"When The Bough Breaks" (dir. Ji Dan)
Ji Dan‘s When the Bough Breaks will screen on Monday, February 20 and Wednesday, February 22nd as part of the Documentary Fortnight at MoMa. The American premiere of the documentary will be followed by a discussion with director Ji Dan.
By Maya Eva Gunst Rudolph
Alison Klayman (alisonklayman.com)
Alison Klayman is a journalist who, while living in China from 2006-2010, produced radio and television for news sources such as NPR’s “All Things Considered,” AP Television, Voice of America, Current TV, and CBC. She is the director of the documentary film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Defiance at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. I spoke with Alison at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah about the film’s trajectory, the role of social media in making bringing this story to life, and her working relationship with China’s most notorious artist and filmmaker. Thanks to Alison and her team for their cooperation.
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dGenerate Films: Can you talk a little about the origins of your working relationship with Ai Weiwei and how the project got started?
Alison Klayman: I had been living in Beijing for about two years when my roommate, Stephanie Tung, who was working at Three Shadows [Photography Center, a gallery and cultural center in Caochangdi, Beijing] got me involved in an exhibition they were doing of Ai Weiwei’s photos from New York. The photos are kind of a“greatest hits” series of contemporary cultural figures in China and provided an interesting window into this cross-cultural understanding of New York that I was really drawn to. I was kind of underemployed at the time and Stephanie suggested I make a video to accompany the exhibition. Rong Rong [photographer and Three Shadows director] gave me the okay and I went from Three Shadows to Weiwei’s house with the camera already rolling. It was really natural and organic. I didn’t just show up at Weiwei’s door and say “I’m fascinated by you, I want to film you.” We finished the video and Weiwei liked. I think it showed who he really is—very charismatic and engaging, fun-loving, doesn’t take himself too seriously. And then projects just kept coming up, so I feel compelled to keep filming. That’s kind of the beauty of Beijing—it’s very open and you can easily fall into these kinds of projects unexpectedly.
New Yorkers, please join Pema Tseden, director of Old Dog, Francois Robin, and Robbie Barnett in a discussion of contemporary Tibetan film and literature this Thursday, February 2. The event, organized by the Trace Foundation, will run from 6-8pm and take place at Trace Foundation’s Latse Library, 132 Perry Street, 2B, New York, NY.
"Old Dog" (dir. Pema Tseden)
By Maya Eva Gunst Rudolph
At the Slamdance Film Festival, where Pema Tseden’s elegiac 2010 feature Old Dog made its US premiere last week, filmmakers are asked to share their “war stories”—the trials and tribulations of producing Slamdance’s class of often low-budget, off-the-grid films. While battling budget woes and zany locations mishaps is common among Slamdance filmmakers, Old Dog arrived in Park City with a self-evident “war story,” a sense of the political and poetic enmeshed in each highly emblematic frame of this story of an aging Tibetan herder and his eponymous mastiff.
MEMORY AND THE WITNESS IN CHINESE LANGUAGE CINEMA
GILMOREHILL CENTRE, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
SATURDAY 28TH JANUARY 2012 (9.30am – 6.15pm)
"Though I Am Gone" (dir. Hu Jie)
With the release of films such as Hu Jie’s Though I Am Gone (2006), Wang Bing’s Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (2007) and Jia Zhangke’s 24 City (2008), there seems to have been a growth of interest in recent years in the relationship between film, memory and the notion of witnessing in Chinese Language Cinema. The aim of this symposium is to explore this trend in relation to work produced in the People’s Republic, Hong Kong, Taiwan and diasporic China through documentary filmmaking, fiction film and video art.
This symposium has been jointly organised by the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Glasgow and Ricefield Chinese Arts and Cultural Centre as part of Takeaway China, a festival of film and photography from China held annually in Glasgow.
Among the dGenerate titles screening will be Xu Tong‘s Fortune Teller, Hu Jie‘s Though I Am Gone, and Robin Weng Shuoming‘s Fujian Blue.
For more information about the symposium and Takeaway China festival, including abstracts, speakers’ biographies and details of film screenings, please go to www.takeawaychina.com
This symposium is free of charge, but as places are limited all delegates much register by Friday, 20th January. For further information and to reserve a place please contact Dr Philippa Lovatt at p.lovatt.1@research.gla.ac.uk
July 9-August 3, 2012
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Open to all K-12 educators, the Institute will include films from the May Fourth period to contemporary times, both documentary and feature, and examine the complex relationship between film, politics and society in China. A stipend of $3300 covers travel and lodging costs.
For more information, contact the co-directors Dr. Nancy Jervis (njervis@illinois.edu), Professor Gary Xu (garyxu@illinois.edu) or coordinator Susan Norris (norris@illinois.edu) or call her at 217-333-9597 or 888-828-2367.
