An unusual relationship develops between an urban Chinese couple struggling with heroin and a filmmaker chronicling their addiction, in this provocative documentary on drug abuse, filmmaking and friendship.
For three years, filmmaker Zhou Hao chronicled the lives of Long and Jun, a couple struggling with heroin addiction in Guangzhou. Zhou captures Chinese junkie subculture, its members languishing in a slum flophouse, the equivalent of a modern day opium den. When Long is hospitalized after a failed robbery, Zhou speaks out from behind the camera to intervene. Still, Long and Jun persist, soon dealing drugs full-time to make ends meet. As the couple increasingly offers lies for answers, Zhou must confront his ethical responsibilities to them, as a friend and a documentarian.
USING probes a dark, cruel reality of contemporary Chinese society that has rarely been seen by any audience. Addicts disclose techniques for dealing with police, confronting sham suppliers and staying high throughout the day. Zhou’s unflinching depiction of his friends’ repeated attempts to quit blurs the line between filmmaker and subject, and raises provocative questions about the ways in which each uses the other.
• 2007 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
• 2008 Hong Kong Film Festival
• 2008 The 5th China Independent Film Festival
• 2008 Taiwan International Documentary Festival
YANG Heng. China, 2005. Narrative, 112 minutes. Hunan Dialect w/ English subtitles.
“Exquisite!” – Tony Rayns, Film Comment
“Pure cinema” – Susanna Harutyunyan, FIPRESCI – The International Federation of Film Critics
Along a sleepy Hunan riverside, two delinquent boys experience a summer of love and violence in Yang Heng’s visually stunning debut.
Ali and Xiao Yu are two teenage rebels idling away their days along the banks of a river in Jishou, a quiet town in Hunan province. They steal motorbikes, bully and rob kids, sing karaoke and get into fist fights outside the local internet bar. But their rough exterior belies a deeper romanticism, and a tenderness unfolds between them and their teenage loves. As one day bleeds into the next in this impoverished rural setting, it becomes apparent that these sun-baked days of misspent youth will be the wildest, freest time of their lives.
These everyday subjects are transformed by a groundbreaking digital cinematography unlike any other Chinese film. Alternating deep-focus with bold flatness, Yang explores spaces with a mastery that recalls both classical Chinese and modernist landscape painting. Filmed in a summery palette with images that give off an otherworldly glow, BETELNUT offers a one-of-a-kind vision of what it’s like to be young, poor and free in China. “Yang is a first-class visual stylist, and BETELNUT is far and away the most exciting debut film I’ve seen all year.” (Michael Sicinski, The University of Houston)
• Pusan International Film Festival – Winner – Best New Asian Filmmaker
• Hong Kong International Film Festival – Winner – FIPRESCI Jury Prize
• 3 Continents Festival Nantes – Winner – New Vision Award
OU Ning. China, 2006. Feature, 85 min. Documentary.
MEISHI STREET 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. Several evictees of Meishi Street, located next to Tiananmen Square, fight through endless red tape and the indifference of fellow citizens for the right to keep their homes. Given video cameras by the filmmakers, they shoot exclusive footage of the eviction process, adding vivid intimacy to their story.
Acclaimed at over two dozen museums and galleries around the world, MEISHI STREET, by renowned visual artist Ou Ning, works as both art and activism, calling worldwide attention to lives being demolished in the name of progress.
YANG Jin. China, 2008. Narrative, 151 minutes. Shanxi Dialect w/ English subtitles.
A rebellious teenager endures boarding school expulsion, family pressures and the harsh realities of rural life in northern China, until an uncovered secret from his past changes his life forever. Er Dong lives alone with his devout Christian mother in a small village. Frustrated with his bad behavior, his mother takes him to a Christian school with the hope that he will find God as well as a new direction in life. Instead, he finds a girlfriend, Chang’e, and their misconduct leads to their expulsion. Together they must face up to the harsh realities of work, parenthood and adult life in the tough economic reality of contemporary China. Recurring nightmares that plague Er Dong lead him to a shocking revelation of his own past.
