Sally Liu came from Beijing to get her MFA at Columbia University. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Back in 2005 when I started as a freshman studying film at Boston University, I was one of only two foreign-born Chinese film students there. I remember the surprised look that people often gave me when they learned about my major. At the time, it was rare to see a student from mainland China taking on film as her major, especially at the undergraduate level.

My reason for studying film was a straightforward one. I fell in love with the medium in high school, and I wanted to become a filmmaker. I could also intuit an impending bright future for Chinese cinema, given its vast unexploited market. In this sense I probably have much in common with the thousand or so Chinese film students in the U.S. today.

This is why Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn’s Oct. 2 article “Reel China: Land of Cinematic Opportunity” makes me feel excited about the path I chose. In the article, he describes the trend of U.S.-bound Chinese film students, the pull and push factors for this trend, the challenges faced by the students, their aspirations, and the reality that they face once they complete the programs. Each of these points reminds me of my own experiences and those of my friends’. I can’t help but wonder, if we are being identified as a group, how will we do collectively ten or fifteen years from now? And how do we prepare for the future?

To reiterate, Horn writes that the number of mainland Chinese art students in the U.S. has grown significantly over the past few years, and film majors count among them. Many Chinese students wishing to become filmmakers chose to leave China behind because the chance of getting into the Beijing Film Academy was too slim – about 0.5% get selected, 14 times lower than the admission rate of Harvard.

Here you may ask, why must they go to the Beijing Film Academy in the first place? The reason is simple. Most people in mainland China have only heard about the Beijing Film Academy as a place to study film. It has the longest history and the best reputation. No other school can challenge its place.

Therefore, even though getting a foreign education means a huge investment, people who can afford it believe that the investment will eventually pay off.

In the article, one thing that Horn’s subjects comment unanimously on is the creative freedom that they can enjoy in American film schools. While they need to subject their films to unwanted monitoring and censorship at many levels in China, they need not worry about getting into serious troubles for making a political film in the U.S.

In addition to the freedom of expression, the students also comment favorably on the curriculum in the U.S. They appreciate the freedom to pick their desired courses to fulfill their desired studies. Many are also amazed by the range and diversity of courses available to them. One student mentioned copyright law and budgeting classes, which were not known to her to be offered in China, and was a delight for her to be able to learn both here.

In my own undergraduate and graduate experiences, this is definitely something that I can put my finger on and have benefited much from. During my four years in college, I became fascinated with cultural anthropology and philosophy. I took the required number of courses in both fields with great self-motivation and eventually graduated with a minor in each of them.

Horn also touches upon the language barrier that foreign students typically face. Unquestionably, learning the everyday English is still several steps away from using it effectively in screenwriting and other areas. And using the English language with a profound understanding of a drastically different set of cultural assumptions, signs and symbols, and subtlety could take a long time.

Fortunately, exemplified by the California Institute of Fine Arts, some U.S. schools have started to counter this one-way effort of Chinese film students by making American film students learn Chinese and sending American film students to China, according to Horn. These measures are directed to developing a pool of American talent necessary for future co-productions between China and the U.S. As some have come to believe, more investment in the film industry may come out from China, and now is the best time to get ready for it.

Here I also want to express my commiseration with Yu Gu, whose story is mentioned in Horn’s article. It is said that she went to China to make her student film “A Moth in Spring.” But local authorities stopped her production in an unexpectedly rough manner. Could she have avoided this sticky situation by connecting to the authorities first, like what Fan Lixin did for his film Last Train Home? Or does her failure to complete her student film tell us something about the work environment faced by mainland Chinese independent filmmakers? The answer is probably yes to both questions.

Relevant Classroom Use

Disorder (dir. Huang Weikai) tied for most mentions in PBS' poll of essential documentaries about China

Last month the acclaimed documentary Last Train Home, about migrant laborers in China, made its US television premiere as part of the POV series on PBS. As part of the film’s online promotional efforts, POV polled several filmmakers and experts in Chinese cinema to recommend top documentaries and features about China. We were pleased to see that Disorder tied for most mentions among all films, including a recommendation by Last Train Home director Fan Lixin. Fan writes of Disorder: “A powerful and utterly honest mishmash of the most bizarre images from contemporary Chinese society, with an almost cynical sarcasm. I’ve never seen anything quite like it!”

