I don’t have to give much to make someone happy. I gave away my FAVORITE Superman hoodie to a hobo that I often pass by on the way home.

I cannot stress how much I loved this hoodie. Superman is my favorite of ALL TIME and this is my ONLY Superman hoodie that I own. During this time that I gave this hoodie, it was winter and extremely cold. I looked through my cupboard to help this man out, but I had recently given all my old clothes to the poor and and had nothing but my favorite clothes and my sentimental clothes.

Even though the jersey still fit me, I hadn’t worn it in years and I realized that I didn’t need it and it just meant a lot to me. So I decided that this man needs it more than me and I’m just being selfish by keeping it to myself.

it has been months and I still see this man with my hoodie on on EVERY cold day. This means that this man is so poor that he doesn’t even have any warm clothes for those freezing nights. It made me appreciate what I have and not take it all for granted. I feel so privileged to be able to warm myself up whenever I’m feeling cold and I just hope more people realize that some people don’t have the necessities that we are given on a daily. I pray for these people and hope only for the best.

Lesson learnt: Don’t take anything for granted

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Compliment everyone you see for an entire day

So this challenge was one of the hardest I had to do. I’m a very shy person when it comes to meeting new people. But now I actually have to compliment people I don’t even know without actually knowing them beforehand. I don’t know if that’s what I was supposed to do for this challenge, but I did it anyway.

So it started bright and early. I woke up, got ready for varsity, and as I was walking to my car, some guy was walking past me, up the stairs. He was wearing these massive diamond earrings, so I told him how dope they were. The smile and greeting I got from this man, it was like I just confirmed that those earrings were the right choice and it’s going to be a good day. It felt really good making someone happy that morning and my confidence just grew.

fast forward to campus. I park my car and I see my friend Napaai. He was dressed SO fresh, I just had to compliment him on his whole outfit. He was so hyped that I complimented his clothes and just made his day. I thought this was too easy.

The day went on and I mostly just saw my friends, so handing out compliments was so easy because I love them all and I love seeing them happy. But then I got to Arcade.

The fear that went through my entire body. before I saw another friend I complimented about 8 people that I didn’t even know. I came up with a plan that if there was nothing I could say, I would just compliment their clothes. Even though sometimes my compliments weren’t genuine, they still made so many people so happy that someone would actually notice the good things about them, whether they know you or not. By making all these people even just a little happy and smile, it made me feel so good to actually make other people feel good about themselves.

Lesson Learnt: You don’t need expensive or artificial gifts to make someone happy.

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Spend time with a very young child

Today I spent the day with my good friend Alicia and her 5 year old brother Jayden. Jayden is a very energetic, naughty, and loving little man. We spent the day playing with his new toys he got for his birthday. He loving using his action figures to fight and he never let me win all 17 times. Jayden does karate at my dad’s dojo, so we have that connection. Jayden loves fighting movies and series, and whenever I come over he ALWAYS wants to wrestle. We played for at least 5 hours straight. I have no idea where he gets all this energy from, but it seems to never run out.

The one barrier that we’ve always had is that Alicia and her family are very afrikaans and afrikaans is there first language. My afrikaans isn’t so good and they always keep switching from Afrikaans to English and it gets to me sometimes, because they know my taal is kuk. I’ve never actually hung out with afrikaans people for this reason.

So instead of neglecting this family because of the language barrier, I decided to actually take learning afrikaans more seriously and get to know the culture a little more. Today was the 1st time I had a conversation with little Jayden in the 1 year that I’ve known him and it brought such a big smile to his face.

Lesson learnt: Sometimes you need to make a better effort for others in order to feel better about yourself.

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Attend a sporting event (cricket, rugby etc).

Today I went to the WITS indoor basketball courts and watched the Women’s TUKS vs WITS game. To my luck the Men’s TUKS vs UJ game was on at the same time, so I could watch 2 games at once. My friend Lisa (number 7) was playing for the TUKS team and she invited me to come watch her; so I thought: “hmmmm...I see I can kill 2 birds with one stone here”.

Now I am a big basketball fan myself, so I really enjoy watching basketball whether it be professional or amateur. But I haven’t really been interested in watching women’s basketball. It’s not because they’re women, it’s just because the men’s basketball is so much more physical and athletic. So as a man, that is naturally more exciting for me when it comes to sports.

So today I gave it a try and kept my focus on the women’s game and supported my friend. I’m sitting in the stands not expecting much from this game and just trying to keep an open mind and not judge before I know. SURPRISINGLY, the game was actually quite interesting. The girls weren’t as physical and athletic, but they did score a lot and the score between the 2 teams had a difference of only 3 points for the entire 4th quarter. Both teams went back and forth on scoring and good defense.

At the end, the WITS team started playing some full court defense and the TUKS team seemed to get a little intimidated by them, even though they were equal the entire game. After seeing that, I realized that change in any situation can affect people negatively if they do not compose themselves, accept the change, and adapt. the TUKS women’s team lost the game, solely on the fact that they did not know how to deal with the new change in defense from the WITS ladies.

Lesson learnt: embrace changes that come your way and adapt accordingly instead of neglecting it.

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Spend time in a place where you are a minority.

I found this a little uncomfortable in the beginning, because everyone would look at me when I walked past and I felt like I was very much an outcast. I attended a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at the Ponte basketball courts near the Joburg CBD.

I did feel uncomfortable because I didn’t really fit in with the majority group, but then as time passed on, eventually I forgot about being the minority and just focused on watching the basketball games. At that moment I realized that even though I was the only Chinese person there, WE as a community were all there for one common purpose...watch basketball.

This has taught me that just because I was in the minority for one factor, doesn’t mean that I can’t be part of the majority in another. the game of basketball has brings many fans closer, because it gives fans an alliance (supporting the same team), as well as a common enemy (opposing team).

Lesson learnt: Don’t judge before you know