Posts Tagged ‘1428’

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Reel China is Back! NYU hosts Fifth Edition of Chinese Doc Showcase

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Disorder (dir. Huang Weikai)

The Reel China @NYU Documentary Film Festival presents a sampling of the most outstanding contemporary independent documentaries produced in China. Participating filmmakers range from more experienced professional documentarians to young novices. As their disparate visions extend and overlap, we witness the persistent presence of independent cameras that, amidst the disorienting transformation in China, assures the discovery and documentation of fragments of contemporary reality that are becoming history at breakneck speed.

In addition to screenings of the best new independent documentaries from China, directors Du Haibin (1428) and Huang Weikai (Disorder) will be on hand for discussions following their screenings. 1428 and Disorder are both distributed by dGenerate Films.

5th Reel China@NYU is curated by Zhang Zhen (NYU), Angela Zito (NYU),
with Zhu Rikun (Li Xianting Film Fund) and Zhang Pingjie (REC Foundation)

Presented by the Center for Religion and Media and The Department of Cinema Studies

Sponsored by the Center for Media, Culture and History and China House, NYU.
Support for this event was received from the Asian Cultural Council.

A full list of screenings and events after the break.

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In One Week, Du Haibin and 1428 to visit Stanford, SF and NYC!

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Du Haibin, winner of Venice Film Festival Best Documentary Award for 1428

Your chance to meet the celebrated director Du Haibin is getting close!  Du Haibin will be on hand at select engagements to present his film 1428, winner of the 2009 Venice International Film Festival’s Best Documentary Prize. A haunting look at a real human tragedy that devastated the lives of millions, 1428 chronicles the days following one of history’s worst earthquakes.

Here’s a list of next week’s events:

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12th
Stanford University, California
Pigott Hall
Main Quad, Building 260, Room 113
Director Du Haibin to attend
http://events.stanford.edu/events/247/24793/

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13th
SF Asia Society
Chinatown YMCA
855 Sacramento St.
San Francisco CA 94108
(415) 576-9622
http://www.ymcasf.org/chinatown/

FRIDAY-SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
Cinema Studies Screening Room
721 Broadway, 6th floor
New York University, New York
Director Du Haibin to attend

This screening opens “Reel China, 5th Documentary Biennial at NYU”
Fri-Sunday: Oct 15-18
NYU Center for Religion and Media/Cinema Studies
http://crm.as.nyu.edu/object/crm.events.screenings

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16th
Maysles Cinema
343 Lenox Ave
Ground Fl., New York, NY 10027
(212) 582-6050
http://www.mayslesinstitute.org/cinema/calendar.html
Co-sponsored by Weatherhead East Asian Institute: http://www.columbia.edu/weai/

Visit the 1428 event page (http://dgeneratefilms.com/events/1428-tours-the-u-s-in-october/) for a full list of events.

Will we see you?  RSVP attending on our Facebook event page.

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Kevin Lee Discusses 1428 on Illinois Public Media – Screening and talk tomorrow at U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Monday, October 4th, 2010

1428 (dir. Du Haibin)

Tuesday October 5, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will host two events showcasing China’s independent film scene. At 3:30, Kevin Lee, dGenerate’s VP of Programming and Education, will present “Chinese Cinema From the Fifth Generation to the d-Generation” At 7:30, there will be a screening of 1428, Du Haibin’s acclaimed documentary about the the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. Both events will be held at Spurlock Museum, Knight Auditorium. 600 S. Gregory Street, Urbana, IL. Sponsored by the Asian Educational Media Service. Details at the AEMS website and at our event page.

Illinois Public Media interviewed Kevin Lee, about the 1428 and Chinese independent cinema. The full interview can be heard at Illinois Public Media’s website. Here is an excerpt:

A wave of filmmakers from the mid-’90s onward have taken up the mission of showing China in an accurate, realistic and questioning light, showing how social policies affect people on a day to day basis. So I’ll be giving some examples of the best achievements of these types of films. And then we’ll be showing 1428, which is a wonderful documentary that exemplifies so much of what is unique and important about these types of films.

The screening of 1428 is part of a nationwide tour of 1428, featuring director Du Haibin. Details on the tour can be found here.