Other documentaries receiving multiple recommendations: Petition by Zhao Liang, whose Crime and Punishment is distributed by dGenerate, and Up the Yangtze by Yung Chang (who also took part in the poll). Strangely, Blind Shaft also tied for most mentions in this “documentary” poll, even though it is a narrative feature.

Not surprisingly, Jia Zhangke was the most recommended filmmaker, with six mentions spread across five titles. His documentary Dong is distributed by dGenerate.

All the recommendations can be found at the POV website on PBS.

Relevant Classroom Use

Asia Society Presents Documentary Film Series:

Visions of a New China

September 25 – October 29, 2011

Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue at 70th Street, NYC

Asia Society presents a documentary film series that focuses on contemporary urban life in China with nine films in seven programs (two double bills). The series runs from September 25 to October 29, 2011 at Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City.

China is undergoing the fastest economic growth and social transformation known in human history. In urban centers, a booming economy, an unfolding physical landscape and shifting demographics have created new and evolving realities. This documentary film series, focusing on urban life, explores how millions of people navigate this changing China. While some Chinese mourn the loss of the past, others find ways to survive and thrive. Films portray stories of success, struggle, disillusionment and caution.

The nine documentaries in the series were made between 2005 and 2011; eight of them are by Chinese filmmakers. The series sheds light on an unparalleled spectrum of experiences across social and economic classes. It also takes critical looks at the repercussions of China’s unstoppable development.

Film descriptions and program schedule follow. To view trailers and for more information on the series, visit AsiaSociety.org/NewChina.

Tickets: $7 members; $9 students/seniors; $11 nonmembers. Series discount available. VisitAsiaSociety.org/NewChina or call 212-517-ASIA (2742) for more information.

The film series is programmed by La Frances Hui, Film Curator of Asia Society. This series is supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. Additional support is provided by the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations and New York State Council on the Arts.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE (all films with English subtitles)

Program 1:

Once Upon A Time Proletarian

GUO Xiaolu. 2009. China/Germany/UK. 76min. Digibeta.

Sunday, September 25, 2011, 3:00PM

Thirteen chapters provide poignant snapshots of individuals navigating the modern China. An old peasant calls his country “shit” and yearns for the old days when greed and corruption were less rampant; a young car washer from the countryside calls Beijing huge and unfriendly; a young woman at a hair salon wants to find a rich husband; businessmen sit around and chat about the prices of Russian prostitutes… This meditative film offers an existentialist take on the common experience of disillusionment and disorientation in an evolving social and economic landscape that is far removed from the bygone days of Mao. Filmmaker Guo Xiaolu is also a prolific writer and is the author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth.

“wonderful spontaneity that captures a fleeting moment in China’s history.”—Daniel Trilling, New Statesman

Program 2:

When My Child Is Born

GUO Jing & KE Dingding. 2010. China/UK/Denmark/Japan. 75min. HDCAM.

Friday, September 30, 2011, 6:45PM

Take a rare glimpse into the life of a young academic couple in Beijing. Jun is finishing her Ph.D. in Australia and is a Virginia Woolf specialist. Long, who has just returned from a research study in Germany, is struggling to finish his dissertation on Marx and Kant. An unexpected pregnancy propels the couple to marry quickly and navigate the world of parenthood. An overbearing mother-in-law enters their private world and expects to be in every part of the child rearing. The film offers a candid and intimate portrait of two people caught between freedom and responsibility, career and family, and the new and the old.

“amazingly candid and personal”—Giovanna Fulvi, Toronto International Film Festival

Program 3: (double bill with New Beijing: Reinventing a City)

Please Vote For Me

CHEN Weijun. 2007. China/South Africa/Denmark. 58min. HDCAM.

Sunday, October 2, 2011, 3:00PM

What would democracy look like in China? In Wuhan, a city in central China about the size of London, a third grade class experiments for the first time in selecting a Class Monitor through an election. As if nobody needs to be coached how to run an election campaign, candidates quickly go all-out to solicit votes from their fellow classmates. Backstabbing, bribing, bullying, fancy speeches…all sorts of aggressive tactics are employed to win votes. Tears are shed, feelings are hurt, and friendships are tested. What have these children learned from this experiment? Is democracy destined for exploitation?

