Shelly Kraicer
@shellyk
Cinema / film art in China, Hong Kong, & Taiwan especially independent films & films from within the Chinese borderlands (Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong…). And I create English subtitles for Chinese-language films.
Pretty reasonable juxtaposition of US and Chinese leaders, in a fine Ed Wong piece in the NYT. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/u...
Canada's climate policy shame: Adam Radwanski @aradwanski.bsky.social in The Star writes about the Carney government's disgraceful "pivot" towards promoting greater fossil fuel emissions. Stimulating climate collapse. Call it what you will. www.thestar.com/business/opi...
There seems to be a key word missing from this New York Times headline. (and the entire article) What do you call it when a government official is paid millions of dollars to alter a policy? Starts with a B.
Intriguing news from Timothy Snyder's email list "Thinking About..." @timothysnyder.bsky.social : his University of Toronto lecture course HITLER AND STALIN TODAY will be available free online to watch. I'll be watching... /1
The Beijing-based experimental animation artist Sun Xun's first feature MAGIC ATLAS will premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. Sun & team spent 10 years hand-carving, then animating woodblock prints. I was fortunate to be invited to work on the subtitles. www.locarnofestival.ch/festival/pro...
In the same block on Yanping Lu, a tiny pig-themed breakfast/lunch restaurant with the second best danbing (egg crepe / 蛋餅) I’ve ever had. Needed to order a double.
Taiwan post-deco and Taiwan post-Rococo (via Japan?) along Yanping Nan Lu, Taipei.
At the end of the narrowest alley in old Taipei (just off Hengyang Lu): Long Ji / Long Kee / 龍記, where pork, chewy noodles, & sweet cabbage are cooked in individual pots to make one of my favourite Taipei dishes: 搶鍋麵 / qiangguomian / pot noodles. Perfect w a little raw garlic, chilli oil, & vinegar
This ATM in Taipei wants to have a scary word with me. Question: I’m supposed to press Enter when “the gangster” is finished cheating me?
Annals of Air China: the “I am the security officer on this flight” pretend robot voice announcement is now reciting an amazing list of illegal acts that you are not allowed to perform on this flight. Otherwise, Robocop will have things to say to the “Procurate” I had no idea of some of these.
Finally had a reunion last night in Beijing with the great Tibetan musician, composer, and sound editor Dukar Tserang. One of the creative filmmakers who surrounded Pema Tseden, carrying on his beautiful legacy.
Luscious dongporou in Beijing. Fat is flavour. At a restaurant that’s new to me: the sublime Laojitang (Gongti branch).
“They Prefer Us When We’re Dead”: Tiffany Sia with Sekou Campbell. A brilliant discussion by @t1ffany4scal3 and Sekou at MOMA PS1 on how the state’s legal regimes are video’s “most consequential material substrate“, an event that took me to New York for the first time since the Canadian boycott.
Raphael at the Met Museum @metmuseum.org was surprisingly provocative, when I stopped paying attention to the sentimental madonnas and started concentrating on the darkly disturbing, horror- and desire-filled drawings. [reposting, censored: Bluesky doesn't like classical Renaissance nudes, it seems]
Toronto people: one of the finest Chinese films of the past few years, LIVING THE LAND 生息之地, will screen at TIFF Lightbox tomorrow evening, May 13th. It's an exquisitely detailed story of a farming family in 1990s China, that takes labour and beauty equally seriously. letterboxd.com/shellyak/fil...
Today in Vancouver: 3 hours walking in magnificent Pacific Spirit Park. Why don’t i live in Vancouver?
Sad to say goodbye to my companion for 50 years. Bought in Montreal in 1974. Converted to Baroque cello from standard cello in the early 90s. Sent to be restored and find a new home at the Sound Post, Toronto in 2026. I’ll miss its light texture and charmingly awkward “wolf “on F# on the G string.
I'm describing professional usefulness, producing an adequately good translated text for film subtitles that replaces professional subtitlers/translators. There, machine translation clearly fails. 2/
Florence, earlier this year: Brunelleschi, Michelozzo (San Marco Library), more Brunelleschi (the Pazzi Chapel) and Poodelleschi in front of the Palazzo Strozzi.
Michael Cherney 秋麦: MIDDLE DISTANCE 心目之中: a magnificent show of my friend's photographic artworks at UCCA Beijing. Michael takes landscape photographs, then extracts details, expands & prints them: the results have the aura & beauty of ink drawings. Show runs to 12 April ucca.org.cn/en/exhibitio...
Scrambling around a less brutally “restored” part of the Great Wall NE of Beijing, at Panlongshan. 蟠龙山长城. Almost no one else there.
Splits In Two: Simon Liu’s newest work and one of his most gorgeous. Prismatic leakages, shimmering layered images of Hong Kong, always disappearing, reappearing, disappearing. HK dances, HK flashes, HK is always almost visible. In Ghostly, Godly 人間, Octone Foundation, M Place, Hong Kong. @cyi_liu
Yang Fudong: Xianghe /香河. A 15-screen semi-narrative installation at UCCA, Beijing. With Tan Zhuo, Lu Yulai, Yang Wang, & mysterious shamans & mourners. Yang’s childhood memories filtered through his polished style, mixed with animals, weddings, a death: all flickering emotions, passionate & cold.
Johnnie To Sir, expansive, over flowers. One of Hong Kong’s finest treasures.
On Lantau Island for a walking excursion. Noticed this sign: mulling over a career change. Coxswain Kraicer? 謝楓船長？