Thomas Mao (dir. Zhu Wen)

By Shelly Kraicer

During a recent interview with an independent Chinese journalist, I was somewhat taken aback, but also quite amused by her rather pointed question to me: “In an online discussion of an article you wrote recently, some [anonymous] commenter was skeptical that Westerners could be so interested in debating Chinese movies and ideology, when in fact it has nothing to do with them. What do you think?”

What could I think? I remember reading the original comment the journalist was referring to, and noting at the time that the implied (and oft-heard) background to this attitude was something along the lines of “outsiders [like you] are fundamentally unequipped to comment on (write about / research about / review) our Chinese films (painting / dramas / novels), so just what do you think you are doing, anyway?

At the risk of answering one cultural judgment with another, I find this display of an aggressively protective attitude to Chinese culture to be distinctly Beijing-ese. Hong Kong, Taipei and Shanghai tend to be much more relaxed about foreigners in their midst, given their cosmopolitan histories. Their urban intellectual cultures more readily admit “other” voices — foreign voices, alternative points of view — with fewer hangups than Beijing’s thriving and otherwise open intellectual culture. Beijing has long been the capital of mainland Chinese independent film and avant-garde culture. No less than half of the dGenerate Films catalog are by Beijing-based filmmakers: Jia Zhangke, Liu Jiayin, and Cui Zi’en, to name a few. And yet, despite its openness to progressive artisitic activity, Beijing has an intensely policed view of the cultural “other” and the potential role of these “others” in its cultural discourse.

(Article continues after the break.)

There may be several reasons for this dichotomy. Beijing has been a more homogeneous Chinese city until quite recently (dating to probably the early part of this century, with the internationalization of Beijing’s urban surface, at least, in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics). And Beijing remains (in a certain, conflicted, post-Cultural Revolution way), the incubator, curator, and protector of a certain idea of Chinese culture. This protective attitude leads Beijing’s cultural workers to patrol (though, again, for completely understandable reasons having to do with resistance to various colonialisms and post-colonial hegemonisms) the boundaries of “us” (Chinese) and “them” (foreigners). This attitude often strives to keep “our” (i.e. Chinese-made) cultural works in a safe zone, circumscribed and patrolled by rather regressive definitions of “the Other”. I’m generalizing, obviously, but I hope not uselessly.

There are clear exceptions: many Chinese intellectuals I know joyfully and productively bring Western cultural theoretical concepts into their work, and play, creatively, in the spaces between Western post-theories and the various streams of Chinese historical cultural heritages. Western voices themselves, though, talking about Chinese art and artists, are entertained somewhat problematically. People in Beijing are often curious about what I’m working on (film research, for example), and are curious to hear my opinions, though they often far too quickly take these as somehow representative of a particular template of what “a Westerner thinks about our Chinese movies” (which is rather often far from the case, especially with my willfully idiosyncratic readings of what I’m watching here). But there comes a point in most conversations I have with Chinese colleagues where things sadly grind to a halt, to a refrain something like “there are just certain things you won’t be able to understand, since you’re not Chinese”. You can almost hear the intended effect: the portcullis clangs down, the drawbridge ratchets up, and the castle is secure with you safely outside. What can a “non-Chinese person” say to that? Any attempt to argue the point circles back to demonstrate that you just “can’t know”. It’s a completely self-sealing argument.

Now, this objection is also true, to a point. I’m still learning Chinese, and it’s getting better, but still not good enough. I’m learning more Chinese history, but there is an awful lot I still have to learn. I’ve been living here for seven years trying to immerse myself in various contemporary cultural scenes, but there’s a lot I’m still missing. Beijing is just so huge, and its culture workers are in the midst of an explosion of creativity in so many fields. Yet, these limitations don’t guarantee that one is at some basic level sealed out of the heart of things. Foreigners like me who are in a certain sense committed to learning about China can constantly approach, asymptotically, if you will, an insider’s point of view. We won’t get there (the asymptotic line never actually reaches the axis it’s creeping towards), but we can get closer and closer. And certainly close enough to say interesting things about the art we’re seeing, and the artists we’re meeting.

I hope I’m far from functioning as one of those old-fashioned restrictive “portals” that Western “China hands” used to assume the role of. Those arbiters of what examples of essential “Chineseness” can pass through their filtering critical gaze to be consumed by the outside, non-Chinese world. That period of the “mysterious Orient” is fortunately long gone, although its traces are stubbornly hard to eradicate, both in the West (just look at the kinds of Chinese films that are still attracting distributors’ hard cash in North America and Europe) and in China itself, where distrust of the limits of “China experts” is something I bump into all the time. So much so that I quickly cringe when someone calls me a “Chinese expert” here, given all the baggage, described above, that necessarily comes with that label.