Yang Jin’s second feature is a detail-rich, documentary-style portrait that builds with clear-eyed assurance through the life of a seemingly unheroic and unremarkable country boy. It’s not until the film looks backwards that one gains the full scope of Er Dong’s strangely epic journey. Quietly moving and full of authentic insight into the prospects for youth in rural China, ER DONG announces the arrival of a major new talent in filmmaker Yang Jin.
Rotterdam International Film Festival – Hubert Bals Recipient
Pusan International Film Festival – New Currents Award
Hong Kong International Film Festival
CUI Zi’en. China, 2002. Narrative, 80 minutes.
Mandarin w/ English subtitles.
“Liberating… ENTER THE CLOWNS conveys a sense of cinema at the vanguard.” – Scott Foundas, Variety
“Cui Zi’en inaugurates a new queer Chinese cinema.” – Tony Rayns, Time Out
Straight, gay and in-between Beijingers unleash a whirlwind of transsexual mayhem in this groundbreaking, gender-bending debut by China’s preeminent queer filmmaker.
Xiao Bo (Yu Bo) lives in a world where the lines defining men from women are constantly dissolving. He kneels at the deathbed of his father (Cui Zi’en) who has become a woman, and whose dying wish is to have oral sex with his/her son. His boyfriend “Nana” has also undergone a sex change, but Xiao Bo no longer finds her attractive as a woman. A sexual chain reaction ensues that wreaks havoc on traditional Chinese roles that govern male and female, parent and child.
Filmmaker, novelist and queer activist Cui Zi’en caused an international sensation with his shockingly transgressive debut. Inspired by the likes of Andy Warhol and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, but set within a specifically Chinese context, ENTER THE CLOWNS is “a movie that says everything you know about sexual identity and gender orientation is wrong” (Tony Rayns, Time Out). “Cui may be unique as China’s first gay filmmaker, but it is… in the international pantheon of queer filmmakers that we must ultimately locate him” (Chris Berry, positions: east asia cultures critique).
Jeonju International Film Festival
Vancouver International Film Festival
Mardi Gras Film Festival
Rotterdam International Film Festival
San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
JIAN Yi. China, 2007. Documentary, 73 min. Mandarin w/ English subtitles.
“As entertaining as it is revelatory” – Ronnie Scheib, Variety
SUPER, GIRLS! follows ten female teenagers on their quest to become instant superstars on China’s biggest television show.
The Chinese equivalent of “American Idol,” the “Super Girls Singing Contest” spawned an unprecedented pop culture phenomenon. Drawing over 400 million viewers, the show’s runaway popularity spurred the Chinese government to ban it after only two seasons.
The film provides unparalleled, intimate access into the contestants’ lives over several months. Through candid interviews and footage of nail-biting auditions and competitions, SUPER, GIRLS! offers a fascinating look inside what the Chinese media have dubbed “the Lost Generation” and their startling takes on sexuality and success in the new China.
Armed with video cameras, twelve artists present a highly stylized portrait of SAN YUAN LI, a traditional village besieged by China’s urban sprawl.
China’s rapid modernization literally traps the village of San Yuan Li within the surrounding skyscrapers of Guangzhou, a city of 12 million people. The villagers move to a different rhythm, thriving on subsistence farming and traditional crafts. They resourcefully reinvent their traditional lifestyle by tending rice paddies on empty city lots and raising chickens on makeshift rooftop coops.
Directed by acclaimed visual artists Ou Ning and Cao Fei and commissioned by the Venice Biennale, SAN YUAN LI explores the modern paradox of China’s economic growth and social marginalization.
GAN Xiao Er. China, 2006. Narrative, 102 min. Henan dialect w/ English subtitles.
“A gentle, sympathetic look at the role of faith in a poor rural community” – Richard Kuipers, Variety
A heartbreaking story told with compassion, RAISED FROM DUST sheds light on the unexplored lives of the approximately 40 million Christians in China.
