Earlier this week, Chinese cinema exhibitor Beijing Bona Starlight Cineplex Management Co. Ltd. announced that it will start applying film classifications to films in the hope of providing better guidance to its patrons and improving box office performance. A subsidiary of film distribution giant Bona Film Group, the exhibitor currently only operates four cinemas in China, including two in Beijing, but has seven more venues in various stages of development. While this may seem like a pretty insignificant gesture, China currently has no official film classification system in place but there have been numerous appeals for one from throughout the industry.

As it stands, any film that is passed for exhibition by China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television can be watched by audiences of any age. SARFT itself also operates without any official guidelines and the opinion amongst many filmmakers and distributors is that if a classification system was in place, SARFT would be more lenient in what it chose to pass as suitable viewing for the country’s 1.3 billion inhabitants. The announcement was made by Starlight’s General Manager, Huang Wei, and while the specifics of the proposed system have yet to be revealed, Huang suggested that Beijing Bona Starlight’s ratings would be based on Hong Kong’s current system.

In a system with such a rigidly-defined code of appropriate content for mainstream releases, even a whisper of a ratings hierarchy could suggest the beginning of some change within the SARFT universe. In any case, giving audiences the ability to determine the appropriateness of a film’s content for themselves is more power than Chinese audiences have yet enjoyed. Though Bona’s ratings system is purely cosmetic and not yet legal, reactions from other studios may set the course for the future of a ratings system. Marsh reports:

If China were to implement such a system then the hope is that SARFT would relax its attitudes towards sexual and violent content in films, if it was confident that only audiences of a certain age would be able to see them. Such a system might also help distributors hone their marketing campaigns towards specific audience demographics, making them more efficient and cost-effective. Beijing Bona Searchlight’s system, set to be implemented at the end of February, would only be advisory, and carry no legal weight, but it’s certainly a fascinating move that we’ll be sure to track in the months ahead.

 

"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.

Documentary Fortnight summarizes the film as follows:

Two girls growing up in poverty on the outskirts of Beijing seek to ensure a better future for themselves and their brother. Determined to continue their education, the girls square off with their stubborn, troubled parents. The family’s tense exchanges are captured as the young women try to negotiate a path to independence, security, and adulthood. The film shows how some children are forced to grow up too early, with little support and no adults to lead the way.

 

"Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" (dir. Alison Klayman)

The documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which was directed by Alison Klayman and won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Defiance at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is a story about an artist and filmmaker, about a tug-of-war between an activist and his government, and a portrait of modern China—but it’s also a story about cats. In the film’s opening sequence, Ai, whose propensity to speak in metaphor is evident throughout the film, discusses the many cats he keeps milling around his home and studio. “One cat out of forty has learned to open the door,” he reports, remarking that if that one cat hadn’t succeeded in opening the door, no one would even know that cats were even capable of opening doors. A charming moment later we see this apparently exceptional cat leap up, open the studio door, and free himself. Welcome to the world of Ai Weiwei.

A portrait of any artist—even one as dynamic and controversial as Ai – is no simple profile to capture, but Klayman’s obvious closeness to her subject and the impressive roster of experts she’s brought on board present a thorough, well-structured chronicle of the artist’s life and times. For Ai, it’s clear from the first frames that every day exists on a public stage: in the international media, on the government surveillance cameras surrounding his home and studios in Beijing, and, most significantly, online. While Never Sorry is an account of how one poet’s son became an international figure for artistic mega-projects and political subversion, it is also a story that explores and champions social media in a way rarely seen on film. From his daily Twitter activity to the “Cao ni ma, zuguo” (Fuck you, motherland) internet meme that launched a thousand gasps, the internet has played—and continues to play—a crucial role in Ai’s international reach as an artist and the practitioner of a broad political message.

The film presents a linear account of Ai’s life, from his family’s years being “re-educated” in Western China to his early artistic career in the New York in the 1980s, the emergence of the Beijing underground art scene from a collective post-Tiananmen depression, and the myriad projects that have ensued over the past few decades. Offering a contemporary narrative touchpoint is Ai’s endeavor to collect the names of all the children killed in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. The collection of names, while affecting as a eulogy for an unspeakable tragedy, seems to drive at the crux of Ai’s message. This project, like so many of his artistic crusades, is about calling for government transparency, examining what is real vs. what is fake, about making bold statements and damning the consequences—no matter how personally damaging they might be.