Two films I’ve seen happen to reflect in interesting ways on the issues behind this othering of Outsiders. I hope to be able to discuss them here in more detail later, but for now, I’d at least like to point towards them in this context:

Zhu Wen’s delightfully paradoxical Thomas Mao (Xiao dongxi) is a fictional tale about a Chinese farmer and a German artist; then it flips to a semi-documentary about a Chinese painter and a European curator. Zhu stages various confrontations between the Foreigner and the Chinese in a series of modes (comedy, science fiction, wuxia, documentary) and flips the stakes again and again, until the outside/inside distinction starts to blur and melt away. Also in semi-experimental mode, Yang Rui’s mysteriously beautiful abstract-fictional-poetic-essay Crossing the Mountain (Fan shan) aims its substantial visual gifts and structural puzzles directly at cultural boundaries: the mysterious bombs spiking the plot threaten to blow up the borders that delineate the film’s characters, and a hazy erotic languor somehow insinuates connections that go through or around the violence and horror marking out Difference.

I’d be fortunate indeed if I could cultivate that sort of languor, eroticized or not. But I’m happy to root out paradoxes, and confront limits wherever I can find them. I’ll certainly keep trying to butt my head up against the Difference Police, both here and at home, and demonstrate that the most interesting boundaries are the ones one can work to sneak around, undermine, or blow up.

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1428 (dir. Du Haibin)

The 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival will screen Du Haibin’s prize-winning documentary 1428 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.

In the current issue of the online magazine includes a lengthy appraisal by film scholar and Cal Arts professor Berenice Reynaud on 1428. It’s part of a much longer review of last fall’s Vancouver Film Festival. We’ve republished the passage concerning 1428 below:

—–

The shadow of lost sons haunts Du Haibin’s 1428, an award-winning (Orizzonti Award in Venice) documentary on the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people, rendered millions homeless and turned the Beichuan area into piles of rubble. Echoing Du’s previous works (such as Tielu yanxian [Along the Railway, 2001] San [Umbrella, 2007]), it is shot in hybrid cinéma-vérité style, with his subjects freely addressing and interacting with him. “Some people thought I was working for television. They would spontaneously stand in front of the camera, to tell me that the Chinese people were lucky. When Chinese people talk about the Communist party leaders, I have no way of sorting out what is true and what is false… Some also told me that is was a system of corrupt bureaucrats, but they said so because they had been wronged.”  We see an old lady staunchly defending the government on her way to collect an electric blanket, then switching to angry recriminations after it is refused to her. Other addresses are more intimate. While washing clothes in a brook, a woman describes how terribly she misses her dead children. A teenager looking for his missing brother asks Du “Are you filming this?” A butcher interjects: “You and I are from the same generation. You remember how terrible it was in 1979!”

Read more after the break.

Du went to the wrecked area a few days after the earthquake (originally to see if there was anything he could do to help), then revisited it six months later. As the shooting developed spontaneously, without prior planning, different bits of (contradictory) reality coexist without explanation, judgment nor commentary – conveying an acute sense of chaos: ruins and makeshift shacks; private sorrows and collective responses; the impotent feeling of being pitted against an absurd coalition of government officials, looters and curiously unresponsive (unconscious?) deities.

Opening on a devastated city, 1428 is inscribed within a series of contemporary Chinese films, narrative and documentaries, that have tackled the large-scale demolition currently taking place in the country.  The cause (an “act of god”) is different from the government plans of tearing down (chai) and resettling (to build a dam, make room for “urban renewal”, or terminate obsolete factories), but the visuals are the same: bulldozers attacking buildings, demolition workers dismantling walls with picks and axes, stubborn survivors digging through the rubble to salvage what they can. In turn these images echoes other, buried in our subconscious – memories of the wars we have seen on television, or in classic films (John Gavin standing in front of his bombed building in Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die [1958], for example). Whether caused by man or nature, ruins represent a challenge to representation. We are used to having our gaze ordered by a planned architecture, by a grid of streets that offers a succession of vanishing points… Where is the vanishing point in ruins? Plain or ornate, high or low, the buildings have been leveled to the same indescribable mass; nothing is hidden behind these hideous, crumbling walls – just an empty lot, and more rubble. Does that mean, cinematically, that there is no off-screen space? Or that there is nothing to see?

