Pedro Almodóvar

[Mr Sausage]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa with Daguerrotype and Hirokazu Kore-eda with both The Truth and The Broker.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Hou Hsiao-hsien has made films in Shanghainese (Flowers of Shanghai), Japanese (Café Lumière), and French (Flight of the Red Balloon). Abbas Kiarostami knew some English, which helped for Certified Copy, but he made Like Someone in Love without knowing any Japanese.

In Taiwan there was a roughly ten-year period (from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s) when the industry was dominated by Taiwanese-language films, which meant Mandarin-speakers who had emigrated from China after the war often had to make them if they wanted to get work. Chang Ying (of the infamous Fantasy of the Deer Warrior) was possibly the best-known Taiwanese-language filmmaker of the time and he didn't speak a word of it; ditto Li Hsing, one of the few directors who was able to transition successfully to Mandarin films. But generally the performers in Taiwanese-language cinema had at least some proficiency in Mandarin, and sometimes didn't speak anything else (which can be very obvious in the dubbing), so communication on the set was relatively smooth. Japanese director Kobayashi Satoru, widely regarded as the originator of the pink film, made some Taiwanese-language films in the '60s and returned to Taiwan in the '80s to co-direct a Mandarin film called War After Truce.

[yoloswegmaster]

Weren't there a bunch of Korean directors/crew members who were a part of multiple Shaw Bros productions who couldn't speak the local language?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The actors and below-the-line crew, probably, but maybe not so much the directors. I know that Chung Chang Wha and Chang Il-ho studied Mandarin at university (Chang Il-ho actually had a degree in Chinese language and literature), and Kim Soo-yong spoke English and had been an interpreter in the South Korean army. There were also at least six Japanese directors who made films for Shaw, but I don't know about their linguistic backgrounds.

[therewillbeblus]

Strange Way of Life Trailer

[hearthesilence]

Almodovar’s first English-language feature, A Manual for Cleaning Women, will star Cate Blanchett— let’s hope it’s better than his English-language short

Almodóvar has left this project over his own concerns about his readiness to shoot a feature in English

Interesting to see this. As mentioned in Louis Malle's thread, John Guare (who wrote Atlantic City) recently did a Q&A where he said he was going to do another film with Malle, but that's when Malle became ill. Pedro Almodóvar agreed to step in, but apparently Billy Wilder convinced him to drop out after telling him that he shouldn't make an English-language film until he became more fluent and familiar with it.

It's amazing how "clubby" it all feels once you get to a certain level. It's no surprise, but still, every time I hear stories like this, it's become less "I was talking to [my long-time collaborator or partner]" and more often "this other member of our esteemed club of great auteurs whom I've never met before."

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, he's doing a book signing at a McNally Jackson in NYC around the time he's in town for the NYFF. It's for the English translation of his new book, The Last Dream. (No other items, just this book and it has to be bought from the store.) OTOH, I haven't seen any enthusiasm for the book outside of diehard fans, just mixed and negative reviews.

[brundlefly]

Trailer for The Room Next Door.