Clashes between Ai and the Chengdu police offer some  of the film’s most compelling footage, providing behind-the-scenes access to the making of Ai Weiwei’s Sichuan-based documentaries Hua Lian Ba Er (Dirty Faces) and Lao Ma Ti Hua (Disturbing the Peace). The altercations suffered during the Sichuan project come to a visual, if not physical climax, with the documentation of a kind of digital camera shoot-off between Klayman and Ai’s assistants and the Chengdu police during a heated confrontation. Ultimately, it’s the momentum of the Sichuan project and ensuing violent entanglements with the Chengdu police that leads the story to the moment Ai is now best known for: his eighty-one day disappearance and detention at the hands of Chinese authorities in 2011.

Birds in flight: flipping in solidarity at the Sundance Awards cenemony

While weaving together the various threads that compose Ai’s story, Klayman employs no singular narrator, but relies on the expertise of a community of artists and scholars who are intimately acquainted with Weiwei and his world, such as Chinese art experts Karen Smith and Philip Tinari, New Yorker correspondent Evan Osnos, director Gu Changwei, artist Chen Danqing, and Ai Weiwei’s mother and his wife, the artist Lu Qing. This assembly of de facto narrators may not represent a broad range of Chinese or even expat attitudes but speak to a specific intellectual culture of galleries and museums, the spaces that house, but do not necessarily typify, the tangible pieces of Ai’s message.

There’s no denying that Ai Weiwei is a film constructed for non-Chinese audiences whose potentially cursory acquaintance with Ai’s story will be well-served by Klayman’s clear, if occasionally somewhat didactic style of reporting. There may remain, however, a few gaps in the audience’s understanding after the credits roll. The final credits sequence is accompanied by a video of Ai singing along to the Cao Ni Ma song. This Chinese internet sensation that plays on the characters Cao Ni Ma (meaning, ostensibly, “Grass Mud Horse”) being phonetically identical to the characters for “Fuck Your Mother” has come to represent the internet’s usefulness to in expressing superficially-apolitical sentiments below government radar.

The meaning of this epilogue was lost on numerous members of the Sundance audience, baffled that such a trenchant piece of reporting—while certainly light-hearted at moments—would end on such a silly-seeming note. Indeed, Ai’s opening story about his cats is broadly allegorical, but bears even more significant weight when one considers Deng Xiaoping’s famous declaration that “it makes no difference if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” So much of Ai Weiwei’s work and life is devoted to wading through the black and white of ethical and political behavior, not to mention tangling with the often indiscriminate “mouse-catching” of the Chinese government, to present the quote without this deeper context seems somehow to weaken it.

Overall, the Spirit of Defiance award seems highly appropriate for this film that promotes in its subject an undeniable spirit of rebellion. In Ai Weiwei’s world, there’s the rebellion of creation in a country fixed in an endless cycle of destruction and development, the rebellion of using social media to subvert the restraints of local geography, and the thrilling rebellion of an outstretched middle finger—a gesture of solidarity adopted by the Sundance awards ceremony audience—to show the world just what he’s made of.

In a country where what’s shown on screen is guarded by the government, online video websites such as Youku and Tudou are revolutionising the way people view film and television. In 2010, the number of Chinese watching video online was 284 million. By the end of 2012 the figure could pass 445m, according to CMM Intelligence, a Beijing-based market research firm.

In addition to providing a channel to an enormous Chinese audience, online distribution is also proving key for artistic ventures that would otherwise remain underground and largely unseen.

…Online platforms are opening up opportunities for filmmakers that cinematic release would stifle. “Our biggest priority is to have as many people as possible watch our films”, says Xiao Yang, one half of film-making duo the Chopsticks Brothers, whose debut short film Old Boys has been watched by 42 million people. “If Old Boys had only been shown through traditional channels, both budget constraints and the plot would have affected the number of people who saw it. On the internet it came alive.”

For film-makers wanting to release in theatres, there are substantial censorship considerations. Last month the state council of legislative affairs drafted three new rules to add to the list of ten cinematic no-nos – which are designed to “promote the prosperity and development of the film industry and enrich the cultural life of the people” – banning the promotion of drug use, hurting people’s religious feelings and “playing up” horror, among others.

“We wanted to make a film that might have challenged censors, and if that was the case we were shutting ourselves off from television and cinema” says Melanie Ansley, producer of Red Light Revolution, a Beijing-based comedy about a cabbie who opens a sex shop – content too racy to pass China’s cinema censors. After release on Tudou last week, the Chinese-language film has had over 1.2 million views. “I think the internet offers a place for stuff that takes a little more risk,” says Ansley. “Some of the comments from viewers of our film say ‘how did this get past the censors? I can’t believe that I’m watching this, that this is up on Tudou’.

