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
Rachel TEJADA. USA, 2008. Documentary, 18 minutes.
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 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.