Xiao-Li (Hu Shuli) is a devoted housewife and an active member of her local Catholic church in the Henan farmlands of southern China. Her faith is put to the test as her husband (Zhang Xianmin) is hospitalized with respiratory illness due to unsafe working conditions, leaving his life clinging to an oxygen machine. Forced to work simple jobs to pay for her husband’s hospital care, Xiao-Li takes her young daughter (Lu Shengyue) out of school, unable to pay for tuition. She finds support only from fellow members of her congregation. But will her faith and devotion be enough to save her family?
Filmed with a beautiful eye for both vast rural landscapes and human intimacy, RAISED FROM DUST explores the lives of those rarely seen in modern-day China, and announces Gan Xiao’Er as a new major talent in world cinema.
Cui Zi’en. China, 2008. Documentary, 60 minutes. Mandarin w/ English subtitles.
China’s most prolific homosexual filmmaker presents a comprehensive historical account of the queer movement in modern China. QUEER CHINA, ‘COMRADE’ CHINA documents the changes and developments in Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender culture that have taken place in China over the last 80 years. Unlike any before, this film explores the historical milestones and ongoing advocacy efforts of the Chinese LGBT community. The film examines how shifting attitudes in law, media and education have transformed queer culture from being an unspeakable taboo to an accepted social identity. The film culminates with the submission of Dr. Li Yinhe’s Same-sex Marriage Bill to the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress in 2003, a major landmark event in the ongoing struggle for acceptance of queer identity in China.
Directed by Cui Zi’en, China’s leading queer theorist, activist and scholar, the documentary includes rarely seen footage of the first ever appearance of gays and lesbians on State television, including Cui Zi’en himself. The film features exclusive interviews with over three dozen leading queer activists, scholars and filmmakers, including Shi Tou, Li Yinhe and Zhang Yuan. The opening night film of 2009’s ShanghaiPRIDE, China’s first ever LGBT pride festival, QUEER CHINA, ‘COMRADE’ CHINA is nothing less than the most authoritative account of queer cultural history in China to date.
• Official Selection, Pusan International Film Festival
• Official Selection, Vancouver International Film Festival
• Best Documentary, 24th Turino GLBT Film Festival
• Best Documentary, Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
• Opening Night Film, Shanghai PRIDE
• Official Selection, Beijing Queer Film Festival
LIU Jiayin. China, 2005. Narrative, 110 minutes. Mandarin w/ English subtitles.
“The most important Chinese film of the past several years—and one of the most astonishing recent films from any country” – Shelly Kraicer, Cinema-scope
“The most celebrated Chinese debut since Jia Zhang-ke’s Xiao Wu” – Mubarak Ali, The Lumiere Reader
Daily life in an impossibly cramped Beijing apartment takes on epic proportions in this, intimate portrait, with unprecedented access, of a working-class Chinese family.
Boldly transforming documentary into fiction, Liu Jiayin cast her parents and herself as fictionalized versions of themselves. Her father, Liu Zaiping, sells leather bags but is slowly going bankrupt. He argues with his wife, Jia Huifen, and his daughter over methods to boost business in the shop. A cloud of anxiety follows them into sleepless nights shared in the same bed. But through the thousand daily travails of city life, a genuine and deeply moving picture of Chinese familial solidarity emerges from the screen.
With virtually no budget and boundless ingenuity, Liu Jiayin’s eye-opening debut, shot when she was 23 years old, consists of twenty-three static, one-scene shots within her family’s fifty square meter home. Liu keeps her small DV camera in claustrophobic closeness to her subjects, often showing only parts of their bodies as their voices dominate the soundtrack. OXHIDE takes the microscopic physical and emotional details of a family and magnifies them on a widescreen canvas. “Liu takes the film language of “realism” into an entirely new dimension.” (Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival).
dGenerate Films is a new non-theatrical distributor of independent contemporary films from China. Our uncensored, award-winning films are selected for their artistic merit as well as their educational value. Films are available for purchase on DVD and VOD, as well as for exhibition rental and broadcast.