Police on duty at Guangzhou Railway Station in early 2012. Image: eChinacities.

On his blog Screening China, Dan Edwards reviews two new films by the prolific documentary maker Zhou Hao, whose films Using and The Transition Period are distributed by dGenerate.  Zhou’s new films Cop Shop and Cop Shop II are both about the daily operations of the police station at Guangzhou Railway Station, one of the busiest public transport hubs in China. Edwards writes, “Without explicitly making the point, the Cop Shop films present a pretty damning view of the vagaries of China’s bureaucratic administration, which impacts negatively upon both the police and the swirling masses outside.”

Edwards goes on to describe how the events depicted in these films reflect the larger social conditions affecting contemporary China:

Unfettered capitalism, in an environment completely dominated by government business monopolies and a weak rule of law, has turned Chinese people against one another and reduced daily life for many to the level of an animalistic struggle for survival. With no effective systems or institutions in place to deal with these issues, the police of the Cop Shop films spend their days fobbing off an endless parade of the distressed and disenfranchised… The Cop Shop films, especially Cop Shop II, are an engrossing look at the myriad pressures and problems faced by uniformed officers in China, as they deal with the front line victims of what has become a cut-throat, highly stratified society.

Read the full article at Screening China.

To watch an in-depth study of the lives of Chinese policemen, watch Zhao Liang’s acclaimed film Crime and Punishment.

Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao toast the guests of their wedding ceremony in Jia's hometown of Fenyang. (Photo source: Sina.com)

Last September we reported that director Jia Zhangke and his longtime lead actress Zhao Tao conducted a private wedding ceremony during the Venice International Film Festival. On Saturday January 7 the couple held a formal wedding banquet for family and friends in Jia’s hometown of Fenyang in Shanxi province. Since the two met during the production of Jia’s 2000 film Platform, the couple have worked together on several film projects, many of which rank among the best Chinese films of the past decade: Unknown Pleasures (2002), The World (2004), Still Life (2006), 24 City (2008), and I Wish I Knew (2010).

As distributors of Jia’s film Dong and as longtime admirers of his and Zhao’s screen collaborations, the dGenerate team extends its heartiest congratulations and best wishes to lovely bride and groom!  Click through to view images from a album of the wedding ceremony, posted on Sina.com.

The lavish setting of Jia and Zhao's wedding banquet (Photo source: Sina.com)

Jia presents Zhao her wedding ring (Photo source: Sina.com)

Jia Zhangke's mother addresses the gathering (Photo source: Sina.com)

"Bai tou xie lao": "May you enjoy your lives together to your grey-haired days!" (Photo source: Sina.com)

Known internationally for his artistic and interdisciplinary projects, which have become inseparable from steadfast political convictions and consequences, Ai Weiwei here addresses his work as a documentary filmmaker (many of these films are available on youtube), his concept of “social investigations,” the line between documentary and performance art, and his collaboration with other filmmakers.

Writes Sniadecki:

It is clear that Ai’s outspoken internet postings and his activism contributed to his detention, but another related cause that has been less explored in overseas discussions is his role as a documentary filmmaker. Working with a production team organized through his Beijing studio—his residence and his main headquarters located in the northwest corner of the capital—Ai has released eight guerilla-style documentaries and many short online videos that, in their rough style and critical approach, seek to initiate a space of open inquiry and free speech around social issues in China. These goals may appear similar to those pursued by Chinese independent filmmakers such as Wang Bing, Zhao Liang, and Zhao Dayong, but Ai’s work is far more confrontational, far more directly political in function, and absolutely devoid of concern for both cinema aesthetics and the status of the artist. His are hard-hitting activist films that are shot in-situ, edited together swiftly, and then immediately posted online to contribute to his larger project of unmasking abuses of power and egregious cover-ups. Thus, his films are akin to the work of Guangzhou-based activist Ai Xiaoming’s films and Xu Xin’s Karamay (2010), the powerful six-hour documentary about a tragic fire that claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent schoolchildren in an oil town in the northwestern province of Xinjiang (Ai’s studio staff actually helped Xu Xin post Karamay online). Yet the major difference here is that Ai’s interventionist filmmaking often compels him to puncture the body of the film itself by appearing on screen to present challenges to authorities in direct defiance of their power. In fact, what captivates and thrills Chinese audiences—the majority of whom view these films on laptops after downloading them for the brief window that the films remain undetected by internet police—is exactly the daring verbal assaults Ai hurls at police officers and officials who fail to respond to his demands for fairness, justice, and greater transparency.

