The British Empire, so secure when Nona Baker, a young Englishwoman, sails to Malaya in the 1930s, was in tatters when she returned home in 1945.   Sean Sheehan   Her story of those tumultuous years, “Pai Naa”, mirroring the contours of war, empire and colonization, is a heartfelt tale, […]

In time to come, the success of “Parasite” (2019) may be seen as the game changer that cemented South Korea’s eminence in world cinema. Yet sixteen years earlier, “Oldboy” helped make familiar the term New Korean Cinema to cineasts whose interests stretched beyond Western films.   Sean Sheehan   What […]

Decluttering can make a lot of sense – the average US household is said to contain some 300,000 items – but it has become a new orthodoxy and in doing so has ironically added to the junk in our lives.   Sean Sheehan   Life becomes tidier when you’re not […]

The Hong Kong actor Maggie Cheung remarked in an interview  “The Chinese don’t accord much importance to things of the past, whether it’s films, heritage, or even clothes or furniture. In Asia nothing is preserved, turning towards the past is regarded as stupid, aberrant.”  A sweeping statement but one that […]