February 8th, 2010
We’re proud to announce that Ying Liang, whose films The Other Half and Taking Father Home are standouts of the dGenerate catalog, has another international award to add to his collection.
During the IFFR 2010 Awards Ceremony for Short Films on Monday, February 1, 2010 in festival location Rotterdamse Schouwburg, the award-winning short films of the 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam were announced. The three Tiger Awards for Short Film were granted to Wei Wen (Condolences) by Ying Liang (China), Atlantiques by Mati Diop (France/Senegal) and Wednesday Morning Two A.M. by Lewis Klahr (USA).
The film was even cited by film critic Neil Young in his top ten list for the 2000s in the Best Chinese Films of the 2000s Poll conducted by dGenerate.
The jury had this to say of Ying Liang’s new short in their award citation: Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: condolences, rotterdam, ying liang
Posted by Kevin in dGenerate News | No Comments »
February 5th, 2010
“Critical Interventions” edited by Sheldon Lu is the latest series from University of Hawaii Press that aims at building a list of innovative, cutting-edge works with a focus on Asia or the presence of Asia in other continents and regions. Manuscripts and proposals exploring a wide range of issues and topics in the modern and contemporary periods are welcome, especially those dealing with literature, cinema, art, theater, media, cultural theory, and intellectual history, as well as subjects that cross disciplinary boundaries. The scholarship should combine solid research with an imaginative approach, theoretical sophistication, and stylistic lucidity.
The following two titles are released and available:
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Tags: chinese cinema, sheldon lu, xiaoping lin, yingjin zhang
Posted by Kevin in Academic Resources | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2010
dGenerate Films is teaming up with the Apple Store in Beijing to present a new monthly series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology. Digital tools, from digital video cameras to editing software, have placed filmmaking in the hands of the people. Listen and watch how award-winning directors use digital technology to create their latest movies, attracting worldwide attention and acclaim.
All events will be held at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, starting at 7pm.
Events are listed below in English; scroll further to read them in Chinese.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: apple store, beijing, cui zi'en, digital filmmaking, jian yi, peng tao, workshop
Posted by Kevin in dGenerate Events, dGenerate Titles | No Comments »
February 2nd, 2010
Fan Lixin, director of Last Train Home (Photo by Nan Chalat Noaker/Park Record)
One of the most acclaimed films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival is Last Train Home by Lixin Fan. Already the Best Feature Film winner at last November’s International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, Last Train Home chronicles a migrant-worker couple in Guangzhou trying to get on a train back to Sichuan to see their kids during the Chinese New Year, the busiest and most impossible travel period in China. Ella Taylor of NPR calls it her “favorite film of the festival, bar none… Watching this devastating portrait of a family trying to glue itself back together, you wonder how China, on its way to becoming the world’s richest nation, will avoid civil war if it doesn’t also attend to the needs of the millions of poverty-stricken families like this one.”
More info (including backlash from China) and video trailer after the break.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: china, fan lixin, last train home, migrant labor, sundance
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Today | 1 Comment »
February 1st, 2010
Zhao Liang
To commemorate Zhao Liang’s visit to the United States, we have translated a lengthy interview with Zhao, originally published in the Chinese magazine Liang You. Translation by Yuqian Yan:
————
In 1996, when Jia Zhangke picked up a 16mm camera to film his fellow townsmen in Linfen, Zhao Liang, who used to live across the corridor to Jia at Beijing Film Academy, held the camera to record a special group of people – petitioners near Beijing South Railway Station.
12 years later Jia Zhangke has shifted his early interest in documentary to a recent martial art film project, and he even became a jury chairman at the Cannes Film Festival, while Zhao Liang eventually finished his 12-year project Petition, and was invited to a special screening at Cannes. Therefore he’s still a novice at Cannes. “Never mind. It’s quite common for a forty or fifty-year-old to be called a young director.”
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Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Today | No Comments »
January 29th, 2010
Petition (dir. Zhao Liang)
In the recent Top Ten Chinese Films of the 2000s poll, one of the top-ranked documentaries was Zhao Liang’s Petition: The Court of the Complainants. A pretty impressive showing, given that the film was just released last year and has been seen by relatively few people, even in Chinese cinema circles. Tonight folks in Minneapolis will have a chance to see what some are calling the most exciting Chinese documentary since West of the Tracks.
Zhao Liang will be visiting the Walker Art Center this weekend to present his films Petition and Crime and Punishment. Then he will visit the East Cost to present his work at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, the Harvard Film Archive, the China Institute in New York, and the Center of Religion and Media at New York University.
Information on his films and a full schedule of his programs after the break.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: china institute, crime and punishment, harvard, minneapolis, nyu, petition, walker art center, zhao liang
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Events, dGenerate Events, dGenerate Titles | No Comments »
January 29th, 2010
Zhang Yimou
“Film Director Battles For Soul of Chinese Cinema” is the provocative title of an NPR report on Zhang Yimou’s new release A Simple Noodle Story (Sanqiang Pai’an Jingqi). Compared with the director’s early national allegories (Raise the Red Lantern; To Live) which made his name as an international arthouse auteur, the new comedy-murder movie is distinctly apolitical.