Du addresses this aesthetic challenge by coining a complex editing strategy, in collaboration with Mary Stephen, the late Eric Rohmer’s long-time editor and a filmmaker in her own right,  (who had already worked with him on his previous film, Umbrella). The absence of a master gaze, of a reverse angle that would provide a meaning to the devastation, is articulated by a careful orchestration of the presence of a young man in weird-looking, unkempt clothes and shaggy hair, seen roaming through the destroyed streets or sleeping in the ruins. His face is pasty, dirty and expressionless, almost as if he were wearing stage make-up; he seems to be ubiquitous, floating more than walking, sometimes just standing there, smoking a cigarette. His surreal appearance marks a beat, a punctuation; there is something theatrical about it – to the point that one can wonder if Du had not mixed performance art and documentary (echoing Jia Zhangke’s insertion of surreal elements inStill Life and fictional figures in Dong.) In the first part of the film, the figure’s appearance and disappearance is constructed through montage; he is not connected to the other stories. In the footage taken in his second visit, Du gives him a context, a history, a name (Yang Bingbing), and redefines the space around him by a Bazinian use of the depth of field. An old man points at the makeshift shelter where his mentally challenged son is sleeping. “I have raised him. I am very attached to him.” Then he cooks rice, calls his son and finally goes to get him. Reality and surrealism coalesce in a single shot taken in a field of rubble: in the foreground, the father carries a bowl of rice; in the background, the son appears, in his badly-buttoned overcoat: it’s the mysterious madman. In a subsequent shot, the two men are seen together, standing at the table, the father serving food to the son, while the family cat looks upon the scene with feline bliss.

As the film concludes on a shot of the madman walking in the middle of traffic near destroyed buildings, it is tempting to see him as a stand-in (a ghost) for all the sons lost in the catastrophe. In a particularly sad sequence, a family – father, mother, older brother – explore what is left of a high school dormitory in search of a missing son. They locate his room – the mother tearfully identifies his clothes, his bedding – but no trace of his physical presence; it is as if he had vanished… The family leaves the school, hurdled together on one single motorbike, the father devastated and stoic… Searching the ruins for what is not, or no longer there, or not to be seen, becomes emblematic. Soon the survivors think of themselves as lost objects. This sheds a different light on the story of the butcher: thirty years ago, when he was a small child, in this “terrible” year 1979, tired of her husband’s inefficiency as a bread-winner, his mother left – and he hasn’t heard from her since. “I miss her terribly,” he says, trapped in his identity as a misplaced son, surrounded by displaced people who are missing someone or are being missed by others. The last shot – the madman’s disappearing into the landscape – also provides some sort of conclusion. His vacant eyes constitute the only possible suturation: they open onto nothing.

—–

Find out more about 1428.

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Queer China, 'Comrade China' (dir. Cui Zi'en)

The newest issue of the online film journal Senses of Cinema features lengthy reviews by film scholar and Cal Arts professor Berenice Reynaud on new films from Mainland China. Titled  “Men Won’t Cry – Traces of a Repressive Past,” Reynaud covers a dozen international titles that screened at last fall’s Vancouver International Film Festival, giving special attention to four new films from the Mainland, as well as the Hong Kong feature Night and Fog by Ann Hui. Her analysis is particularly astute at discerning issues of identity, gender, power and nationhood in the formal approaches taken by each film. The following are some choice excerpts, though readers are advised to read Reynaud’s appreciations in full:

On Cui Zi’en’s Queer China, ‘Comrade China’

Cui’s most ambitious documentary,Zhi Tongzhi (Queer China, Comrade China). Espousing a more traditional form, and dividing the film in seven chapters, Cui covers incredible ground in a relatively short amount of time (60 minutes)…Fact-filled, yet fun-filled, Cui’s film pays homage to all the tongzhi warriors, male or female, prominent or unknown, who are bringing about what Li describes as a major sexual revolution.

On Oxhide II, Liu Jiayin’s sequel to Oxhide.

Niupi er (Oxhide II) pushes the previous film’s formal radicalism one step further: it breaks down an even smaller domestic space and its 133 minutes into nine shots of uneven lengths and varied angles that go around the table in 45-degree increments (performing a complete 180-degree match). Within this minimalist framework, several layers of emotion/narration intersect. Liu’s shots are carefully, rigorously, exquisitely composed. What is even more amazing is how tension is expressed within the frame, how every gesture, every verbal exchange reorganise the balance of power between the three protagonists.

