Archive for the ‘Chinese Cinema Events’ Category

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Shelly on Film: Fall Festival Report, Part One: Keeping Independence in Beijing

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

By Shelly Kraicer

Just having a party: This year's Beijing International Film Festival had to take a more casual tone. (photo: ArtInfo)

I’m often asked how it is that I keep track of new Chinese independent films. One answer: just be in China for a few weeks in October and November. The film festival season here is packed right now. Two major indie film festivals have just concluded: the 6th Beijing Independent Film Festival (BIFF, in the Beijing exurb of Songzhuang) and the 8th China Independent Film Festival (in Nanjing). In Beijing itself, we’ve had the 4th First Film Festival (an international festival for films by first-time directors) at various campuses in China including Peking University, and the 6th Chinese Young Generation Film Forum. Coming up is the 5th Chongqing Independent Film and Video Festival (CIFVF).

That’s a lot of films and festivals. Of course there is substantial overlap, especially between the three main indie film festivals (BIFF, CIFF, CIFVF). BIFF and CIFF each had its own issues this year: external and internal conflict that showed just how much pressure independent filmmakers are under in China at the moment. These conflicts, which I’ll describe below, also demonstrated the urgency with which these filmmakers conceive of their practice, their autonomy, their mission, and their very existence.

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This Weekend: Documentary Memory Project with Wu Wenguang at NYU

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Getting the Past Out Loud: Memory Projects with Wu Wenguang

December, 3 2011 | 12:00 – 1:00pm721 Broadway, 6th Floor

SCREENING AND DISCUSSION

Co-sponsored by the Department of Cinema Studies.  With generous support from China House

Getting the Past Out Loud: Memory Projects with Wu Wenguang

Saturday, December 3, 4, 2011

A five-film weekend with documentary director and artist Wu Wenguang where he will present films from The Memory Project, based at Coachangdi Workstation in Beijing.  From there, young filmmakers fanned out to return to family villages and their own pasts, real and imagined, to inquire about The Great Famine of 1959-61 — a disaster of which memories have been actively abandoned by the state.  But the films reveal as much about the wish for memory as of memory itself and of the interesting role of film in such projects of retrieval.  Two of Wu’s works will be featured.
Program:

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iSunTV Chinese Documentary Awards Honor Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul, Beijing Besieged by Waste

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
By Isabella Tianzi Cai

"Searching For Lin Zhao's Soul"

iSunTV hosted the 1st Chinese Documentary Awards from Nov. 4 to 5, 2011 in Hong Kong. Hu Jie’s Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul (2004) won the gold award in the feature-length documentary section. Wang Jiuliang’s Beijing Besieged by Waste (2011) won the bronze award in the iSunTV TNC (The Nation Conservatory) Films section. (Both films are available through the dGenerate Films catalog)

iSunTV claims to be the only independent Chinese television channel in China. It was founded in 2000 in Hong Kong as a Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) channel. Now headquartered in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Taipei, it produces and broadcasts programs in Chinese around the clock. Currently its programs are divided into eight categories; they are news, reviews, histories, biographies, documentaries, dialogs, cultural talks, and world cultures. A strong focus on free speech permeates all its programs. Documentaries, in particular, are a staple with them.
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On the Road: Post WTO New Chinese Cinema

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

By Tianqi Yu

Originally published on ArtinChina issue 3

Chinese version published on Contemporary Art and Investment, 2011 June issue

Republished with permission of the author

The International Conference “New Generation Chinese Cinema: Commodity of exchange” took place at King’s College London on 26th and 27th May 2011. It is regarded as the first international conference that focuses solely on contemporary Chinese cinema in the UK.

The conference focuses on how China’s market forces and new eco-political role on the global stage have impact on Chinese cinema from the year 2000 onwards. It aims to explore a diverse range of films, from commercial Chinese blockbusters to regional films; from popular genre waves to avant-garde art works; from ethnographic documentaries to amateur works that use digital filming techniques, to examine how these films are exchanged as commodities within the global and local film festival circuits and markets.

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Independents Day at the 2011 China Independent Film Festival

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

By Chris Hawke

"Shattered" (dir. Xu Tong)

(Originally published in the China Global Times)

A convicted bordello madam who once dabbled in illegal coal mining played a starring role at the 8th China Independent Film Festival (CIFF), accepting an award during the opening ceremony at Nanjing University and breathing life into an otherwise-dull forum on filmmaking.

Tang Caifeng won the True Character award for Xu Tong’s Shattered, which followed Tang back to her hometown to reunite with her irascible father, a former engineer educated under Japanese rule.

Subplots involve Tang’s efforts to get into mining and her efforts to “assist” a young prostitute who later turned her in to authorities, leading to a prison term.

The 600-seat auditorium was packed for the ceremony, with 200 left standing in the aisles to watch a high-octane preview of the 24 documentaries, 10 feature films and 20 shorts that screened from October 28 to November 1.

Organizers emphasized their independence and a clenched fist thrust upward in a gesture of empowerment served as their icon.

CIFF is the most important event on China’s indie film circuit, drawing buyers and festival programmers from the US and Europe. It is also one of the few opportunities for independent filmmakers to show to large audiences.

