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!

Related posts

• The New Home for Independent Chinese Cinema (1)
• The dGenerate Films Birth Story (3)

Ghost Town (photo courtesy of Fanhall Films)

Marking a breakthrough for the Chinese digital filmmaking community, director Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town (Fei Cheng, 2008) was selected for the 47^th New York Film Festival (September 25 – October 11), as the only Chinese entry in the lineup. This low-budget documentary shot on HD has never been shown in any major festival outside China; as of this article it has yet to even appear on IMDb and All Movie Guide. Yet it joins a prestigious NYFF lineup that features new works by renowned directors such as Alain Resnais, Pedro Almodovar, Jacques Rivette, and Lars von Trier. Its inclusion in the NYFF represents a first in the festival’s program: a nod to China’s digital generation of documentary filmmakers.

According to the website of Fanhall Films, a multi-faceted indie film support organization based in Beijing, the three-hour documentary is not about phantoms, but the Lisu and Nu minority villagers in the abandoned halls of a remote former communist county seat in the southwestern province of Yunnan, China. Consisting of three chapters, “Voices,” “Recollections,” and “Innocence,” the film observes and records the mode of existence of the nameless and the forgotten, offering extraordinary insights into such topics as religious faith, relationships, juvenile deviants, generational differences, and lost history.

Dennis Lim, a member of this year’s NYFF jury and a major voice in promoting Chinese independent cinema, shared his reasons for selecting the film with dGenerate Films’ Kevin Lee: “Ghost Town is one of the most surprising and rewarding films I’ve seen all year, one of the most important films to have emerged from the booming (but still underexplored) field of Chinese independent documentaries.” Fellow jury member Scott Foundas also considered the film an exciting discovery, exclaiming: “I didn’t think there was another Jia Zhangke or Wang Bing lurking out there, but it turns out there is!”

“Out there” refers to the ever mysterious but increasingly accessible world of Chinese cinema. As one of the most selective film festivals in the world, NYFF has the reputation of showcasing the best in world cinema, usually handpicked from Cannes and Venice. Films from Greater China have occupied a small but consistent place in the festival for more than a decade. Mainland directors Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang, Taiwanese directors Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang and Edward Yang, as well as Hong Kong directors Wong Kar-wai and Johnnie To have all made multiple appearances at the event. Yet almost all of them earned the entrance after being embraced by major European film festivals and championed by influential critics like J. Hoberman and Tony Rayns, or popular American directors like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Their global recognition is in line with NYFF’s taste, which is oriented towards spotlighting the most elite of international auteurs. (This year’s opening and closing directors, Resnais and Almodóvar, are making their tenth and eighth appearances in the event, respectively.)

A distinct breakthrough occurred at NYFF in 2000 with Jia Zhangke, who entered with his independently produced second feature Platform (Zhan Tai, 2000), after he was officially banned from filmmaking in China and virtually unknown to the rest of the world. In the years to follow, Jia would join the rank of the festival’s most beloved alumni, with four features (Platform, Unknown Pleasures [2002], The World [2004], 24 City [2008]) and one documentary (Useless, 2007) showcased in a mere eight years. Last year’s program dubbed him as the “dean of Chinese independent cinema.” As Zhang Zhen, NYU professor in Cinema Studies, has aptly noted in her book The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, Jia Zhangke’s appearance in the late 1990s helped inagurate a new phase in the Chinese indie movement. Jia and his filmmaking collective championed “amateur cinema” (yeyu dianying), or “unofficial cinema” (minjian dianying). They found a following among emerging filmmakers outside of the elite Beijing Film Academy in particular and professional filmmaking in general, joining forces with an incipient DV movement. Zhao Dayong, a director with a background in fine art who works from his private Dayong Film Studio and serves as director, cinematographer, and editor of his own films, belongs to this burgeoning amateur generation, the digital generation.