The interview can be accessed here in its entirety.

"Disorder" (dir. Huang Weikai)

Sight and Sound‘s annual account of the year’s cinematic highlights featured two dGenerate titles, spotlighting some of the brightest and boldest Chinese indies in recent memory.

Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum selected Huang Weikai‘s Disorder as one of his most memorable cinematic experiences of the past year, praising the film as a “Guangzhou city symphony culled from street footage by many hands and a major example of recent Chinese independent cinema.” 

Wang Jiuliang‘s Beijing Besieged By Waste appeared on the list of critic Sukhdev Sandhu, who called the film “eerie and urgent.” Sandhu goes on to address “One image – of the splayed yet oddly restful corpse of a man who had assembled a tiny shack amidst an enormous wasteland – has haunted me like no other in 2011.” 

Wang Jiuliang focuses his camera in a Beijing landfill

A recent article in the Global Times addresses the sprawling landfills surrounding Beijing that inspired Wang Jiuliang‘s documentary Beijing Besieged By Waste.

Feng Shu reports:

Wang spent months tracking garbage trucks to hundreds of the city’s legal landfill sites, illegal garbage dumps and recycling centers. He took more than 10,000 photographs and shot more than 60 hours of video.

Wang’s original idea was to discuss the environmental hazard of over-consumption. He focused on garbage as the “evidence” and decided it was time to ring the alarm.

“Few people know just how much garbage there is in this city, all of these photos and videos I shot show just how urgent this matter is,” said Wang…

Wang’s film, steeped in the hopeless expanse of Beijing’s waste situation, minces no meaning in showing the truth behind Beijing’s least sustainable landscapes.

Wang’s video essay of Beijing’s garbage dumps suggests there are more than 1,000 illegal landfills, where an army of garbage pickers scour the waste for anything that can be recycled for cash. The unlicensed illegal sites take no precautions to protect the environment before going into business or during their operation, said Wang.

Wang used satellite images from Google Earth to look for telltale signs of landfill sites. He also used less high tech sleuthing methods; he simply followed garbage trucks to the final destinations.

“If the trucks led to a place where I could see lots of black smoke and many crows, then I was sure there must be a landfill,” said Wang.

Wang’s activism and Beijing Besieged were also the topic of a recent Beijing Today article by He Jianwei, which describes the landfills surrounding Beijing—a city categorized by geographic division into concentric “ring roads”—as the city’s “Seventh Ring.”

The "Seventh Ring": Wang's Google Map findings

With air quality in Beijing at an all-time low, concerns being raised over the breakneck pace of auto sales in China, and a garbage problem that is raging out of control, Wang’s message is resonating loud and clear.

Again, the Global Times reports:

“I never knew there are so much garbage to take care of and how close it is to us. Nothing is more important than raising people’s awareness and to help push the government to make changes,” said Wang.

 

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.

dGF: In some of the films, the subjects express hesitation about having the films shown abroad. They’re worried that foreigners will develop a negative view of China or Chinese village life. As someone who works hard to have these films screened abroad, how do you reconcile this contradiction?

WWG: Yes, this appears especially in Zou Xueping’s film Satiated Village. The villagers expressed these kinds of misgivings. They are worried. They think foreigners won’t understand, will laugh at them. When you saw this film, did you want to laugh at them?

dGF: Definitely not. History is complicated.

WWG: It’s not even about history. It’s about human understanding. Would you look at this work and this, “You are so stupid?”

dGF: Of course not.

WWG: Right. But they are afraid, they even assume that you will look at them and say “You are so stupid.” But you won’t. They need to be told now that you would not say this, that you won’t laugh at them.

dGF: Jian Yi’s IFChina Original Studio has closed recently. What do you think about this? Does it create any concern for or have any effect on your Caochangdi Workstation?

WWG: I believe they are relocating to new location. I’m not totally clear on the events surrounding this. Why did they have to close? I think, overall, no one can really make them close their doors. There is no such thing as closing off this kind of organization now—we have email, we have internet. Nobody can stop you. Just one person—yourself—can stop you. No one else can force you to do anything. Even if they [IFChina] no longer have the cooperation of the University and they get kicked out, they can find some other place to operate. They’ll find a new place and continue to work.

dFG: I agree. So, this is the last time most of these works have screened in the US. How did you feel about the audience reaction?

WWG: This was about what I expected. The audience was great and received all the pieces really well. The best audience is one that really gets the work, will engage with the filmmakers and material. The best audience is one that really expresses interest in the work. They can come from any background and just come to watch, start thinking after watching. That’s the goal.