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Shelly on Film: Tremors and Traumas: Notes on Three Chinese Earthquake Movies

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

By Shelly Kraicer

Buried (dir. Wang Libo)

It’s been earthquake movie season in China ever since the terrible Wenchuan earthquake that struck Sichuan province on May 12th 2008. I’ve seen fourteen of these films since then — documentaries, features, and shorts, including titles like May Day, Don’t Cry Mom, Who Killed Our Children, and Quake de Love — and I’ve by no means done a systematic search. This doesn’t include the films that mention the earthquake in passing: the number would then increase three- or four-fold.

What makes this subject so essential for Chinese filmmakers to grapple with? The Sichuan earthquake is a disaster seared into the consciousness of most people living in China, where national mass media gave saturation coverage to the earthquake and its aftermath. The subject naturally lends itself both to propaganda-style tales of heroic rescure and moral uplift, and equally to outsider critiques of government policies that made the destruction worse. It seems that there is an earthquake for every political colouring, and every possible calibration of mass media coverage (and exploitation).

I’d like to look a bit more closely at a couple of films from what we might call opposite ends of the spectrum, and one right in the middle. On one end is Wang Libo’s Buried (Yanmai), an independent documentary from 2009. Situated at the other end of is Feng Xiaogang’s massive blockbuster Aftershock (Tangshan da dizhen, 2010), the most popular Chinese film in history, measured by the box office. And right in the middle is 1428, Du Haibin’s documentary from 2009.

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1428 tours the U.S. in October

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

1428 (dir. Du Haibin)

Following its highly successful premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Du Haibin’s acclaimed documentary 1428 will be screening in October at select US engagements. Director Du Haibin will appear at several of these events.

Information on the screenings and can be found on the 1428 tour schedule page. Check back on this page regularly for updated information.

Contact us to book a screening of this film at your festival, museum, or school.

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1428 tours the U.S. in October

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Following its highly successful premiere at the NY MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight series, Du Haibin’s acclaimed documentary 1428 will be screening in October at select US engagements.  Contact us to book a screening of this film at your festival, museum, or school.

Special Thanks to New York University and the Reel China Documentary Biennial, who are sponsoring Du’s visit.

1428 (dir. Du Haibin)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5th
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Spurlock Museum
600 S. Gregory St.
Urbana, IL
(217) 333-9597
http://www.spurlock.uiuc.edu/education/calendar/2010_10.html#event5
With presentation on Chinese independent cinema by dGenerate’s Kevin Lee

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12th
Stanford University, California
Pigott Hall
Main Quad, Building 260, Room 113
Director Du Haibin to attend

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13th
SF Asia Society
Chinatown YMCA
855 Sacramento St.
San Francisco CA 94108
(415) 576-9622
http://www.ymcasf.org/chinatown/
Director Du Haibin to attend

FRIDAY-SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
Cinema Studies Screening Room
721 Broadway, 6th floor
New York University, New York
Director Du Haibin to attend

This screening opens “Reel China, 5th Documentary Biennial at NYU”
Fri-Sunday: Oct 15-18
NYU Center for Religion and Media/Cinema Studies
http://crm.as.nyu.edu/object/crm.events.screenings

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16th
Maysles Cinema
343 Lenox Ave
Ground Fl., New York, NY 10027
(212) 582-6050
http://www.mayslesinstitute.org/cinema/calendar.html
Director Du Haibin to attend; Small reception to follow

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 17th
*screening Umbrella*
Union Docs
322 Union Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11206
(718) 395-7902
http://www.uniondocs.org/
Master Class/Workshop led by Kevin Lee to follow
Director Du Haibin to attend

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19th

7:00pm-9:00pm
Harvard Film Archive
B04, Carpenter Center
24 Quincy Street
Cambridge MA 02138
Free and open to public
The screening will be followed by Q&A.  Discussants include Eugene Wang, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art; Jie Li, Harvard College Fellow; and Ying Qian, PhD candidate at Harvard EALC.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20th
7:00 PM
Yale University
Auditorium at Whitney Humanities Center
53 Wall Street
New Haven, CT
Director Du Haibin to attend

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21st
University of Chicago
5:30pm-7:30pm Screening
7:30pm-8:30pm Discussion and Q&A
Classics 21

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22nd
California Institute of the Arts
Film Today Class
Bijou Auditorium
Presentation by Thom Andersen and Bérénice Reynaud
24700 McBean Parkway Valencia CA 91355
(661)255.1050
Director Du Haibin to attend

