June 29th, 2009
dGenerate Films is pleased to introduce CinemaTalk, an ongoing series of conversations with esteemed scholars of Chinese cinema studies. These conversations will be presented on this site in audio podcast and/or text format. They are intended to help the Chinese cinema studies community keep abreast of the latest work being done in the field, as well as to learn what recent Chinese films are catching the attention of others. This series reflects our mission to bring valuable resources and foster community around the field of Chinese film studies.
For our first CinemaTalk, we spoke with Chris Berry, Professor of Film and Television Studies in the Department of Media and Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London. Some of Chris’ work includes:
- Author, Cinema and the National: China on Screen (Columbia University Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2006) with Mary Farquhar
- Author, Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: The Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004)
- Editor (with Ying Zhu), TV China (Indiana University Press, 2008)
- Editor, Chinese Films in Focus II (British Film Institute, 2008)
- Editor (with Feii Lu), Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005)
- Editor (with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue), Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003)
- Translator and Editor, Ni Zhen’s Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Origins of China’s Fifth Generation Filmmakers (Duke University Press, 2002)
- Author, “Imaging the Globalized City: Rem Koolhaas, U-thèque, and the Pearl River Delta,” in Cinema at the City’s Edge, edited by Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, forthcoming), part of a series TransAsia: Screen Cultures, co-edited by Chris Berry and Koichi Iwabuchi
Kevin Lee, dGenerate’s VP of Programming of Education, spoke with Chris about various topics from his current work and areas of focus, to comparisons between contemporary Chinese cinema and the Fifth Generation filmmakers whom he helped to champion in the 1980s and 1990s, to which recent Chinese films that have excited him the most. Podcast audio can be accessed here (right-click to download). Full transcript follows after the break.
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Tags: Academic Focus, arthouse, cao fei, chris berry, cinema studies, educational, film studies, jia zhangke, meishi street, ou ning, san yuan li, taking father home, the other half, YING Liang
Posted by Kevin in Academic Focus, Chinese Cinema Today, CinemaTalk | No Comments »
June 18th, 2009
SFGate Homepage featuring Ying Liang
What a nice surprise to see our very own Ying Liang, director of Taking Father Home and The Other Half, peering at us from the homepage of the San Francisco Chronicle’s website. And what an even nicer surprise to read the great article by Jeff Yang (formerly of A Magazine fame) tying dGenerate Films, and the films and filmmakers we represent, into the digital media revolution enabling independent voices from historically media-oppressed nations to be heard.
Yang and (we) agree we’ve come a long way from the government censorship of Tiananmen Square media coverage to today’s digitally-driven, people-powered media movement occurring in countries like China and Iran thanks to new technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and digital video. Give it a read here.
For more details on Taking Father Home and The Other Half, visit our Catalog.
Tags: digital media, digital video, media, Press, taking father home, the other half, tiananmen square, YING Liang
Posted by Brent in Chinese Cinema Today, Film Reviews, dGenerate News, dGenerate Titles | No Comments »
June 17th, 2009
Read Part 1 here
So after a fateful NYU booking and Sundance shuttle ride, I now had the beginnings of a foundation to make the idea of distributing independent Chinese films a reality. For six months, I worked on the idea from afar, that is from my office in Chinatown. I tried email, Skype, and phone calls, but the time and cultural differences between U.S. and China were too great to surmount through digital communication alone. I had hit a roadblock.
At the same time, friends and colleagues began to express interest in collaborating on this venture. By the Fall, Philip Lam, now on our board of directors, and Brent Hall, our COO, expressed their faith in the venture, and made a commitment to building a company together. Their support was what I needed to push the idea into reality.
Having realized that nothing beats face-to-face contact, I booked a three week trip to Beijing to see the underground film community for myself. With nothing more than a handful of contacts and a Powerpoint presentation, I arrived in Beijing for my first time in January’s below-freezing temperatures.
I was ready to start meeting China’s underground directors … now I just had to find them.
Come back soon for Part 3 of “The Birth of dGenerate Films” by dGenerate President Karin Chien…
Tags: beijing, china, dgenerate films, film distribution
Posted by Karin in dGenerate News | No Comments »
June 16th, 2009
…dGenerate Films hopes to be for Chinese film. Thanks to our friends at the Center for Asian American Media for the shoutout. For those of you not familiar, CAAM is the leading distributor and supporter of Asian American film, and put on the world-class San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Over their 25+ years they’ve created a great model for us to follow in the footsteps of. Three cheers to CAAM!
Posted by Brent in dGenerate News | No Comments »
June 12th, 2009
June 7 saw the launch of China’s first gay pride event, ShanghaiPRIDE, which includes club events, film screenings, art shows and panel discussions on the issue of homosexuality. It is the largest festival of LGBT communities in mainland China to date. On June 10, China Daily praised the event as a “showcase of the country’s social progress alongside the three decades of economic boom” and “an event of profound significance”. However, later that day, BBC News reported a government ban on a play and a film screening, which proves that homosexuality is still a complicated and controversial issue in China, although with more tolerance than before.
