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.
“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).
Six documentary shorts chronicle the changing state of China’s independent, and underground, film scene.
Join dGenerate Films on a month-long trip to post-Olympics China. We traveled from Shanghai to Nanjing to Beijing, and kept the cameras rolling. The result is unprecedented access into China’s other film community, where writing, filming, and distribution don’t always wait for government approval.
The series starts at the largest underground film festival in China, explores the spirit of independence in Beijing, tours art-film compounds, and discusses the future of Chinese cinema. Along the way, the series features the most important filmmakers, critics, producers, curators, and underground scenesters making films, their way, in China today.
dGenerate Films is the leading distributor of contemporary independent film from mainland China to audiences worldwide. We are dedicated to procuring and promoting visionary content, fueled by transformative social change and digital innovation.