The NYFF’s choice of Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town takes its embrace of Chinese indie cinema a step further, by bringing much needed attention to documentaries. As distributor of several Chinese indie docs, dGenerate Films has worked extensively with the Chinese independent community; these interactions are depicted in the web series “Digital Underground in the People’s Republic,” which is viewable online. Critics and scholars have taken notice of this scene, such as Chris Berry, one of the first scholars to chart the ascendance of the Fifth Generation directors back in the 1980s. In an interview with Kevin Lee for dGenerate’s CinemaTalk series, Berry said:

For me independent documentary has been the most powerful force in Chinese film for quite a long time now, not only in the documentaries themselves but also in their impact on the style of most interesting fiction feature films.  So when you think about someone like Jia Zhangke, who in fact crosses both documentary making and fiction filmmaking, he would be exemplary of what I’m talking about.

In another CinemaTalk inteview, Lu Xinyu, one of the foremost scholars of Chinese independent documentary, gave her account of the significance of these films:

Now we are facing the dramatic transformation of Chinese society, both temporally and spatially.  Everyone’s life is inevitably involved in and affected by this process.  How should art react to these changes?

By watching independent documentaries, we not only experience the psychological world of the directors, but also get to experience the existence of people at different social levels through the lens of the camera, especially the existence of the underclass and how they struggled through these changes, their pains and their needs.  This is extremely important to me.

Based on the description of Ghost Town, all of these factors seem to be in play in the film. In the “Director’s Statement,” Zhao summarized his mixed feelings toward China’s development and economic boom typical of a generation of filmmakers: “I wanted to explore the idea of these lost histories and ravaged cultures, and by extension my own cultural identity, by delving into the lives and spirit of the abandoned city.”

Zhao’s depiction of contemporary China in Ghost Town will provide a stark counterpoint to the Festival’s special showcase: a retrospective of classic Chinese films from 1949-1966 to mark the 60^th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.  (This is the third major retrospective of Chinese cinema to be showcased by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in the last five years, following the NYFF tribute to the Shaw Brothers Studios in 2004, and the FSLC celebration of Chinese cinema’s centennial in 2005.) Combining cinema from the propagandist past and the documentary present, this year’s New York Film Festival will allow audiences a unique opportunity to see how far China has come, historically, socially, and cinematically.

dGenerate Films is proud to announce the premiere of Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town at the prestigious New York Film Festival.  This marks the introduction of a major new talent to western audiences.  dGenerate Films will be working with Zhao Dayong and the Ghost Town team on their US distribution and festival run.  If you’re interested in screening Ghost Town at your festival or venue, please contact us.

Related posts

• Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town Premieres at the NYFF, Tix on Sale Sunday! (0)
• Shelly on Film: What is a Chinese Film? (2)

My first trip to Beijing was a startling revelation.  The city seemed to me a mix of Las Vegas and Eastern European Communist aesthetics.  The smog, traffic, and sprawl of Beijing were mind-boggling (and I’m an LA native).  The underground, independent film community, though, was small and, as I soon found out, very inviting.  A few introductions from colleagues in the States got me meetings with key influencers, including professor/producer/actor Zhang Xianmin, critic/curator/filmmaker Zhang Yaxuan, and programmer/critic Shelly Kraicer.  I knew I found the beating heart of the community when I walked into an Communist Bloc-era apartment, in the middle of a Friday night, saw leading filmmaker Wang Bing chain-smoking in the corner, and sat down for a serious discussion about the politics of world cinema.

That first trip solidified for me the importance of distributing these films to an American audience.  Not only could we return revenue to filmmakers, so they could keep making films, but we had an opportunity to open a window onto contemporary China.  There is no easy access in the States to contemporary media made about China, from within China, by Chinese filmmakers.  The opportunity and need were, and still is, clearly present.

When I returned to the States, we quickly got to work on watching films and pulling the company together, which took a good year of hard work, including a second visit to China in Fall 2008 (see Digital Underground in the People’s Republic).  But to this day, I remain eternally grateful to the filmmakers, professors, programmers and critics who welcomed me with open arms on that first trip to Beijing.  Without their faith in our work, and the trust of the filmmakers, we wouldn’t be granted the access that truly sets dGenerate apart.