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Tags: chinese documentary, cui zi'en, enter the clowns, gay, lgbt, pride, queer china, queer cinema, shanghai
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Events | 1 Comment »
June 11th, 2009
Last Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square tragedy. We didn’t want to let it go without some making mention of it within the context of cinema and media. Fortunately Gina Telaroli at Take Part published a wonderful piece that explores some features and documentaries that deal with the incident, with embedded video excerpts of each film. These films include PBS’s Frontline documentary The Tank Man, documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace, and Lou Ye’s Summer Palace. She also explores how the tragedy might inform the work of Jia Zhang-ke.
Tags: chinese cinema, chinese history, documentary, tiananmen
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Today, Film Reviews | No Comments »
June 9th, 2009
It’s always an event for us at dGenerate when a Chinese film enjoys a theatrical release in the United States, especially when it’s a film from Jia Zhangke. But Jia’s new film 24 City, which opened today in New York and will hopefully make its way across the country, is a particularly interesting case, because the film in some ways is a critique of itself as a international cultural product.
The issue of the different reactions between Western and Chinese audiences to Chinese cinema has been with us for at least since the first appearance of Zhang Yimou’s exotic period tragedies. But what’s striking about 24 City is how it seems to elicit different reactions across national borders by design. The film mixes non-professional subjects with professional actors portraying civilians, and films all of them in the same talking heads interview format as they relate the history of a run-down factory complex in Chengdu. Chinese audiences are bound to recognize the actors, while Americans are not, with the exception of Joan Chen and possibly Jia regular Zhao Tao. This is but the tip of a wedge driven between distinctly Chinese and non-Chinese experiences of reality and fiction by this groundbreaking work.
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Tags: 24 city, jia zhangke, Reviews
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Today, Film Reviews | No Comments »
June 8th, 2009
We’re thrilled at dGenerate Films to be launching our first slate of films. In honor of the occasion, I was recently thinking about the journey we undertook to get here.
The idea for the company was inspired by one of our films, San Yuan Li, by Ou Ning and Cao Fei. By a chance encounter, I indirectly helped Andrew Gluckman, now a good friend, book a screening of San Yuan Li at New York University in December 2007. At the time, I had no inkling of what was to happen. Nor did I know anything about the film. But when I saw San Yuan Li, I was blown away by the artistry and production methodology of the film. After the screening, Ou Ning told me many films in China were being made underground, meaning without censorship and without any chance at domestic distribution.
I knew there was an audience here for these films – given the immense interest in China, and a general lack of access to media made from within China, it seemed like an obvious one-two connection. Problem was, I was and still am an independent film producer, a consuming profession. I self-distributed films I produced, but the thought of tunneling a new route to bring underground Chinese films to the U.S. was daunting.
So I mulled over the idea, and a month later, it came out in an idle chat between myself and Brian Newman, Tribeca Film Institute’s Executive Director, as we were riding the free Sundance Film Festival shuttle bus. Brian said he was developing a new platform called Reframe designed specifically to distribute independent films to the academic market. He promised to accept all the films I brought back China. Reframe would take care of the physical manufacturing and order fulfillment. Brian’s offer suddenly made the idea much less daunting. I got back on the phone with Ou Ning, who immediately sent me forty films to watch.
The content was there, the distribution network was coming, all that was needed now was the missing link between the two.
More information on San Yuan Li can be found here.
Come back soon for Part 2 of “The Birth of dGenerate Films” by dGenerate President Karin Chien…
Tags: cao fei, dgenerate films, ou ning, reframe, san yuan li, screening, sundance, tribeca
Posted by Karin in dGenerate News | No Comments »
June 4th, 2009
Another Cannes has come and gone; reports from my peers who attended were mostly lukewarm about the quality of the films they saw. I thought it would be worth taking a moment to collect a critical consensus on the one Chinese film in this year’s competition line-up, Lou Ye’s Spring Fever, which went on to win the Best Screenplay Award. Many of you may know that Lou Ye’s previous film Summer Palace, which depicted the Tiananmen Square incident, led to his being banned for five years from making films by the Chinese government following its premiere in Cannes. Lou Ye was able to sidestep this ban by shooting the film undercover as a Hong Kong-France co-production.
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Tags: cannes, homosexuality, lou ye, spring fever
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Today, Film Reviews | No Comments »
May 21st, 2009
Big thanks to our friends at Reframe for featuring Super, Girls! on the homepage of their site. Reframe, an initiative of the Tribeca Film Institute (and formerly Renew Media), is an initiative funded primarily by the MacArthur Foundation to create a new one-stop destination for independent films with an emphasis on the educational market. Sort of the last bastion of old school delivery, educational film distribution has long relied on phone and fax orders, paper catalogues, and up until recently, VHS. But, working with Amazon.com and their CreateSpace technology, Reframe offers low cost digitization and an online sales fulfillment system to distributors and filmmakers in an attempt to bring educational distribution into the 21st century.
We’re happy to be in fine company with other Reframe partners like ITVS, Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Tribeca Film Festival, and POV amongst others. All of the dGenerate film titles can be found on the Reframe site at our collection page here. And purchases are fulfilled through tried-and-true online retailer Amazon.com for your comfort and ease. Thanks Reframe!
Super, Girls! to Cover Girls!
Tags: amazon, asian american media, caam, educational, film distribution, itvs, macarthur, pov, reframe, super girls, tribeca film
Posted by Brent in dGenerate News, dGenerate Titles | No Comments »