“Equal parts charmer and exposé… It’s part “American Idol,” part “Survivor.”—Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post

Sterling Feature Award, Silverdocs Documentary Festival 2007

Program 3: (double bill with Please Vote For Me)

New Beijing: Reinventing a City

Georgia WALLACE-CRABBE. 2010. Australia. 52 mins. HDCAM.

Sunday, October 2, 2011, 4:10PM

Beijing has enthralled the world with major architectural wonders such as the National Stadium (Herzog & de Meuron), National Aquatics Center (PTW Architects), CCTV building (Koolhaas), and National Theater (Andreu). Behind the futuristic face of Beijing are old neighborhoods and hutongs (traditional narrow alleys) that have to be sacrificed for new developments. Heritage activist Zhang Jinqi and other volunteers scramble to document the fleeting old Beijing in a photography project. While Zhang mourns the past, major international architects express their visions for the renewed city. Working with a Chinese crew, Australian filmmaker Georgia Wallace-Crabbe captures the dilemma between development and preservation.

Sydney Film Festival 2010

Program 4:

The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World

CHEN Weijun. 2008. China/UK/Netherlands/Denmark. 80min. Digibeta.

Saturday, October 8, 2011, 3PM

Situated in Changsha, Hunan is the world’s biggest Chinese restaurant, which seats up to 5,000 diners and employs 1,000 staff. A sprawling complex containing pavilions in the style of traditional Chinese architecture, the restaurant is owned by Qin Linzi, a middle-aged female self-starter who used to earn 30 RMB a month. Documenting the restaurant’s day-to-day operation, the film shows routine slogan-chanting sessions intended to boost morale among the staff. A perceptive portrait of Chinese society, this engaging documentary provides a window into traditional Chinese customs that often revolve around banquets.

“wonderful microcosm of China at large… a lively, accessible survey.”—Peter Debruge, Variety

Program 5: (double bill with Brave Father)

Children of the Chinese Circus

GUO Jing. 2007. China/UK. 58min. Digibeta.

Sunday, October 16, 2011, 3PM

Take a behind-the-scenes look at the training of some of the world’s best acrobats and circus performers. In this Shanghai circus school, a highly disciplined environment, small children endure excruciating and dangerous training regimes. Mostly from poor families, these children are sent to the school by their parents in the hope that the specialty training will secure them a future. While small children sustain agonizing daily practice, the teachers are also under tremendous pressure to produce award-winning stunts. A faculty meeting turns into a Cultural Revolution-styled criticizing session. This film is set to change your perception of acrobatic performances forever.

“Recalling the finest nonfiction achievements of Frederick Wiseman….Fiercely intelligent”—Robert Koehler,Variety

Program 5:

Brave Father (double bill with Children of the Chinese Circus)

LI Junhu. 2007. China. 55min. Digibeta.

Sunday, October 16, 2011, 4:10PM

Han Shengli has been admitted to a university in Xi’an. For his peasant family, this presents an incredible opportunity to move up the economic ladder. To pay for his education, the family sells off most of its valuable belongings. Shengli’s father also comes to Xi’an to find work in construction, while the son quietly collects plastic bottles on campus to make small change. The extremely shy son, who struggles to find a job upon graduation that pays better than his father’s construction work, is a sharp contrast to his old man, who is expressive and resourceful. Reading from a small notebook about his dreams for his son, the father believes all the sacrifices will eventually pay off.

“an incredibly moving affair, with the determination of its characters offset and cruelly undermined by the harsh economic reality of the modern Chinese employment sector.”—James Mudge, Hollywood.com

Program 6:

Floating

HUANG Weikai. 2005. China. 93min. DVCAM.

Friday, October 21, 2011, 6:45PM

A 30-year-old rural-born singer brings his guitar to Guangzhou to eke out a living by performing in public spaces. Like many migrant workers who don’t possess residence permits to stay in this southern metropolis, he is constantly dodging the authorities. The camera closely follows the singer’s daily life as he performs in pedestrian underpasses and lives out his tumultuous romantic life, which involves suicide, abortion and a bad break-up. As the film progresses, we find the filmmaker, who also made the much praised Disorder (2009), getting intimately involved with his subject’s precarious existence. Floating offers a humanist portrayal of those who drift on the fringes of society.