On Du Haibin’s 1428:

The shadow of lost sons haunts Du Haibin’s 1428, an award-winning (Orizzonti Award in Venice) documentary on the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people, rendered millions homeless and turned the Beichuan area into piles of rubble. Echoing Du’s previous works (such as Tielu yanxian [Along the Railway, 2001] San [Umbrella, 2007]), it is shot in hybrid cinéma-vérité style, with his subjects freely addressing and interacting with him.

On Pema Tseden’s The Search:

A visual poem, as well as a bittersweet song of cultural identity, The Search unfolds at two levels: the classical codes of cinematic representation, and issues pertaining to “the national” (an ambiguous term, if any, for Tibetans born in the Chinese province of Qinghai)… Pema’s immense talent, however, prevents The Search from being yet another film about trying-to-make-a-film; with subtle humour, melancholic accuracy, and impeccable dignity, it opens a too-rare vista into what moves and ails the Tibetan men of his generation.

Read Reynaud’s full review.

Queer China, ‘Comrade China’, Oxhide, 1428 and Oxhide 2 (coming soon) are distributed by dGenerate Films.

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Kevin Lee (center) with students of Swarthmore College (photo by Shiyin Lin)

Last month dGenerate Films’ Kevin B. Lee gave a presentation and screening to students and faculty at Swarthmore College. Alex Ho, student organizer of the event, provided the following testimonial:

Many thanks for coming to Swarthmore College to speak about the growth in independent Chinese cinema over the past decade and what your company dGenerate Films is doing to help this movement gain greater exposure. Your talk was of great interest to our varied audience, which included film studies and Chinese studies students and faculty as well as the general liberal arts student who attended on a whim.

As an admirer of your work in online film criticism, I was excited to bring to our college your take on what makes this particular moment in film history so groundbreaking and important, given your extensive knowledge of and passion for world cinema. Your talk certainly didn’t disappoint; it was an accessible, sweeping introduction to Chinese cinema and its place in the foreign film market. At the same time, for even those more familiar with Chinese film, your talk was a priceless look into the works of up-and-coming independent filmmakers that most of the film world doesn’t yet seem to have caught on to. You definitely tapped into our school’s affinity for small-scale, relaxed seminars, peppering your talk with interesting anecdotes and seriously considering questions from our audience about the pertinence of the “dGenerate movement” to the general public in the U.S. and China. Thanks also for having an informal dinner with some of our students and letting us pick your brain about a multitude of topics within and outside of Chinese cinema.

Again, it was a pleasure to bring your presentation to Swarthmore. I hope to see your talk reach more and larger college audiences in the future. Certainly, any university interested in covering Chinese film in its curriculum, shouldn’t limit themselves to the well-known Fifth and Sixth Generation, but look also to the less Beijing-centric films that dGenerate Films works to distribute.

Best,

Alex Ho

dGenerate Films organizes presentations and screenings at colleges, museums and other institutions across the country. For more information, please contact info *at* dgeneratefilms *dot* com.

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Ying Liang

dGenerate Films and the Apple Store in Beijing continue their ongoing series showcasing China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology. This Thursday, April 21, acclaimed digital filmmaker Ying Liang will show clips from his films and discuss his creative process.

Ying Liang’s talk is part of the series “Meet the Filmmakers,” a collaboration between the Apple Store in Beijing and dGenerate Films. Digital tools, from digital video cameras to editing software, have placed filmmaking in the hands of the people. This series introduces award-winning directors discuss with the general public how they use digital technology to create their latest movies, attracting worldwide attention and acclaim.

Read news coverage of the inaugural “Meet the Filmmakers” events, and watch video from a previous Apple Store talk with filmmaker and activist Cui Zi’en.

All events will be held at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, starting at 7pm.

Ying Liang graduated from the Department of Directing at the Chongqing Film Academy and Beijing Normal University. He directed his first feature film, Taking Father Home (2005), which won awards at the Tokyo Filmex Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. In 2006, Ying made The Other Half (2006), which is supported by the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) from the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film also won the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo Filmex Film Festival. Ying Liang’s latest film Good Cats (2008) premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

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Lan (dir. Jiang Wenli)

The ScreenOut Film Exhibition, hosted by Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily, is China’s first (and so far only) campaign to introduce art films into commercial-run cinemas. It has presented a number of indie films by many acclaimed Chinese directors, such as Jia Zhangke, Gu Changwei, Lv Le, Wang Quanan, and Wang Xiaoshui. This year, a special retrospective programme at UCCA will screen selected films from past years and a special screen of this year’s new film Lan (dir. Jiang Wenli) and Judge (dir. Liu Jie).

