Posts Tagged ‘digital media’

CinemaTalk: Peng Tao at the Beijing Apple Store

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

This is the third of three interviews produced from the “Meet the Filmmakers” series held in Feburary 2010 at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing. The series, co-presented by the Apple Store and dGenerate Films, is an ongoing series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology.

Peng Tao at the Sanlitun Apple Store, Beijing

Peng Tao is the award-winning director of Little Moth (2007) and a graduate of the Art Department of Beijing Film Academy, where he received the Outstanding Short Film Award and first prize at the 1st JINZI Awards. Peng Tao’s second feature, Floating in Memory (2009), is supported by the prestigious Sundance Institute Feature Film Program and the Hubert Bals Fund, and screened in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition at the 2009 International Film Festival Rotterdam.

The video of Peng’s interview is in three parts, with an English transcript following each video. Video of Part One is below. Click through to view both videos and the full transcript. Interview conducted by Jane Zheng. Videography by Michael Cheng. English transcription and subtitles by Yuqian Yan and Isabella Tianzi Cai.

Note: English subtitles for each video can be accessed by clicking on the CC button in the pop-up menu on the bottom right corner of the player.

VIDEO PART ONE

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CinemaTalk: Jian Yi at the Beijing Apple Store

Monday, June 21st, 2010

This is the second of three interviews produced from the “Meet the Filmmakers” series held in Feburary 2010 at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing. The series, co-presented by the Apple Store and dGenerate Films, is an ongoing series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology.

Jian Yi

Jian Yi is a filmmaker from China whose work actively engages ordinary citizens in documenting their own lives. He directed the critically acclaimed films Super, Girls! and Bamboo Shoots, and co-directed the groundbreaking China Village Documentary Project, in which ordinary villagers from across China used video cameras to record the changing rural dynamics in their home villages. Jian Yi is also the founder of the Participatory Documentary Center at Jinggangshan University and Original Studio, one of the nation’s first innovative community art centers. His documentaries and feature films, which reveal the social and cultural tensions of contemporary China, have won international awards and are shown worldwide. He is a 2010 Open Society Institute Fellow.

The video of Jian’s interview is in four parts, with an English transcript following each video. Video of Part One is below. Click through to view both videos and the full transcript. Interview conducted by Jane Zheng. Videography by Michael Cheng. English transcription and subtitles by Isabella Tianzi Cai.

Note: English subtitles for each video can be accessed by clicking on the CC button in the pop-up menu on the bottom right corner of the player.

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CinemaTalk: Cui Zi’en at the Beijing Apple Store

Monday, April 12th, 2010

This is the first of three interviews produced from the “Meet the Filmmakers” series held in Feburary 2010 at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing. The series, co-presented by the Apple Store and dGenerate Films, is an ongoing series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology.

Cui Zi'en, director of Queer China, 'Comrade China', speaks at the Apple store in Beijing. (Photo: Robert Douglas)

Cui Zi’en is a director, film scholar, screenwriter, and novelist based in Beijing. He is an associate professor at the Beijing Film Academy. Cui Zi’en is a premiere avant-garde digital filmmaker in China. He has published nine novels in China and Hong Kong, and he is also the author of books on criticism and theory, as well as a columnist for magazines.

dGenerate Films distributes three of Cui Zi’en’s features in its catalog: Queer China, ‘Comrade China‘, Enter the Clowns, and We Are the… of Communism (coming soon).

The video of Cui’s interview is in four parts, with an English transcript following each video. Video of Part One is below. Click through to view both videos and the full transcript.

Note: English subtitles for each video can be accessed by clicking on the CC button in the pop-up menu on the bottom right corner of the player.

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Chinese Visual Ethnography Conference This Weekend at USC

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Cultural Dimensions of Visual Ethnography: U.S.- China Dialogues
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Conference locations (various locations, please see program listed below); Film screenings (Leavey Auditorium)
April 8-10, 2010
Time: 12:00PM – 7:30PM
Please RSVP to Jia Tan at jiatan@usc.edu

How has visual ethnography shifted from becoming a discipline of “first world” filmmakers traveling to film “third world” people to a more complex and dialogical series of exchanges?  Moving away from this bi-polar perspective to see the world in more complex and subtle terms, how have the audience for ethnographic documentaries shifted in recent years?  How are ethnographic documentaries influenced by controversies about minority nationalities and ethnicity?  What is the relationship between visual ethnography and the commercial videos produced for tourism promotion? What is the role of autobiographical or first person documentaries in defining a cultural perspective? What role do videos play in maintaining transnational connections among dispersed families and communities in China and the US? How do websites and web-based blogs serve to maintain transnational ties?

Full schedule after the break.

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DV Management Regulation in the People’s Republic of China

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

In the New York Times article “Indie Filmmakers: China’s New Guerillas” reporter Kirk Semple mentions an “undefined gray area” in which today’s digital independent filmmakers work under the close watch (and occasional intervention) of the government.  As a background information resource, we have procured and translated the official government statement concerning the monitoring of digital video work in China, issued in 2004, and referred to whenever a party is prosecuted for making, distributing or exhibiting illegal films in China.

“Notice on Strengthening DV Management in Theater, Television and on the Internet” was officially issued on May 24th, 2004 by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. The following is a translation of its main part:

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Changing the World (but don’t take our word for it!)

Thursday, June 18th, 2009
SFGate Homepage featuring Ying Liang

SFGate Homepage featuring Ying Liang

What a nice surprise to see our very own Ying Liang, director of Taking Father Home and The Other Half, peering at us from the homepage of the San Francisco Chronicle’s website.  And what an even nicer surprise to read the great article by Jeff Yang (formerly of A Magazine fame) tying dGenerate Films, and the films and filmmakers we represent, into the digital media revolution enabling independent voices from historically media-oppressed nations to be heard.

Yang and (we) agree we’ve come a long way from the government censorship of Tiananmen Square media coverage to today’s digitally-driven, people-powered media movement occurring in countries like China and Iran thanks to new technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and digital video.  Give it a read here.

For more details on Taking Father Home and The Other Half, visit our Catalog.

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