Black Pottery Prize and Audience Award, Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, China 2005
Hong Kong International Film Festival 2006
The International Umbria Film Festival, Italy 2007

Program 7:

Beijing Besieged by Waste

WANG Jiuliang. 2011. China. 76min. Digibeta.

Saturday, October 29, 2011, 3PM

With a population of about 20 million, the growing city of Beijing produces 30,000 tons of waste each day. Photographer/filmmaker Wang Jiuliang traveled around the city and visited 460 legal and illegal landfills from 2008 to 2010 to document the collection of garbage and excrement, the environmental calamity and the life cycles around these landfills, which include scavengers building a precarious livelihood, green spaces forming on top of waste, and livestock being fed trash. An informative and alarming portrait of urban ecology, the film has earned keen Chinese media coverage and the attention of government officials.

Abu Dhabi Film Festival 2011

About the filmmakers:

CHEN Weijun is a documentary director and producer living in Wuhan, China. After graduating from the journalism program at Sichuan University in 1992 he joined the documentary production department of the Wuhan regional TV station. His first film, My Life Is My Philosophy, was nominated for best documentary of the year by the Chinese National Association of Broadcasters. In 2003 he completed To Live Is Better Than To Die, which was awarded a Peabody and Grierson award, as well as the Rudolf Vrba Award from the One World Festival.

GUO Jing was born in 1976 in Shanghai, China. She graduated from the journalism department of Fudan University and has worked as a director and editor ever since. KE Dingding was born in 1965 in Shanghai, China. He graduated from the Institute of Chengdu Radio Engineering and has been working as a photographer and director since 1995. Other films by the duo include First Period (2009), All About My Friends (2010), andFruitful Summer (2006).

GUO Xiaolu (b. 1973) was born in a fishing village in south China. She is a novelist and filmmaker who uses film and literary language to explore themes of alienation, memory, personal journeys, daily tragedies and develops her own vision of China’s past and its future in a global environment. She studied film at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before moving to London in 2002. The English translation ofVillage of Stone was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first novel written in English, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, published in 2008, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Xiaolu’s film career continues to flourish; her feature, She, A Chinese, premiered at the 2009 Locarno International Film Festival and took the highest prize, the Golden Leopard. Her documentary We Went to Wonderland (2008) was selected for the New Directors/New Films Festival in New York in 2008.

HUANG Weikai was born in 1972 in Guangdong Province, China. He studied Chinese painting for 15 years and graduated from the Chinese Art Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He used to work as a cinema promoter, art editor, graphic designer, movie script writer and cameraman. Since 2002, he has been directing independent films. His 2009 found-footage documentary, Disorder, has been acclaimed as “One of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages” by Hua Hsu in The Atlantic for its unflinching look at the absurdity and anarchy of urban life in contemporary China.

LI Junhu (b. 1977) graduated from Xi’an Arts Academy with a degree in photography. He currently works for the International Division of Shaanxi TV Station. His TV documentaries have won many awards both in China and internationally. His previous works include Cyber Love (2004), Accompanied Study (2005), Born in 1977(2006), City (2006), etc.

Georgia WALLACE-CRABBE, a native of Australia, graduated from the Swinburne (VCA) Film and Television School in 1984. She has produced award winning documentaries, and has directed, line produced and production managed a number of dramas, television series, documentaries and short films. She has worked as Exhibitions Officer & Cinema Programmer at The State Film Centre of Victoria and for the Melbourne Film Festival as Programmer & Coordinator of the Youth Film Festival and the Short Film Competition. Georgia was the Founding Director of the WOW film Festival and President of Women in Film and Television NSW (95-98). Georgia has produced and line-produced numerous documentaries, short films and long form drama. She was a producer of Jabe Babe: A Heightened Life (2005), the winner of an AFI Award in 2005 for Best Documentary and an IF Award for Best Direction in a Documentary. She was coproducer of the French-Australian coproduction Shark Tracker (2002) MVC (France 5 & France 3).

WANG Jiuliang was born in Anqiu, Shandong Province in 1976. He is a graduate of the Cinema-Television School at Communication University of China. Wang is also a photographer. Beijing Besieged by Wasteaccompanies a larger photography project.