DATES
April 11, 2010 – April 28, 2010

15rmb for adults (with exhibition admission)
10rmb for students with valid student ID

ADDRESS
798 Art District, No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, P.O. Box 8503, Chaoyang District, Beijing, P.R.China, 100015

Tel: +86 (0) 10 8459 9269/8459 9387
Fax: +86 (0) 10 8459 9717

TRANSPORTATION
- By Car: From Sanyuan Bridge or Siyuan Bridge enter the Airport Expressway, then leave the Airport Expressway at the entrance to Jiuxianqiao Rd.
- By Bus: Take Bus 401, 402, 405, 445, 909, 955, 973, 988, 991 to Dashanzi or Wangyefen Stop.

Full screening schedule and film descriptions after the break.

SCREENING SCHEDULE

Sunday, Apr. 11
13:00
Old Fish
101 mins, Chinese and English subtitles, Q&A with director Gao Qunshu

Wednesday, Apr. 14
19:00
Jalainur
92 mins, Chinese and English subtitles, Q&A with film director Zhao Ye

Saturday, Apr. 17
13:30
Railroad of Hope
56 mins, In Chinese with English subtitle, Q&A with director Ning Ying

19:00
Knitting
98 mins, Chinese and English subtitles, Q&A with director Yin Lichuan

Sunday, Apr. 18
16:00
Judge
98 mins, In Mandarin with English subtitle, Q&A with director Liu Jie

19:00
Lala’s Gun
99 mins, Chinese and English subtitles, Q&A with director Ning Jingwu

Sunday, Apr. 25
19:00
Lan
85 mins, Chinese and English subtitles

Tuesday, Apr. 27
19:00
The Story of Ermei
115 mins, Chinese and English subtitles

Wednesday, Apr. 28
19:00
The Search
122 mins, In Tibetan with Chinese subtitle, Q&A with director Pema Tseden

FILM DESCRIPTIONS

Old Fish
Drama, China, Gao Qunshu, 2007, 101 mins, In Mandarin with English & Chinese Subtitles
13:00, Sunday, Apr. 11

Awards:

• Best Actor and Jury Grand Prix in Shanghai Film Festival (2008)

Lao Yu, an old cop in Harbin, knows a thing or two about explosives. He’s also about to retire and has a routine for family, work and leisure. When criminals start planting bombs in the city, he volunteers to defuse them, out of an old-school sense of duty and a deep-seated sense of boredom. One after another he defuses the bombs (and barks at his young colleague),until number 11,a big one…played by real Harbin cops in their snow-bound city, Old Fish is at once a solid action thrilled and a subtle elegy to the sorrows of the “accidental heroes” that are becoming extinct in contemporary China.

About the director:
One of the most popular TV directors in China, Gao Qunshu has turned to filmmaking in recent years. Gao had made two smaller films, first Tokyo Trial in 2006 and then Old Fish in 2008. Based on an actual serial-bomb extortion case in Qiqihar in Northeast China, the latter film harks back to Gao’s roots in crime dramas, and is highly lauded for his documentary-like treatment using lots of long shots and a cast filled with amateur actors. The film was awarded Jury Grand Prix and Best Actor (for Ma Guowei, who is a cop in real life) at the 11th Shanghai International Film Festival.

Jalainur
Drama, China, Zhao Ye, 2008, 92 mins, English & Chinese Subtitles
19:00, Wednesday, Apr. 14

Awards:

• Shanghai International Film Festival Asian New Talent Award for Best Director Award (2009)

Jalainur (a Mongolian word meaning “ocean-like lake”) is a coal mine in the Manzhouli City of Inner Mongolia. Old Zhu, a steam-train driver, and his apprentice Li Zhizhong, a train signalman, are inseparable. Old Zhu, who has worked at the colliery for thirty years, will soon retire, leaving Zhizhong lost and confused. The latter decides to follow Master Zhu after work one day, much to Zhu’s quiet dismay. Impending obsolescence shadows the future of these men, although Zhihong, riding the trains like a romantic horseman and waving his signal flag, remains dedicated to both his job and Zhu. Director Zhao Ye’s cinematic vision monumentalises the smoke, steam and grit that form the existential texture of lives in the colliery, celebrating as well as mourning the passing of time and the fragility of friendship. A plate of steamed buns glows like a celebration of resilience in the middle of a barren landscape interrupted by the figures of tired men and gasps of smoke from the long throats of locomotives; in another scene, Old Zhu and Zhizhong awkwardly sing a duet in the street that captures exactly the sense of loss that both of them must eventually learn to live with.

