Posts Tagged ‘jian yi’

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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Video: Jian Yi Speaks to Soros Foundation / Open Society Institute

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Jian Yi (Photo by Christopher Capozziello for the Open Society Institute)

Next week, we’ll post the second of our video interviews produced from the “Meet the Filmmakers” series held in Feburary 2010 at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing. The video will feature Jian Yi, one of the most accomplished and ambitious independent filmmakers working in China today. Jian Yi 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. He is also the founder of the Participatory Documentary Center at Jinggangshan University and Original Studio, one of the nations 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.

Jian is also the founder of IFCHINA, a pioneering NGO that helps ordinary citizens in small and medium-sized Chinese cities document their own lives through videography, theater, and photography. Provincial communities are losing collective memory as residents migrate to the coastal metropolises in search of work. Jian Yi believes that video technology can preserve that memory, while stimulating a sense of civic engagement and strengthening shared values. He is currently working to seed a project in Ji’an City, the cradle of the communist revolution and the major pilgrimage site for Maoists across China.

Jian Yi’s work led him to receive a prestigious fellowship with the Open Society Institute, funded by the Soros Foundation.  The OSI posted this brief video with Jian Yi, speaking in English about his work. It’s a nice preview to the more lengthy interview that we will be posting next week.

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Zhao Liang’s Petition screening at Migrating Forms Festival

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Petition (dir. Zhao Liang)

As this year’s Cannes Film Festival gets into gear this weekend, one of the standout films from last year’s festival will make its way to New York City for a special screening. Petition, the acclaimed documentary by Zhao Liang, will screen Sunday, May 16 at 6:15 PM at Anthology Film Archives as part of the Migrating Forms Festival.

From the program description (taken from the Harvard Film Archive):

“The dysfunctional Chinese court system allows citizens with grievances against their local governments to petition the court to clear or correct their record. Yet in order to do so, the petitioners must travel to Beijing to file paperwork and wait an indefinite period to plead their case. The vast majority of petitioners are impoverished villagers who travel far to the capital and typically end up waiting desperately in decrepit shantytowns for their cases to be settled, often pressured by hired thugs to return home. Following the saga of a group of petitioners over the years of 1996 and 2008, Petition unfolds like a novel by Zola or Dickens. Unwilling to accept defeat and seemingly unable to do anything but wait, the petitioners enter a strange and often terrifying zone, gradually losing touch with family and friends back home and with the cruel reality of their situation.”

dGenerate Films is proud to distribute Zhao Liang’s previous film Crime and Punishment, now available for pre-order. Find out more.

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Press on Beijing Apple Store Events with dGenerate Filmmakers

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

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

Following up on our recent “Meet the Filmmakers” series at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, here are a couple of links to local coverage of the events.

At The Beijinger, Dan Edwards talks to Karin Chien about the Apple Store events and China’s digital filmmaking revolution.

At the Global Times, Robert Powers reports on Apple Store appearances made by filmmakers Jian Yi and Cui Zi’en.

We’re pleased to announce that the “Meet the Filmmakers” series will continue with other filmmakers appearing at the Apple Store Sanlitun over the coming months. Stay tuned for details.

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“MEET THE FILMMAKERS” at the Apple Store Beijing

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

dGenerate Films is teaming up with the Apple Store in Beijing to present a new monthly series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology. Digital tools, from digital video cameras to editing software, have placed filmmaking in the hands of the people. Listen and watch how award-winning directors use digital technology to create their latest movies, attracting worldwide attention and acclaim.

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

Events are listed below in English; scroll further to read them in Chinese.

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SUPER, GIRLS! and Director JIAN Yi at China Institute!

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

super_girls-thumbIn collaboration with dGenerate Films, the China Institute in America (125 East 65th Street) will present dGenerate title Super, Girls! (Chao Ji Nu Sheng) on Saturday, October 24, at 4:30 pm, as part of the Sinomathèque Film Series. An open discussion with director JIAN Yi will follow the screening.

Super, Girls! follows ten female teenagers on their quest to become instant superstars through the “Super Girls Singing Contest,” the wildly popular Chinese version of the “American Idol.” Discussing his unusual subject matter among Chinese indies, director Jian says in the “Director’s Statement”:

“Mainstream life is fairly underrepresented in independent Chinese documentaries as filmmakers tend to focus more on the society’s underprivileged groups. Yet ‘mainstream’ life in fast changing societies like China’s can be as different as Red Guards in 1960s, poets in 1980s, businessmen in 1990s and the ‘Super-girls’ in 2000s. What are the values of the family’s-only-child generation? How do they release their tremendous extra energy and money and embrace a globalized culture? China should not be just the playground for banks and corporations. China’s new generation of independent filmmakers look into the present-day mainstream culture and document and scrutinize this crazy and confusing time of the nation’s history.”