About Asia Society

Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational institution. Through exhibitions and public programs, Asia Society provides a forum for the issues and viewpoints reflected in both traditional and contemporary Asian art, and in Asia today. Asia Society is located at 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City. www.AsiaSociety.org

Relevant Classroom Use

Huang Weikai

From now until March 2011, director Huang Weikai will be available for screenings and lectures in the United States. Huang’s latest film Disorder is a groundbreaking work of experimental documentary that has won prizes and screened at festivals around the world. The Atlantic calls it “one of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages!”

If you are interested in bringing Disorder and Huang Weikai to your institution or university for a screening, Q&A or guest lecture, please contact exhibitions *at* dgeneratefilms *dot* com.

BIOGRAPHY

Huang Weikai was born in 1972 in Guangdong Province, China. He studied Chinese painting for 15 years and graduated from the Chinese Art Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He used to work as a cinema promoter, art editor, graphic designer, movie script writer and cameraman. Since 2002, he has been directing independent films. His 2009 found-footage documentary, Disorder has been acclaimed as “One of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages” by Hua Hsu in The Atlantic for its unflinching look at the absurdity and anarchy of urban life in contemporary China.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

Disorder
2009, 58 min, documentary

- 2008 Asian Network of Documentary Fund Project (13th PIFF)
- 2009 Young Jury Special mention Award of 31nd Cinema du Reel International Documentary Film Festival, France
- 2009 PRIX RED Award of the 24th Belfort International Film Festival, France
- 2009 Jury Special mention Award of 4th Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, China
- Official selection at the 52nd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, Germany, 2009
- Official selection at the 11th Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, the New Asian Currents program, Japan, 2009
- Official selection at the 16th Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, Canada, 2010
- Official selection at the 6th Play-Doc International Documentary Film Festival, Spain, 2010
- Official selection at the 7th Planete Doc Review Film Festival, Poland, 2010
- Official selection at the 3rd Chongqing Independent Film & Video Festival, China, 2009
- 14th Pusan International Film Festival, Korea, 2009
- 49th Krakow Film Festival, Poland, 2009
- 6th China Documentary Film Festival, China, 2009
- 6th China Independent Film Festival, China, 2009
- 9th DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival, Finland, 2010
- 2010 True/False Film Fest, America
- 2010 Black Movie Festival, Switzerland
- 12th Sarasota Film Festival, America, 2010

Floating (Piao)
2005, 93 min, documentary

- 2005 Black Pottery Prize and Audience Award of Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, China
- 2006 New Filmmaker Award of the 3rd Reel China Documentary Biennial, New York, Shanghai
- The 30th Hong Kong International Film Festival
- The 3rd China Independent Film Festival
- The 11th Umbria Film Festival (Italy)

Bin Laden’s Body Could Be Nothing But a Copy (Ladan de Shiti Zhineng Shi Yifen Kaobei)
2002, 23 min, short

- The 29th HongKong International Film Festival
- Never Go Out Without My DVcam-Video art from China- Museo Colecciones ICO, Madrid

Relevant Classroom Use

dGenerate Films Newsletter: June 2010

In celebration of the summer and the end of the school year, we are offering a sale though the end of June — 15% off any dGenerate title ordered before June 30! We hope that you will consider rounding out your DVD libraries with dGenerate titles and support the invaluable work that our filmmakers are doing to created uncensored perspectives on contemporary Chinese society. Contact us to order and mention the discount, you’ve got a week!

Now is also the time to start thinking about your Fall film series’ and bringing one of our indie Chinese films to your venue. With enough time and planning, our filmmakers are also available to come out and visit as well.

And for those of you home viewers, most of our films are available online for viewing through Amazon and Indieflix for $5 a film. Visit the respective page for each film on our catalog page and you’ll find links to view them.

As always, contact as any time, for any reason. Visit our latest film catalog here. Thanks for your support!

