“Compelling… You won’t be able to shut it off” – Jim Hoberman, Village Voice

A remote village in southwest China is haunted by traces of its cultural past while its residents piece together their existence.

Zhiziluo is a town barely clinging to life. Tucked away in a rugged corner of Yunnan Province, Lisu and Nu minority villagers squat in the abandoned halls of this remote former Community county seat. Divided into three parts, this epic documentary takes an intimate look at its varied cast of characters, bringing audiences face to face with people left behind by China’s new economy. A father-son duo of elderly preachers argue over the future of their village church. Two young lovers face a break-up over harsh financial realities. A twelve year-old boy, abandoned by his family, scavenges the hillside to feed himself.

“Directed with scrupulous attention to detail by Zhao Dayong” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times), GHOST TOWN is “one of the most important films to have emerged from the booming (but still underexplored) field of Chinese independent documentaries” (Dennis Lim, Moving Image Source). GHOST TOWN “has a strong sense of historical consciousness, an eye for unique material, and a real sympathy for the people in the film and their tough lives” (Chris Berry, Goldsmiths University). “I do not expect to soon find scenes to match GHOST TOWN’s mountaintop funeral, the running along after a rowdy exorcism, or the scanning of faces at the town Christmas chorale. His back to prosperity, Dayong finds hallowed ground” (Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice).

Reviews:

• New York Times
• Time Out NY
• Village Voice
• Chicago Tribune
• New City Film
• Real Time Arts
• Slant Magazine
• Reverse Shot
• Hammer to Nail

Director’s Bio: ZHAO Dayong

Film Website: Ghost Town – Lantern Films

Articles:

• “A New Chapter for Chinese Cinema at NYFF“, New York Times
• “Getting Back to Roots“, Lu Chen
• “The Selling of Culture in China“, Toronto Star
• “Chris Berry on Ghost Town“, Chris Berry

Select Film Festivals & Exhibitions:

• New York Film Festival
• Turino Film Festival
• Museum of Modern Art (NYC)
• Facets Cinematheque (Chicago)

Contact us to book a screening of this film at your festival, museum, or school.

Trailer:

Downloads: Press Kit (4.6 MB Zip file includes all publicity stills)

Publicity Stills:

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.

Director’s Bio:

Yang Jin

Select Film Festivals:

• Rotterdam International Film Festival – Hubert Bals Recipient
• Pusan International Film Festival – New Currents Award
• Hong Kong International Film Festival

Film Clip:

Visit Reframe for more information on Er Dong

“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).

Director’s Bio
Cui Zi’en

Reviews:

Variety
Time Out

Select Film Festivals:

• Jeonju International Film Festival
• Vancouver International Film Festival
• Mardi Gras Film Festival
• Rotterdam International Film Festival
• San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

Film Clip:

Visit Reframe for more information on Enter the Clowns

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.

Director’s Bio:

Gan Xiao Er

Reviews:

Variety
Asia Sentinel

Film Festivals:

• Rotterdam International Film Festival
• Pusan International Film Festival

Film Clip:

Visit Reframe for more information on Raised From Dust