Related posts

• The Birth Story of dGenerate Films, Part 2 (0)
• Shelly on Film: An Inside Tour of The Chinese Independent Film Circuit (5)

So after a fateful NYU booking and Sundance shuttle ride, I now had the beginnings of a foundation to make the idea of distributing independent Chinese films a reality. For six months, I worked on the idea from afar, that is from my office in Chinatown.  I tried email, Skype, and phone calls, but the time and cultural differences between U.S. and China were too great to surmount through digital communication alone.  I had hit a roadblock.

At the same time, friends and colleagues began to express interest in collaborating on this venture.  By the Fall, Philip Lam, now on our board of directors, and Brent Hall, our COO, expressed their faith in the venture, and made a commitment to building a company together.  Their support was what I needed to push the idea into reality.

Having realized that nothing beats face-to-face contact, I booked a three week trip to Beijing to see the underground film community for myself.  With nothing more than a handful of contacts and a Powerpoint presentation, I arrived in Beijing for my first time in January’s below-freezing temperatures.

I was ready to start meeting China’s underground directors … now I just had to find them.

Come back soon for Part 3 of “The Birth of dGenerate Films” by dGenerate President Karin Chien…

Related posts

• The Birth Story of dGenerate Films, Part 3 (0)
• The New Home for Independent Chinese Cinema (1)

The idea for the company was inspired by one of our films, San Yuan Li, by Ou Ning and Cao Fei.  By a chance encounter, I indirectly helped Andrew Gluckman, now a good friend, book a screening of San Yuan Li at New York University in December 2007.  At the time, I had no inkling of what was to happen.  Nor did I know anything about the film.  But when I saw San Yuan Li, I was blown away by the artistry and production methodology of the film.  After the screening, Ou Ning told me many films in China were being made underground, meaning without censorship and without any chance at domestic distribution.

I knew there was an audience here for these films – given the immense interest in China, and a general lack of access to media made from within China, it seemed like an obvious one-two connection.  Problem was, I was and still am an independent film producer, a consuming profession.  I self-distributed films I produced, but the thought of tunneling a new route to bring underground Chinese films to the U.S. was daunting.

So I mulled over the idea, and a month later, it came out in an idle chat between myself and Brian Newman, Tribeca Film Institute’s Executive Director, as we were riding the free Sundance Film Festival shuttle bus.  Brian said he was developing a new platform called Reframe designed specifically to distribute independent films to the academic market.  He promised to accept all the films I brought back China.  Reframe would take care of the physical manufacturing and order fulfillment. Brian’s offer suddenly made the idea much less daunting.  I got back on the phone with Ou Ning, who immediately sent me forty films to watch.

The content was there, the distribution network was coming, all that was needed now was the missing link between the two.

More information on San Yuan Li can be found here.

Come back soon for Part 2 of “The Birth of dGenerate Films” by dGenerate President Karin Chien…

Related posts

• Defending Culture and Democracy in Chinese Independent Documentaries (0)
• CinemaTalk: A Conversation with Chris Berry (4)

We’ve assembled an initial slate of films that we couldn’t be prouder of, by such up-and-coming filmmakers as Ying Liang, Ou Ning, and Jian Yi. And our film topics range from budding pop stars to war-era comfort women to the industrialization of rural China.

We’re just getting things underway, having done recent screenings of our films at places like the MOMA, Brooklyn Academy of Music, China Institute, and University of Maryland, and have begun pre-sales of our institutional DVD’s. Our focus is on educational and institutional sales of DVD and downloads, and exhibition screenings at public performance venues like museums, community organizations, and film forums.

So check out our film catalog, bookmark us, add our feed, signup for our email newsletter. We’ll not only be growing our collection, but intend for our site to be the authority on contemporary independent Chinese cinema. Welcome, the dGenerate Films team looks forward to seeing you back soon!

Related posts

• The Birth Story of dGenerate Films, Part 2 (0)
• Ghost Town: a New Chapter for Chinese Cinema at the New York Film Festival (2)