A radical remake of the Coen brothers’ 1984 neo-noir Blood Simple, Zhang’s latest work transplants the action from a Texas bar to a remote noodle shop in ancient China, and adds on to the crime thriller “a slapstick comedy with song-and-dance numbers revolving around noodle-making.” In an interview with NPR, Zhang does not deny the “commercial factors” behind his new experiment: he intends to make a “New Year film” (the Chinese equivalent of an American holiday season film) and to change his focus from the international to the domestic market.
Zhang is equally straightforward about his ambition behind the commercial turn, which the article dubs as his “battle with Hollywood for the soul of Chinese cinema.” According to the director:
Young people are the key. If they lose their interest in domestic movies, we will be in big trouble. The China’s film market will be occupied by foreigners. Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea are examples of this. The mainland is our last battlefield.
Behind this patriotism, the article also notes the director’s changed stature in China’s national imagination. The hugely popular successes in the spectacular Olympic opening ceremony in 2008 and the military parade marking China’s 60th anniversary in 2009 made him a national cultural hero, but also raised doubts “overseas” about whether Zhang had became Beijing’s “artist in residence.”
Zhang denies losing independence, arguing that censorship limits all Chinese directors equally, but his latest film has been panned after its premiere in China on Dec. 11. Half of those answering one online survey at a popular website, Sina.com, thought it was “terrible” or “worse than expected.” For China’s arguably most famous director, the leap between the political and the commercial, or the merging of the two, is not an easy one.
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Tags: blood simple, chinese cinema, coen brothers, hollywood, simple noodle story, zhang yimou
Posted by Lu Chen in Chinese Cinema Today | 2 Comments »
January 28th, 2010
Peter Rist, who recently contributed a thoroughly considered ballot for our Chinese Films of the Decade Poll, has published an interview he conducted with Liu Jiayin, the director of Oxhide and Oxhide II. The interview was conducted for Offscreen Magazine at last year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, where Oxhide II was presented. Oxhide II is currently screening at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Here are some choice excerpts from the interview. The full interview can be found at Offscreen.
Offscreen: My first question is about style. And, I wonder if you could explain a little bit of why you use the cinemascope frame, because I was very surprised when I saw your first feature film, that for such an intimate setting, and shooting on (not the highest definition) digital, you would use the widest scope frame available.
LJ: Firstly, it is personal. I like the aesthetics of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and it also makes the film look more “serious.” I knew that, normally, the cinemascope format is used as a more “epic” style, and for more “spectacular” scenes, or for exterior scenes. I know that my film was really intimate, but I still chose to use this ratio. That’s the first point. Secondly: size and distance are relative, so, even if you are shooting something very close, or if something you are shooting is very small, if you are using a cinemascope lens then that will give you a different perspective, and it will make it look larger.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: liu jiayin, oxhide, oxhide 2, oxhide ii, peter rist, rotterdam, vancouver
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Today, dGenerate Titles | No Comments »
January 27th, 2010
Sun Spots (dir. Yang Heng)
18 films by Chinese directors or with a Chinese theme will be presented at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, which runs from January 27 to February 7. Among these films include Oxhide II, Liu Jiayin’s follow up to her debut feature Oxhide (recently voted one of the top ten Chinese films of the past decade). Sun Spots, the second feature by Yang Heng (whose debut Betelnut is a dGenerate Films ttle) will be in competition for the VPRO Tiger Award.
City of Life and Death, Lu Chuan’s controversial big-budget feature depicting the Nanjing Massacre, has inspired a sidebar of related films, several of which date back to the time of the historic tragedy.
The full lineup of films can be found after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: chinese cinema, city of life and death, liu jiayin, lu chuan, nanjing massacre, oxhide ii, rotterdam, sun spots, yang heng
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Events | No Comments »
January 25th, 2010
City of Life and Death (dir. Lu Chuan)
In the new issue of Cinema-Scope Magazine, our own Shelly Kraicer takes on last year’s Chinese blockbuster about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, City of Life and Death by Lu Chuan. Shelly ties the film to the legacy of “zhuxuanlu” or “main melody” propaganda films produced by the government-sponsored Chinese film industry:
A look at City of Life and Death’s genre and narrative strategies can demonstrate its importance in helping to establish what I’d like to call a nascent post-zhuxuanlu cinema. It is a full-out war epic, massively budgeted and vast in ambition. Huge sets of devastated Nanjing were built, and thousands of extras mobilized to illustrate the battle scenes that open the film. Lu films his striking set pieces in a beautifully modulated black and white, where cinematography, art direction, staging, music, and sound design all conspire to create massive, intentionally overwhelming images of violence, horror, and devastation.
Read more of Shelly’s review at Cinema-scope.
For an alternative view of the Japanese occupation of China and the story of “comfort women” – women who were forced to sexually serve Japanese soldiers – check out Ban Zhongyi’s extraordinary documentary Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters.
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Tags: city of life and death, lu chuan, shelly kraicer
Posted by Kevin in Chinese Cinema Today, Film Reviews | No Comments »
We’re proud to announce that Ying Liang, whose films The Other Half and Taking Father Home are standouts of the dGenerate catalog, has another international award to add to his collection.