Welcome,

Ariella Tai

Manager, Operations & Sales
(646) 360-0343 / info@dgeneratefilms.com
http://dgeneratefilms.com
Twitter: @dgeneratefilms
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/dGenerate-Films/61032165931

NEW TITLES AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER

• As the summer begins, dGenerate Films is happy to announce that we are preparing to release a 3rd round of titles on DVD and VOD, all of which are now available to be pre-ordered for educational DVD and are currently available for public performance
  • Using (Long Ge) - directed by Zhou Hao
  • Crime and Punishment (Zui Yu Fa) – directed by Zhao Liang
  • Street Life (Nanjing Lu) – directed by Zhao Dayong
  • We are the … of Communism (Wo Men Shi Gong Chan Zhu Yi Sheng Lue Hao) - directed by Cui Zi’en
  • Fujian Blue (Jin Bi Hui Huang) – directed by Robin Weng
  • Dong – directed by Jia Zhangke
  • Black and White Milk Cow (Yi Zhi Hua Nai Niu) – directed by Yang Jin

DU HAIBIN’S 1428 FEATURED AT LA FILM FESTIVAL

• Currently making its way around the festival circuit and available for exhibition screenings is Venice Film Festival Best Documentary 1428. A powerful look at the reality facing survivors of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, Du Haibin’s film recently was picked as “Best of the Los Angeles Film Festival” by LA Weekly critic Karina Longworth.
• Film scholar and Cal Arts professor Bernice Reynaud recently reviewed 1428 in Senses of Cinema, along with Oxhide and Queer China, ‘Comrade China’, amongst other contemporary Chinese films
• CNN also took a behind-the-scenes look at 1428

“THE MAGNIFICENT 7″ OF CHINESE INDIE FILMMAKING

• The latest issue of Time Out Shanghai highlights “The Seven Hottest Directors in China”: Ying Liang, Yang Heng, Zhao Liang, Liu Jiayin, Zhao Dayong, Zhao Ye, and Wei Tie. The feature interviews all seven of the directors, as well as dGenerate President Karin Chien. dGenerate proudly offers titles from five of the seven directors named in the article as “directors to watch.” You can download the full article at the dGenerate website.

NEW ACQUISITIONS

• We are excited for the recent addition of Huang Weikai’s Disorder to our catalog, as well as Liu Jiayin’s long-awaited sequel to Oxhide, Oxhide 2. Please contact exhibitions@dgeneratefilms.com if you are interested in bringing these films to your city or university!

FOLLOW US

• The best way to keep tabs on all the up-to-the-minute happenings in the underground Chinese film world is by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and through our blog’s RSS feed. Stay in touch!

Relevant Classroom Use

Students worldwide are welcome to the program, administered through the University of Washington. Twelve quarter credits are transferable to other institutions. The program is especially well suited for upper-level undergraduates who intend to continue their studies in Chinese cinema, and for graduate students and professors who plan to teach courses involving Chinese films. No knowledge of Chinese is required.

The courses will be taught by professors from outside Asia (including Chris Berry, Yomi Braester, and James Tweedie) and a variety of faculty from the Beijing Film Academy. The program also includes meetings with filmmakers. The program cost (including tuition and lodging) is $3,300 + registration fee. Rolling admission will start on January 1, 2010.

Further details on curriculum and application procedures can be found on the program’s website. Questions should be addressed to the program director, Professor Yomi Braester: yomi @ uw.edu.

Relevant Classroom Use

Tony Rayns and Shelly Kraicer, programmers of the Vancouver International Film Festival‘s big Dragons & Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia section, have announced a program that will showcase a total of thirty-five features, four mid-length films and twenty-two shorts, as of publication. Dragons & Tigers is one of the preeminent showcases of East Asian films in the world, and a stepping stone for many young Asian filmmakers. This year it will feature five World Premieres, eight International Premieres, twelve North American Premieres and two Canadian Premieres from seventy countries.

Four dGenerate Films directors are featured in the program.

• Gay activist and radial filmmaker Cui Zi’en’s Queer China, ‘Comrade’ China uses rare testimonies from theorists, activists and artists to outline the modern origins of Chinese homosexuality through its attempted suppression to its breakthroughs in the last decade.
• Zhao Dayong’s (whose documentary Ghost Town will have its international premiere at the New York Film Festival on September 27) Rough Poetry brings together political theater and faces in closeup by putting eight characters in a cage, playing themselves, including a cop, a prostitute, and a poet.
• Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide II is a sequel to her dGenerate title Oxhide and uses the occasion of making dumplings with her parents to structure this formally daring, wryly amusing look at family dynamics, economic burdens and the ethics and aesthetics of cooking from scratch.
• Yang Heng’s (Betelnut) Sun Spots tells a tale of love, betrayal and revenge set in a verdant mountain paradise in central China, and captures the anguish and passion of a youthful lost generation.

