Every year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants are drawn to the allure of Shanghai, one of the world’s most vibrant cities, with hopes of earning a decent living. Some end up in the dark alleys of Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s largest shopping street, where they learn to hustle and scrape together any kind of living they can. One migrant, known as Black Skin, faces numerous pressures in his daily existence, including police violence. Black Skin’s story intersects with those of fellow bottle collectors, enterprising thieves and even a young boy who was abandoned. Eventually Black Skin goes mad, dancing wildly through the crowds of Nanjing Road and in the doorways of luxury shops.

Director Zhao Dayong (GHOST TOWN, 2009 New York Film Festival) arrived in Shanghai in 2004 and began documenting the lives of itinerant Chinese using digital video. He saw their stories as overlooked portraits of the deep social impact caused by China’s rapid economic growth. Zhao uses bold, exaggerated compositions in order to emphasize the relationship between his vagrant subjects and the city streets they inhabit. The result is a raw, vivid portrait of physical and psychological rootlessness. STREET LIFE reflects the way of life for thousands of forgotten people in one of the world’s largest cities.

Director’s Bio:
Zhao Dayong

Reviews:

Select Film Festivals:

Jury Prize, Beijing Documentary Film Festival
City of Rome Prize, Rome Asiatica Film Mediale
Vienna Film Festival
Berlin Blobale Film Festival
Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, China
Filming East Festival, UK

Film Clip:

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.

Director’s Bio:
Zhou Hao

Select Film Festivals:

•    2007 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
•    2008 Hong Kong Film Festival
•    2008 The 5th China Independent Film Festival
•    2008 Taiwan International Documentary Festival

Film Clips:

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.

Director’s Bio:
Cui Zi’en

Select Film Festivals:

•    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
•    Official Selection, Pink Screens Film Festival, Brussels
•    Official Selection, Calgary GlobalFest FilmFest
•    Official Selection, Kosmorama Trondheim Film Festival
•    Official Selection, CinemAsia Film Festival

Film Clips:

A nearly perfect little film.” – Shelly Kraicer, Vancouver International Film Festival

When an impoverished country couple adopts a crippled young girl and puts her to work begging on city streets, a battle soon ensues over her fate.

Luo Jiang and Guihua, a poor, middle-aged couple with few prospects, decide to buy an 11-year-old girl, Xiao Ezi (aka “Little Moth”), for $140 in rural China. Xiao Ezi’s life is in peril, as she is forced to earn money for her new parents as a beggar while suffering from a blood disease that leaves her unable to walk. Her greedy adoptive father, Luo Jiang, refuses to buy her medicine, while Guihua’s growing maternal affection wracks her with guilt. After a run-in with local extortionists, the three flee into the territory of the unsavory Mr. Yang, whose one-armed boy Xiao Chun is also forced to beg. Inevitably the grownups take turns taking advantage of each other, giving the children a rare opportunity to develop a protective bond with one another.

With virtually no budget, a hand-held digital camera and a cast of non-professionals, Peng Tao turns the sordid street life of small town China into a chain-reaction tale of human cruelty and unforgettable suspense. LITTLE MOTH “melds the anger and storytelling scope of Dickens, the doc-influenced immediacy and sensitive gaze of the Dardenne brothers, and the best tendencies of recent Chinese cinema.” (Robert Koehler, Variety).

Director’s Bio:

Peng Tao

Reviews:

Variety
New York Times

Select Film Festivals:

• Hong Kong International Film Festival
• Locarno International Film Festival
• Bucharest International Film Festival
• Cairo International Film Festival
• Brisbane International Film Festival

Film Clip:

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