About the Director:
Jalainur is Zhao Ye’s second feature film, and it received the FIPRESCI prize in Pusan in 2008. Barely thirty years of age, he has already directed Ma Wu Jia in 2007, which won the Best Picture Award at the China Independent Film Festival, and a short animation film, Cai Wei, in 2004.

Railroad of Hope
Documentary, China, Ning Ying, 2001, 56 mins, Chinese with English subtitle
13:30, Saturday, Apr. 17

Awards:

• Forum at Berlin International Film Festival (2002)
• Cinéma du Réel Award at French Real Film Festival (2002)
• Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival

Every year during August and September, several thousand agricultural workers travel more than 1800 miles across China, from Szechwan to the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. There, endless cotton fields await the harvest. For many, it is the first time away from the home village, and the first time on a train. In fascinating detail and nuance, Railroad of Hope casts a light on the relatively new phenomenon of internal migrations across China, featuring the scores of workers traveling by rail. During the journey, the camera crew wanders the train, filming passengers as they eat or sleep, and asking them such questions as “Is this your first trip?” “What are your ideals?” “What is important to you in your life?” The result is a rare and wonderful presentation of the thoughts, hopes, and dreams of ordinary Chinese.

About the director
Ning Ying was born in Beijing. She first directed a film in 1990, yet recently was the subject of a retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive. At the international level, her best known films include: For Fun, On the Beat and I Love Beijing which are also known as the BEIJING TRILOGY. These films show the profound changes experienced by ordinary Chinese people during the post-Mao reforms.

Lala’s Gun
Drama, China, Ning Jingwu, 2008, 99 mins, English and Chinese subtitles
19:00, Sunday, Apr. 18

Awards:

• Generation 14plus program at Berlin International Film Festival (2009)

Lala’s Gun tells the story of a young boy of the Miao ethnic minority in China. As dictated by tradition, every Miao boy upon reaching the age of fifteen is to receive a gunfrom his father as a symbol of reaching manhood. Lala, however, has been raised by his grandmother, his mother having died and his father having abandoned the family years earlier. Though promised a gun from the local gunsmith, Lala sets off to other villages in search of a father he never knew.

About the director:
In 1996, Ning Jingwu graduated with a master degree in directing from Beijing Film Academy and has been working on film industry as director, writer and producer. He used to be a poet before he entered filmmaking. Ning’s films show his compassionate concerns for minority groups and people from lower class, including kids, the disabled, labors and aboriginal tribes. He depicts the banal everyday life of these minority groups in a style characterized by a sense of poetry and simplicity.

Judge
Drama, China, Liu Jie, 2009, 98 mins, Mandarin with English subtitle
16:00, Sunday, Apr. 18

Awards:

• Horizons at Venice Film Festival (2009)
• FIPRESCI Prize at Miami Film Festival (2010)

This story happened in 1997 in a small city in northern China. A criminal named Qiuwu was sentenced to death for stealing two cars. The lead judge on this case, Judge Tian, had just lost his daughter in a tragic traffic accident – she was killed by a stolen car. A change in the law creates an opportunity for Qiuwu to avoid execution… At the same time, Qiuwu tries to lighten his sentence by offering to donate one of his kidneys – creating a chance for a rich businessman named Lee to survive a terminal illness. Lee sets to work paying Qiuwu’s family and greasing the wheels of the system so he can secure the kidney… Lee discovers that the only way to secure the kidney is after Qiuwu’s execution – an execution that is now being questioned based on the new changes in the law… On the execution ground, a hard decision awaits Judge Tian.

Director’s Note:
January 1, 2007, the Supreme Court took back the review right of death penalty. That news reminded me about a true story, in which a young guy was sentenced to death for merely stealing two cars a decade ago. Are we going to be surprised from the loose death penalty standard when we look back 10 years from now? Through my film, I hope people can start thinking more about life and death and the philosophy behind them.

About the Director:
In 1987 Liu Jie entered the Beijing Film Academy and studied photography for 4 years. From 1992 to 2003, as director of photography or producer, he made a number of acclaimed independent films, none of which, however, met the general public in Chinese mainland. Courthouse On The Horseback – Liu’s first work as director-Official Awards-Premier Horizon at 63rd International Venice Film Festival.