For the 16th straight year, a distinguished international jury will single out an exceptional new director from the Asia-Pacific region for the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema. Chinese director Wu Haohao’s debut Kun 1: Action is among this year’s nominees. Previous winners from the independent sector include Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu (1997), Diao Yi’nan’s Uniform (2003) and Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide (2005).

Festival Director Alan Franey said, “The heart of Dragons and Tigers remains the discovery and introduction of new talent to the West. and it’s a very rich program on that account this year.”

A list of this year’s Dragons & Tigers features from mainland China:

• 1428 (Du Haibin) – North American Premiere
• THE COW (Guan Hu) – North American Premiere
• KUN 1: ACTION (Wu Haohao) – World Premiere
• OXHIDE II (Liu Jiayin) – North American Premiere
• PETITION (Zhao Liang) – North American Premiere
• QUEER CHINA, ‘COMRADE’ CHINA (Cui Zi’en) – International Premiere
• ROUGH POETRY (Zhao Dayong) – World Premiere
• THE SEARCH (Pema Tseden)
• SUN SPOTS (Yang Heng) – World Premiere

Relevant Classroom Use

San Yuan Li (dir. Ou Ning, 2003)

What is a Chinese film?  Ever since I’ve started living and working in Beijing over six years ago, most serious discussions about Chinese cinema ultimately come down to this elemental question, either in its descriptive mode (what defines a Chinese film?) or in its more urgently prescriptive version (what should a Chinese film be?).  Often, it’s filmmakers themselves who seem most anxious about the issue.  Behind it lie several subsidiary anxieties: “What do Westerners want from Chinese films?”, “What’s my role in Chinese society?”, “Are films art, or commerce, or politics?”

In English, we don’t distinguish between zhongguo dianying (movies made in China) and huayu pian (Chinese language films).  Chinese film in the first instance can simply mean the national cinema of China, from its early years in Beijing and Shanghai to the present day, both within and outside the state run system of production, distribution, and exhibition.  A broader geographical definition adds to this films from “greater China”, encompassing Taiwan and Hong Kong.  A still broader meaning includes any films in the various Chinese languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, etc.).  A still wider circle would embrace filmmakers of Chinese ethnicity like Ang Lee and John Woo, whose work can be in English or in Chinese.

So much for the first term in “Chinese film.”  The second word, “film”, is equally ambiguous.  Look at any catalogue of the state-run Shanghai International Film Festival, and you’ll find the official narrow interpretation of Chinese film, encompassing state-owned film studios’ mainstream propaganda films (zhuxuanlu pian) and independently financed commercial movies authorized by the Film Bureau, both on film and DV.  Small-scale independent “image exhibitions” in China (see my previous article for an overview) will show films made outside of the system, these days almost exclusively on digital video.

With foreign film festivals, the picture becomes even more complex.  There are still international film festivals that largely follow the creaky old Shanghai IFF model, filtering out non-sanctioned cinema (several of the old-style “Category A” film festivals fit this bill).  On the other hand, there are festivals such as Rotterdam’s International Film Festival that exist to “discover” (for western viewers), support (though financing and programming) and promote independent, alternative, non-commercial cinema.  Most festivals lie somewhere in between.

Foreign festivals of either bent attempt to satisfy certain ideas about what constitutes “China” and what constitutes “film.”  No choices are completely objective, and none escape the confines of pre-existing notions of cultural and national difference.  Even the most independent, enterprising festivals can have a stake in constructing a vision of a product, the “independent Chinese cinema” brand.  This is a brand that can satisfy certain prejudices and requirements of an alternative art film distribution network.  We have to change the question, then.  Instead of asking “what is a Chinese film?”, let’s ask instead “what kind of cultural work can Chinese cinema do?”