Additional information and applications are available at www.aems.illinois.edu/
By Maya E. Rudolph
After his screening series premiering many works from the Getting the Past Out Loud: Memory Projects at New York University, I spoke with filmmaker and Memory Projects organizer Wu Wenguang about the project, a new generation of filmmakers, and his view on screening works in the US. The event was held at the NYU Center for Religion and Media and co-sponsored by the Department of Cinema Studies, with generous support from China House.
Special thanks to NYU Professors Angela Zito and Zhang Zhen for curating the program and arranging this interview with Wu Wenguang.
Wu Wenguang at NYU
dGF: When and how did the Memory Project begin?
Wu Wenguang: The project started last year. It was last summer that we had the opportunity to start this. It was during this time we first started going to villages to conduct interviews. It had to be summer, this was the ideal season for heading off to these villages. So, everyone headed off to their own villages, their hometowns, for these interviews. When they got back, everyone started to edit, give advice, collaborate. This is how we got started.
dGF: The majority of the people participating in this project as filmmakers are pretty young, born in the 80s or 90s. You’ve said that your generation’s view of cinema differs greatly from that of these young people. What do you feel you have to teach one another—what kind of exchange do you have?
WWG: These kids have a lot of confidence, real self-starters. I don’t know if I really can teach them much. We can simply work together. Sometimes, the people in these villages think I’ve taught them how to shoot and what to shoot. This isn’t the case; they’ve chosen how and what to shoot by themselves. What I have to teach them isn’t important. What is important is their own work and how they choose to conduct it.
By Maya E. Rudolph
From L to R: Dan Streible, Angela Zito, Wu Wenguang, Zhang Zhen
“Independent film has gone from underground to come above ground.” Wu Wenguang’s most recent project in mentorship and documentary filmmaking, which made its US premiere at NYU under the title Getting The Past Out Loud: Memory Projects with Wu Wengugang, is an exploration of individual and collective memory, of personal storytelling, and of the evolving talents of China’s newest generation of filmmakers. The event was organized by Professors Angela Zito and Zhang Zhen at the Center for Religion and Media Studies at NYU, which Zito co-directs and was co-sponsored by the Department of Cinema Studies, where Zhang is Associate Professor. The event was also made possible thanks to generous support from China House.
Wu, often extolled to as the godfather of the New Documentary Movement in Chinese independent cinema, presented two of his own projects at the weekend screening series, but emphasized the significant work of those young people involved in the Memory Project. “My generation of filmmakers often started out working within the state system, but we were dissatisfied and bored,” Wu expressed in conversation with Professors Zhang, Zito and Cinema Studies Professor Dan Streible. “Filmmaking twenty years ago was about throwing tantrums. The new generation is more introspective, they don’t need to throw tantrums. They’ve adapted a more authentic independent posture.”
CIFF Official Logo
Reporting for the Electric Sheep blog, John Berra delivers a comprehensive account of the sights and sounds of the 8th annual China Independent Film Festival. Commenting on festival highlights, Berra offers an opinion on Shu Haolun‘s No. 89 Shimin Road, a staple of the current festival circuit throughout Asia.
The turbulent political landscape of the late 1980s is filtered through a nostalgic lens in Shu Haolun’s No. 89 Shimen Road (2010), although reference to Tiananmen ensures that this engaging drama will not receive a mainland release. High school student Xiaoli lives with his strict but understanding grandfather in Shanghai following his mother’s relocation to the United States, and becomes romantically involved with two girls who represent opposing social ideologies; next-door neighbour Lanmi becomes an escort for easy money while classmate Lili is more politically motivated. Shu resorts to some coming-of-age clichés, but this is still an evocative snapshot of youthful uncertainty at a time of social instability.
By Shelly Kraicer
Shu Haolun's "No. 89 Shimen Road" won the top prize at CIFF, but wasn't shown on Awards Night.
The Nanjing-based China Independent Film Festival (28 October-1 November 2011), unlike the Beijing Independent Film Festival described previously, benefited from a substantial degree of official and semi-official “cover”. Unlike BIFF, there is a certain amount of practical compromise with official bodies and officially approved cinema: purity isn’t such an issue. Co-sponsors include the Nanjing University School of Journalism and Communication, The Communication University of China (Nanjing) and the RCM Museum of Modern Art. The second day of CIFF includes a forum attended by local propaganda department officials. A sidebar of the festival (nicknamed the “Longbiao Section” for the dragon-headed insignia that appears at the beginning of all officially approved film prints in China) included screenings in a luxurious commercial cinema of several films that that are strictly speaking non-independent (i.e. censor-approved) but are made in a spirit of independence. These films would not appear at BIFF, for example, but might show later in official venues like Beijing’s Broadway Cinematheque MOMA, where approved “arthouse cinema” (i.e. non-commercial) finds a refuge in Beijing.