Knitting
Drama, China, Yin Lichuan, 2008, 98 mins, English & Chinese Subtitles
19:00, Saturday, Apr. 17

Awards:

• Directors’ Fortnight 2009 Cannes Film Festival
• Best Female Actor in a Motion Picture and Best New Performer at Golden Phoenix Award (2009)

Daping hates Haili. Haili strode out of nowhere into her apartment, her life, and her promising relationship with Chen Jin. Though Daping tries to be a kind and honest person, Haili bullies her mercilessly. Then one day, Chen Jin disappears, leaving Daping pregnant again and not knowing how to survive. Haili has also experienced many hardships and difficulties in her life, and might be just the person to help Daping in troubled times. Although her mocking attitude doesn’t change, there’s still a chance for a bond to form between these two women’s hearts.

Director’s Note:
This is a moving film full of humanism. Created in the style of traditional realism, the film focuses on social reality. But society is only the background for a vivid depiction of people and their stories.

The film unfolds from a female perspective and deals with female themes. Yet it expands from these themes to demonstrate humanism and express my understanding of life compassion and forgiveness, as well as pay tribute to the protagonists’ tenacity.

About the Director:
As an important member of the poetry society “Xiabanshen (Lower Half of the Body),” she is praised as the leading female writer of the generation of “post-1970s” and “the cool generation.” In 2006, she wrote and directed her first film The Park, which is rapidly making her “one of the ten most eye-catching young directors in the new Chinese film power” (Variety).

Lan
Drama, China, Jiang Wenli, 2009, 89 mins, Mandarin with English subtitles
19:00, Sunday, Apr. 25

Awards:

• South Korea’s 14th Pusan International Film Festival audiences Choice Awards (2009)

Lan, the debut by acclaimed Chinese actress Jiang Wenli (Lost Indulgence, And the Spring Comes), is a recollection of growing up under her grandfather’s fold during the Cultural Revolution. This Cultural Revolution-set tale of a young girl, whose dream of becoming a champion gymnast is scuppered by the realities of everyday life and family background, is handled with grace and feeling, and is notably light on the political cliches besetting stories of the era.

About the director:
Jiang Wenli, born 1969 in Bengbu, Anhui, is a famous Chinese actress. She graduated from Beijing Film Academy in 1992. She won the Best Actress award at Rome Film Festival for her performance in And the Spring Comes which was directed by her husband Gu Changwei.

The Story of Ermei
Drama, China, Wang Quanan, 2004, 115 mins, English and Chinese subtitle
19:00, Tuesday, Apr. 27

Awards:

• Panorama at Berlin International Film Festival (2004)
• Best Female Actor at Golden Phoenix Award (2004)
• Paris International Film Festival Best Actress (2004)

Jingzhe tells the story of Ermei (played by Yu Nan), a young villager in rural China. When Ermei’s family falls on hard financial times, she is forced to marry off to an alcoholic villager so her family can collect the dowry. Unhappy in her married life, Ermei runs away to the city where she finds a work at a restaurant. She has an affair with a man named Qiao but soon returns to her drunkard husband, where an emergency forces her to take initiative in her relationship.

About the director:
Born in Yanan in Shaanxi province in 1965, he attended film school in Beijing. After graduating in 1991, he began working for Xi’an Film Studios and also wrote screenplays in his spare time. His feature film debut, Yue Shi (Lunar Eclipse), which also starred Yu Nan in the leading role, was shown in the International Forum section of the Berlinale in 2002. Jingzhe is his second film as a director.

The Search
Drama, China, Pema Tseden, 2008, 112 mins, Tibetan with Chinese subtitle
19:00, Wednesday, Apr. 28

Awards:

• 12th Shanghai International Film Festival Jury Prize Award (2009)

A film director is accompanied by his friend and a business owner, who serves as a guide, to find an actor and actress to play the roles of Prince Drimé Kunden and Princess Mande Zangmo. In a village known for its Tibetan opera performance, the director finds a girl, an ideal candidate for the role of princess. Her melodious voice touches everyone. However, she decides to take the role only on the condition that the director and his friend find her ex-boyfriend, who previously acted as the prince along with her. The director consents to her wish. On the way to find her ex-boyfriend, the business owner narrates his touching love story as a young man. Throughout their search, the story gradually draws in both the director and the girl with the covered face. The initial simple search for an acting cast eventually becomes a complex inner and outer search for existential and spiritual meaning. Finally, although they find the girl’s ex-boyfriend, her face is still not revealed. The life and the search for Drimé Kunden both continue.