Rice University
Room 301, Sewell Hall
6100 Main St.
Houston, TX 77005

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23rd
University of California, Santa Barbara
UCSB Multicultural Center
University Center room 1504
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-6050
(805) 893-8411
http://mcc.sa.ucsb.edu/ContactUs.aspx
Director Du Haibin to attend

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Review of 1428 in Mubi Notebook

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

1428 (dir. Du Haibin)

In his coverage of the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival for Mubi Notebook, Doug Cummings offers his take on Du Haibin’s 1428:

Du Haibin’s 1428 visits the aftermath of the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and charts the reactions and interpretations of the survivors, who wrestle with severe personal loss and confusion. Sorting through debris and often gushing at the camera—in a variety of angry, philosophical, and grief-stricken ways—the people of the region express their sentiments about the Chinese government, cosmology, the media, and anything else of immediate importance to them. Lush green mountains provide serene visual contrast to the individual lives scrambling amid the rubble, but… the film never falls into postcard pictorialism.

Read the full article at Mubi Notebook.

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Cinematic Earthquakes: Thoughts on Aftershock and 1428

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

By Isabella Tianzi Cai and Kevin B. Lee

Aftershock (dir. Feng Xiaogang)

The 1976 Tangshan Earthquake was one of the worst natural disasters in China’s history and believed to be the deadliest earthquake of the twentieth century. It had a magnitude of 7.8 and an estimated number of casualties between 212,419 to 719,000. Aftershock, director Feng Xiaogang’s dramatic feature about the Tangshan Earthquake, is set to be released July 22.  Budgeted at 138 million RMB (over $20 million US), it is primed to be the film event of the summer for Chinese cinemas. To behold such a big-budget spectacular about a historical tragedy raises several questions about the film, chiefly:  how it will recount the details of a historical tragedy while satisfying audiences as big-budget mass entertainment?

It is worth noting that the Censorship Board of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television of China gave Aftershock virtually no obstacle in production and distribution. Such lack of interference is very rare within the Chinese film industry. Many board members are said to have cried during the screening of the film, feeling deeply touched by the story. Clearly it is a state-approved account of history, every word, sentiment and action reviewed and approved. What bearing this has on the merits of the film remains to be seen upon its release. For now, we can contrast Feng Xiaogang’s production with another recent film about a similar historic tragedy in China.
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“An Eye Opening Dose of Reality:” Review of 1428

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

1428 (dir. Du Haibin)

By Isabella Tianzi Cai

Last month, Libertas Film Magazine (LFM), an online film magazine devoted to the voice of freedom in movies and popular culture, published a review of Du Haibin’s 1428, which screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The article is penned by Joe Bendel, who is a professor at NYU and also works in the book publishing industry. He originally published this article in his blog, and it was picked by LFM’s editor-in-chief among a series of reviews for provocative films at the LA Film Festival this year.

In the article, Bendel notes the unconventional yet pronounced cinematic style of Du Haibin as representative of a new generation of Chinese filmmakers.

“Stylistically compatible with China’s so-called D-Generation (D for Digital) filmmaking, Du eschews conventional documentary techniques, like formal interviews and voiceover narration.  Instead, he lets the camera roll, capturing the unfiltered reality of the quake’s aftermath at intervals of ten and two hundred ten days after the disaster.  It is not pretty.”

More after the break.

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1428 Picked as Los Angeles Film Festival’s “Best of the Fest”

Friday, June 18th, 2010

1428 (dir. Du Haibin)

Du Haibin’s award winning documentary 1428 has been selected as one of the must-sees playing at the Los Angeles Film Festival by the LA Weekly. LA Weekly film editor Karina Longworth ties the film’s depiction of disaster management with that the current oil spill devastating the Gulf Coast:

“We don’t know what to do at all.” That statement, spoken by a Chinese woman whose home has been demolished by the government without her permission, functions as the thesis of this episodic, verité-style documentary shot in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Setting up a fascinating contrast between the “official” version of events captured by the state media and the rage and frustration of those struggling to rebuild far from photo ops, the theme of power brokers failing to serve people who can’t fathom self-sufficiency in the wake of unforeseen disaster hits eerily close to home.

1428 plays this Sunday and Monday at the Regal Cinemas at LA Live:

  • Sun. Jun 20, 1:45pm, Regal Cinemas #13
  • Mon. Jun 21, 8:00pm, Regal Cinemas #13

Tickets can be purchased at the Festival website.

Find out more about 1428.

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