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Chinese-language films screening at UT Austin

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

The Department of Radio-Film-Television and the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin present:

Contemporary Chinese-Language Cinema, Nov 9-13, 2011

with Peggy Hsiung-ping Chiao, distinguished Taiwanese scholar and film producer, alumna and recipient of the 2011-12 William Randolph Hearst Fellow Award from the College of Communication, The University of Texas at Austin

Public Lecture: Chinese-Language Cinema – The New Image
Nov 11 (Fri) 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. Legends Room, the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center

Award Ceremony will be held at the end of the lecture and followed by the reception

Master Class: Filmmaking in China: From Art Cinema to Commercial Production
Nov 10 (Thur) 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. CMA 4.128

Public Screenings of Films Produced by Peggy Chiao

Buddha Mountain Nov 9 (Wed) 7:30 p.m. CMB Studio 4D (CMB 4.122)
Beijing Bicycle Nov 10 (Thur) 7:30 p.m. ART 1.102

Taiwan Cinema of the 2000s In Celebration of the Founding of the Taiwan Academy

Reception
Nov 11 (Fri) 5 p.m. -7:30 p.m. Legends Room, the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center

Public Screenings of Films Made in Taiwan

7:30 p.m. CMB Studio 4D (CMB 4.122)
Hear Me Nov 11 (Fri)
Blue Gate Crossing Nov 12 (Sat)
Yang Yang Nov 13 (Sun)

Please see the websites below for more details:

http://rtf.utexas.edu/events/contemporary-chinese-language-cinema

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/eastasia/events/19939

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8th Annual Chinese Independent Film Festival – Lineup

Friday, October 28th, 2011

By Maya E. Rudolph

The 8th annual China Independent Film Festival will commence October 28th with an exciting roster of narrative, documentary, and short films screening in Nanjing. The festival this year boasts a balanced feature narrative and documentary program, and an extensive program of shorts, experimental films, a selection of shorts from Germany, and four selections from the Folk Memory Project.

Kicking off the documentary program is Zheng Kuo’s 798 Station, a 2011 film documenting the evolution of Beijing’s 798 factory space from an East German-engineered industrial park to a contemporary art hotspot. Also screening on the festival’s first day is Cong Feng’s (director of 2008’s Doctor Ma’s Country Clinic) The Unfinished History of Life, a serious and thorough account of a group of friends and acquaintances in Gansu province, their daily lives and concerns unfolding over several hours of footage.

Yang Heng, the director of Betelnut (distributed by dGenerate), brings to the narrative program a second feature, Sun Spots. This 2010 Hong-Kong co-production boasts a vaguely surrealistic, hauntingly still story of violence and redemption. Other films by directors represented by dGenerate are No. 89 Shimen Road (Shu Haolun, Nostalgia, Struggle), Shattered (Xu Tong, Fortune Teller), and Cop Shop II (Zhou Hao, Using, The Transition Period).

The full program is listed following the break: (more…)

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Chinese Films at the Busan International Film Festival

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

By Isabella Tianzi Cai

In the recently closed 16th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), which ran from October 6 to 14, 2011, two independent Chinese productions made to the list of 30 finalists in the Asian Project Market (APM). They were Late August by YANG Heng (director of Betelnut, distributed by dGenerate) and Du, Zooey, and Ma by Robin WENG Shouming (director of Fujian Blue, distributed by dGenerate).

The Asian Project Market of BIFF, previously known as the Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP), is a venue for promising Asian directors and producers to get help and support from industrial representatives from all over the world. This year, 27 of the 30 finalists competed for six cash awards that ranged from 8,717USD (Lotte Award and PanStar Cruise Award) to 22,777USD (Göteborg Film Festival Fund from Sweden); 7 films won. See list.

This year, 307 films in 11 categories were screened at BIFF this year, with 134 world or international premieres. Below is a complete list of 22 Chinese films screened at the festival.

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Oxhide I & II in NYC this Wed & Thurs – Liu Jiayin & Caveh Zahedi in conversation

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
Oxhide II

Oxhide II

All you indie Chinese fans in NYC are once again in luck. Liu Jiayin’s acclaimed Oxhide and Oxhide II screen this Wednesday (10/26) and Thursday (10/27) at hot new Lower Manhattan art & film space Exit Art.

Come early and have a drink at their bar, stay after and be rewarded with a continent-spanning Skype Q&A between Liu Jiayin and filmmaker Caveh Zahedi (I Am a Sex Addict). Even better, dGenerate fans get half-off their tickets by emailing aimee@exitart.org. Seriously folks, no excuses on this one.

Don’t miss what Shelly Kraicer deems “The most important Chinese film of the past several years—and one of the most astonishing recent films from any country” (Oxhide) and David Bordwell proclaims “A masterpiece…inventive, quietly virtuosic” (Oxhide II).

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Beijing Independent Film Festival Proceeds Under Pressure; Full Program Listed

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore reports for IPS:

The Sixth Beijing Independent Film Festival (BIFF) has had to switch venues twice following pressure by the police, obliging the organisers to inform festival-goers of the last-minute location changes.

BIFF, now in its sixth year, is showing over 50 cutting-edge feature films, documentaries, experimental works and animations in Songzhuang, a village on the outskirts of Beijing which is known as a hub for its avant-garde artistic community. The meddling by the authorities – while stopping short of shutting down the festival itself – has thrown into the spotlight the heavy scrutiny that the independent arts face in China by the one-party state.

Karin Chien, founder of dGenerate Films, a New York-based distribution company that specialises in distributing independent Chinese film to audiences worldwide, says she that was not surprised by the most recent interference from the authorities.

“Authorities caused BIFF to change venues twice, to the point where screenings were being held in the festival’s headquarters,” Chien, who was present at the launch event, wrote to IPS in an email. ‘So when the police showed up to stop the first screening, it wasn’t a surprise. The documentary version of BIFF was canceled by the authorities in May, so I suppose we were all holding our breath to see what would happen this time.”

Read the full report at IPS

Click through to access the full program of The 6th Beijing Independent Film Festival

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