Foreign film festivals, especially, play critical and controversial roles in presenting, labeling, constraining, defining, and shaping foreign cultural production for domestic (i.e. Western) consumption.  Since the era of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, “Chinese film” has often meant something gently or violently exotic: old models of Orientalism carried over quite easily into our so-called “postmodern”, “post-colonial era.”  Sex and violence, preferably vibrantly coloured and richly costumed, sell, because they offer western viewers a comfortingly familiar vision of a China that they think they already know.  It’s hard to account for films like Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia, 2006) any other way.

For many in the West, China is currently being re-defined as an increasingly powerful and ominous nation.  This fear of a new economic and cultural adversary colours how Western media outlets choose to depict China.  Films that in some way underline social problems, films that are bleakly depressing, films that adopt some sort of adversarial stance in relation to power, all constitute an approved set of images which flow towards Western audiences.  Examples abound.  To pick three, almost at random: Zhang Lu’s Grain in Ear (Mang zhong, 2005), Han Jie’s Walking On The Wild Side (Lai xiaozi, 2006), Li Yang’s Blind Mountain (Mang shan, 2007).  Again, the point for festivals and distributors is to supply audiences with comforting images of what they think they already understand: China as a place essentially different from their own home.  China is a place whose internal problems and contradictions need to be exposed, defined, and consumed.  This essentially is just a way of confirming one’s own “normality” in the face of a menacing “other.”  The role of critical, independent Chinese directors in making these films is therefore sometimes all too painfully ambivalent.

Enter the Clowns (dir. Cui Zi'en, 2001)

Within the Chinese filmmaking community, there are other fault lines.  Particularly visible is an implied polemic between film art and film politics.  For many independent filmmakers enmeshed in China’s particular political situation, film offers an imperative duty of opposing power.  Facing a Party whose old style hegemonic control of political discourse is no longer matched by its control over China’s social and economic space, cinematic discourse has an unavoidable responsibility to engage.  Alternatively, the Party’s now only sporadic surveillance of visual culture provides filmmakers with a new freedom to explore questions of form, to create or challenge film aesthetics.  Exemplary figures  include young filmmakers like Liu Jiayin (Oxhide [Niu pi, 2005]), queer experimentalist Cui Zi’en (Enter the Clowns [Chou jue deng chang, 2001]) and avant garde artists Ou Ning (San Yuan Li [2003] and Meishi Street [Meishi jie, 2006]) and Yang Fudong (An Estranged Paradise [Mosheng tiantang, 2002] and Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest [Zhu lin qi xian, 2003]).

Another tendency newly visible in mainland Chinese independent cinema is the urge to record and catalogue.  This is the work that these new Chinese films do.  There has been a virtual explosion, mainly on the documentary side, but also in new narrative fiction, to use cinema as a kind of archive, capturing communities and disappearing or threatened ways of life.  This movement, if it’s not premature to call it that, results in long (sometimes very long) films that function as exhaustive catalogues of data, seemingly assembled more than structured, presenting in some sense a “complete” view of a certain slice of Chinese reality, presented raw and un-altered, for a viewer to digest and analyze on his or her own.  I’m thinking of recent films like Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town (Feicheng, 2008), Cong Feng’s Doctor Ma’s Country Clinic (Ma Daifu de zhensuo, 2008), and Lin Xin’s Classmates (Tongxue, 2009).  Derived from the ethnographic documentary tradition, but injected into mainstream independent film discourse (if that term makes any sense), these catalogue films respond to what can be seen as a political imperative to show the truth: real, unmanipulated reality, untainted by the ideological manipulations of previous Chinese cinema.  Watching this movement is fascinating: the resulting works can be exhilarating, or pretty mind-numbing, or a provocative mixture of the two.

So what can be done to avoid the traps of cramming “Chinese cinema” into restrictive definitions?  What should Chinese film be and do?  It’s not easy: people largely see what they want to see.  Mass media is about giving comfort, reinforcing patterns of thought, policing the boundaries of what we call knowledge.  If I had to give the Chinese filmmakers an answer, I’d say: Make and exhibit films that show audiences what they don’t already know.  Find images that are fresh, provocative, that destabilize the complex of pre-established, pre-thought concepts that a film audience totes like baggage.  Don’t show what’s already been seen; don’t depict what’s already been imagined.  Unsettle, surprise and disturb, and you’ve started to point in the right direction.

This article, revised in June 2009, is based on a shorter article that originally appeared in the Festival Daily, published by the Toronto International Film Festival, September 2007.

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