Wee Ling Soh of the Shanghaist tipped us to “First Spring,” a nine minute video directed by avant garde filmmaker Yang Fudong (Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest) as an artsy promotional tie-in for Prada. Video after the break.
Posts Tagged ‘ou ning’
Chinese Avant-garde Shills for Prada: Is This the Future of Indie Filmmaking?
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010Avatar Breaks Chinese Box Office Records — and Inspires Activists
Monday, January 18th, 2010What do this:
and this:
have in common? Apparently, they are both images of urban gentrification in China.
The top image is from James Cameron’s Avatar, which recently set the opening-day box office record in China with 33 million yuan ($4.85 million US). The film is on track to take over the record for total gross of 460 million yuan ($67 million US) set just months ago by Roland Emmerich’s 2012, which itself had just beaten the 450 million yuan earned by Transformers 2: The Revenge of the Fallen. 2009 was indeed a record year at the Chinese box office, whose 6.2 billion yuan toppled the 2008 take by a staggering 43%. Chinese films got in on the action, with five domestic features placing among the 2008 top ten earning films. (Full list after the break).
It’s somewhat reassuring that some Chinese have taken some political activist inspiration from their mainstream entertainment. British news source The Independent reports that Avatar has been embraced by potential evictees of urban neighborhoods slated for redevelopment (such as new shopping centers that feature state-of-the art cineplexes showing, um, Avatar):
Residents of China’s “nail houses” – so named because they are the last hold-outs in areas flattened for development – have likened their plight to those of the alien Nai’vi race in the blockbuster, as too have villagers in Hong Kong who face eviction to make way for a high-speed railway line.
“I’m touched by how they protect their homeland,” 81-year-old Wong Kam-fook told the South China Morning Post, referring to the war the Na’vi wage in the film against the human invaders.
For a more realistic depiction of this plight, one might look at the source of the second image, Ou Ning’s documentary Meishi Street, which shows ordinary citizens taking a stand against the planned destruction of their homes for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In order to widen traffic routes for the Olympic Games, the Beijing Municipal Government orders the demolition of entire neighborhoods. Given video cameras by the filmmakers, evictees shoot exclusive footage of the eviction process, adding vivid intimacy to their story.
Click here for more information on Meishi Street. Trailer of Meishi Street and the list of top 10 grossing films in China in 2009 after the break.
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“Skyscraping ambition:” The Shenzhen Biennale curated by Ou Ning
Monday, December 21st, 2009
Shenzhen Biennale (Photo Courtesy of BB News)
We’re pleased to share this report on Shenzhen’s third Biennale of architecture, curated by Ou Ning. Among Ou Ning’s many accomplishments as an artist and activist, he’s the director of two dGenerate titles, Meishi Street and San Yuan Li.
From the report by World BB News:
The biennale, now in its third edition, is a government-sponsored attempt to establish one thing Shenzhen lacks: a cultural scene. The theme is city mobilisation, which chief curator Ou Ning – who lived here throughout the 1990s, when growth was so fast that the phrase “Shenzhen speed” was born – says is an experiment to unite citizens “in a time that lacks centralised force, spiritual solidarity and practical organisation”. While most architecture biennales are unappealing cocktails of dodgy architectural art and dense technical presentations, this one has a more popular touch. More than 60 installations by artists and architects occupy an underground hall at the civic centre, the massive public plaza above it, and various spots around the city.
Read the full report on the Biennale, with many vivid images included.
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The Selling of Culture in China
Friday, December 18th, 2009
Zhao Dayong
“How China is using art (and artists) to sell itself to the world” is an informative and insightful article in The Star by Murray Whyte. It analyzes China’s recent boom in cultural and media industries and its discontents—a burgeoning scene of individual expression. dGenerate directors Ou Ning and Zhao Dayong and producer David Bandurski are featured in the article as prominent representatives of the alternative art scene.
For Whyte, China’s recent supports and displays of cultural development reflect the government’s deep desire to raise “soft power”– “the ability of a political body to get what it wants through cultural or ideological attraction”–in order to match its huge economic development. The efforts include the plans for new museums and “creative districts” nationwide, proliferation of a glossy magazine industry that embraces Western excess, participation in global cultural events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the induction of formerly underground filmmakers back into state-run studios, and the production of big-budget political blockbusters such as The Founding of a Republic.
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Shelly on Film: What is a Chinese Film?
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
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?”
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CinemaTalk: A Conversation with Chris Berry
Monday, June 29th, 2009
dGenerate Films is pleased to introduce CinemaTalk, an ongoing series of conversations with esteemed scholars of Chinese cinema studies. These conversations will be presented on this site in audio podcast and/or text format. They are intended to help the Chinese cinema studies community keep abreast of the latest work being done in the field, as well as to learn what recent Chinese films are catching the attention of others. This series reflects our mission to bring valuable resources and foster community around the field of Chinese film studies.
For our first CinemaTalk, we spoke with Chris Berry, Professor of Film and Television Studies in the Department of Media and Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London. Some of Chris’ work includes:
- Author, Cinema and the National: China on Screen (Columbia University Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2006) with Mary Farquhar
- Author, Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: The Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004)
- Editor (with Ying Zhu), TV China (Indiana University Press, 2008)
- Editor, Chinese Films in Focus II (British Film Institute, 2008)
- Editor (with Feii Lu), Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005)
- Editor (with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue), Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003)
- Translator and Editor, Ni Zhen’s Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Origins of China’s Fifth Generation Filmmakers (Duke University Press, 2002)
- Author, “Imaging the Globalized City: Rem Koolhaas, U-thèque, and the Pearl River Delta,” in Cinema at the City’s Edge, edited by Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, forthcoming), part of a series TransAsia: Screen Cultures, co-edited by Chris Berry and Koichi Iwabuchi
Kevin Lee, dGenerate’s VP of Programming of Education, spoke with Chris about various topics from his current work and areas of focus, to comparisons between contemporary Chinese cinema and the Fifth Generation filmmakers whom he helped to champion in the 1980s and 1990s, to which recent Chinese films that have excited him the most.
Play the Podcast
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Download it here (right-click to download). (File size: 28.7MB)
Full transcript follows after the break.
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The dGenerate Films Birth Story
Monday, June 8th, 2009We’re thrilled at dGenerate Films to be launching our first slate of films. In honor of the occasion, I was recently thinking about the journey we undertook to get here.
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…