The Sinomathèque is an ongoing film series at the China Institute that showcases contemporary and historical work of every genre originating from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

For more information, visit the China Institute.

For further information, please contact sinomatheque@chinainstitute.org or 212-744-8181×150.

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Jian Yi to Show New Documentary at Yale

Monday, September 14th, 2009

dGenerate director Jian Yi (Super, Girls!) is to screen his new work New Socialist Climax (Hong Se Zhi Lü) at the Auditorium of Henry R. Luce Hall, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut on Thursday, September 17 at 8pm.  This special screening is in coordination with the international conference on “Culture, Conflict & Mediation” sponsored by Yale, Cambridge and Qinghua Universities (September 17-19, 2009).  A Q&A session with the director will follow.

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American Idol as… Underground Cinema?

Monday, September 7th, 2009
Jian Yi filming Super, Girls!

Jian Yi behind the scenes of Super, Girls!

Recent d(igital)-generation films are considered “underground” not only due to subject matter. More often than not their production methodology helps define their independence. This is part of a series looking behind the scenes of Digital Underground in the People’s Republic.

It’s true that one standing trope of “underground” Chinese films is a fascination with life on the margins. These are the folks who don’t get any screen time in glossy studio pics – ethnic populations, village life, orphans, petty criminals, drug addicts, homeless migrants, and the list goes on. So it’s more than a little surprising to come across an underground film that takes ten average Chinese female teenagers as its subject. Add to that the inclusion of the wildly popular Chinese version of American Idol, and the choice of subject matter is even more startling.

But this is exactly what Jian Yi, director of the documentary Super, Girls!, did. He figured that the margins weren’t the only populations ignored in mainstream cinema. So Jian Yi picked up his digital camera and, without authorization from the Chinese government or the sponsoring television station for that matter, headed down to the regional auditions for the television contest Super Girl.

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A “Brighter” Future

Thursday, August 6th, 2009
Ten Thousand Pig Farm, Jiangxi, Photo courtesy of Brighter Green

Ten Thousand Pig Farm, Jiangxi (Photo courtesy of Brighter Green)

We’re excited to announce a new partnership with environmental policy organization Brighter Green on the production of their documentary Meat World, which explores the impact of meat and dairy consumption on developing countries like China.  This marks the beginning of a new chapter for dGenerate Films.  Increasing inquiries from American producers have led us to start offering co-producing and consulting services for documentary and fiction films interested in filming in China.

We’ve been fortunate throughout the short life of our business to develop extensive ties and strong relationships to the best and brightest of the independent Chinese filmmaking community, as well as an insider’s understanding of how the film business works there.  For Meat World, we’ve connected Super, Girls! director Jian Yi with Brighter Green to helm the project and have been supervising the pre-production and production process in Beijing, Jiangxi, and Guangzhou.  Early feedback has it that the footage is remarkable and transformed the Chinese crew into vegetarians by day three of the shoot!

Check out this enlightening blog post by Brighter Green’s Mia MacDonald on the Meat World project.

Any productions in search of location assistance, crew, talent, producing partners, or anything production-related in China, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to explore ways to work with you while continuing to support truly independent filmmaking in China.

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Shelly on Film: Between the Cracks of Capitalist China

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

By Shelly Kraicer

Photo courtesy of TreeHugger.com

Photo courtesy of TreeHugger.com

It’s always an interesting time to be in China, a place seemingly without uninteresting times.  To be here now, though, lets you see a singular moment in society floating, unpinned, somewhere in between two bankrupt ruling ideologies.  The collapse of official Communism/Maoism/Socialism with Chinese characteristics, as the ruling thinking evolved from pre-Liberation through the Cultural Revolution to post-Mao Dengism, is the keynote for lots of standard accounts of China today.

Traditional Chinese culture was, for a time, obliterated by various more or less radical and institutional versions of leftist ideology.  These slowly disappeared in fact, though the rote sloganeering formulas persist, especially around the “liang hui” or annual meeting of the Chinese government’s legislative bodies, that took place in the spring.  Following Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, and the unbridled embrace of wealth-concentration and manifest corruption in the Jiang Zemin era, the new god became capitalism, in its rawest, unregulated forms.  Free market ideology imported from its Western exponents has washed over China, pushing some groups and regions ahead, leaving millions in the interior and the countryside, behind.  Now that financial market capitalism is having its own profound existential crisis in the West, does China have to think about tossing out its brand new ruling ideology, right on top of the refuse of the old one?  It’s enough to cause a case of ideological whiplash.

What happens when an unstable society starts to face the possibility that its hot new set of ideological nostrums might be just as insubstantial as those it has just recently thrown over?  It must be a dizzying sort of disorientation for those Chinese who have invested their new identities in the new ways of thinking.

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