About the director:
Pema Tseden is the son of Tibetan nomads, the only one of three siblings to have finished his schooling. He is also the first director in China ever to film movies entirely in the Tibetan language. The Search, Pema Tseden’s latest film, won the Grand Jury Prize at Shanghai’s recent International Film Festival and is slated to be shown at the upcoming Locarno film festival in Switzerland.

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• Shelly on Film: Bumping against Boundaries in Chinese Film Culture (4)
• Hail! Hail! Hail! The State of Chinese Cinema, Part Three (0)

“Images that Cannot be Banned” will offer a program of both fictional and documentary feature films as a way of introducing and exploring an interest in Chinese underground cinema. Through contextualisation, the primary intention of the selection is not to produce a ‘canonical’ list, but rather, to construct a snapshot of underground and independent filmmaking by tracing a web of links and commonalities inherent within emerging trends in Chinese filmmaking over the past decade.

What I like about this statement is the desire to resist producing a canon or list of key films. While there are several films that would be worthy of such a distinction, the Chinese underground cinema movement is a relatively new phenomenon still in the process of maturing and defining its historical legacy. It should be acknowledged that dGenerate took a significant step in commemorating the achievements of the movement with our poll of the greatest Chinese films of the 2000s, in which numerous digital independent productions were cited. But at the same time, there is such a wealth of creative activity being generated by the Chinese underground scene, that singling out specific films risks misrepresenting the collective nature of the movement, as a response to a larger and multifaceted sense of crisis underlying the radical social development of China in the post-Reform era.

It’s encouraging to see that a number of articles found on the dGenerate site are linked by Carrington as key resources for learning about Chinese underground cinema, as well as our short documentary Digital Underground in the People’s Republic, which, we hope, gives an impression of how much this aesthetic movement is the result of a collective effort involving not just directors, but producers, programmers and audiences.

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Ghost Town (dir. Zhao Dayong)

SATURDAY, APRIL 3rd and SUNDAY APRIL 4th
Union Theatre, University of Wisconsin
800 Langdon Street
Milwaukee, WI 53706
http://uniontheater.wisc.edu/

THURSDAY, APRIL 8th
Southwest Film Center
3601 University Boulevard, SE
Albuquerque, NM 87106
http://www.unm.edu/~swfc/

SUNDAY, APRIL 9th
Facets Cinematheque
1517 Fullerton Avenue
Chicago, IL 60614
http://www.facets.org/pages/cinematheque/cinematheque_april2010.php

SATURDAY, APRIL 17th
University of Colorado, Humanities 150
Boulder, CO 80309-0234
http://www.colorado.edu/cas/events.htm

TUESDAY, APRIL 27th
Melnitz Movies
James Bridges Theater, Melnitz 1409
Los Angeles, CA 90095
http://gsa.asucla.ucla.edu/melnitz/

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City of Life and Death (dir. Lu Chuan)

Lu Chuan’s controversial Nanjing Massacre movie City of Life and Death picked up the Best Director award at the fourth Asian Film Awards, held during the Hong Kong International Film Festival. While the film continues to gain attention following its successful theatrical run in China and international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last year, it has yet to be shown theatrically in the US, following an aborted spring release with National Geographic.

Meanwhile, it’s generated a bit of a quarrel among film critics. Shelly Kraicer, who reviewed the film earlier on our site, issued a lengthier critique in Cinema-scope. The review has drawn the ire of Asian film stalwart Tony Rayns (who happens to co-program the Asian film selections at the Vancouver Inernational Film Festival), who issues seven bullet-pointed rebuttals to Kraicer’s review.

On the Cineaste website, dGenerate’s Kevin B. Lee has his own take.

An excerpt:

The imperative to honor the longstanding domestic account of the tragedy, offset by the desire to avoid fraying international ties, and further complicated by the desire to appeal to a global audience with its own expectations of art-house entertainment, makes for one of the most compelling filmmaking gauntlets to be found. These three agendas—political, cultural, commercial—wage a battle within City of Life and Death that’s as compelling as the one the film depicts. The film certainly qualifies as an “incoherent text,” to borrow Robin Wood’s phrase, informed by competing social ideologies and commercial ambitions that result in a work of fascinating dissonance.

Full review here.

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 – screening at Asia Society on April 9.

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Fujian Blue (dir. Robin Weng)

The value of Asia Society’s series China’s Past Present, Future on Film… is that it exposes us to a diverse group of lesser-known artists at a time when much of the discussion of contemporary Chinese cinema still revolves around big names like Jia Zhangke.

Andrew Chan reviews several of the titles playing at the Asia Society series, giving special mention to Robin Weng’s Fujian Blue.

Read the full article.

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