Xu Tong's Relentless Gaze – Shattered

This is the last of my posts reviewing Chinese work from this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival - apologies that it has taken so long to get all of these up online.

Old Tang and his daughter Tang Caifeng, in Xu Tong's latest documentary Shattered.

Independent Chinese documentaries are not known for their easy, upbeat tone, and few present a more confronting vision of China's lower depths than director Xu Tong. Last October I wrote about his Fortune Teller, a grueling look at the life of a crippled itinerant fortune teller and his deaf, mute, mentally impaired wife as they wandered around China's north. Among that film's cast of characters was a tough brothel owner named Tang Caifeng, who disappeared at the end of the film following her arrest during a crackdown on the sex trade. Fortune Teller's sequel, Shattered, which premiered at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, catches up with Tang Caifeng a year later, as she returns to her father's home in China's far northeast.

Jia Zhangke's Yulu – Striding confidently forward, but into what?

Folk singer Zhou Yunpeng, one of the personalities profiled in the Jia Zhangke-produced documentary Yulu.

As I sat watching the world premiere of Yulu – produced and partly directed by Jia Zhangke – at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, I kept thinking of a conversation I'd had in Beijing a few weeks earlier. During a rather heated post-lunch discussion about China's politics and film industry, a friend who is a scriptwriter for Chinese television declared that local filmmakers face two choices: they can remain “independent” and financially insecure or they can do the Communist Party's bidding and enjoy a comfortable future. He didn't believe there was any middle ground.

A Blank Slate for Our Own Thoughts and Prejudices – Wang Bing's Man With No Name

The man with no name in his subterranean dwelling, a scene from Wang Bing's eponymous documentary.

Wang Bing's new documentary Man With No Name is an intriguing companion piece to his recent debut drama The Ditch, so it's fitting that the two films screened alongside each other at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival. Both works depict the lives of marginalised men living in the ruggedly parched landscape of China's northwest, but where The Ditch dramatises events from sixty years ago, Man With No Name is an observational documentary set in the present.

Corrosive Obsession – Yu Guangyi's Bachelor Mountain

San Liangzi in Yu Guangyi's quietly moving documentary Bachelor Mountain, screened at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Yu Guangyi's documentary Bachelor Mountain – caught at this year's Hong Kong Film Festival – beautifully captures the space where individual temperament and social circumstances intercept, forging a documentary that is both subtle in its social critique and moving in its portrayal of unrequited love.

Hong Kong From the Bottom of a Glass – Freddie Wong's The Drunkard

Freddie Wong's debut The Drunkard, seen at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.

The image of the dissolute artist pursuing a bohemian lifestyle and resisting the allure of the market may not have much credence in today's rampantly commercialised culture. But if the novel The Drunkard is anything to go by, the tension between art and commerce was very real for Shanghai-born novelist Liu Yichang. His autobiographical stream-of-consciousness work tells the story of a writer living in the squalor of early 60s Hong Kong, balancing serious literary ambitions with the need to write pulp fiction and soft porn to earn a living. For not the first time a local director has produced a screen adaptation of Liu's book, which appeared at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.

The Horror of History – Wang Bing's The Ditch

Prisoners in Wang Bing's The Ditch.

Bedraggled men sit in a seemingly empty desert landscape, the bareness of their surrounds strangely beautiful on screen. We see the group from a distance, as if the desert itself is a brooding presence observing these puny beings on its surface. The men are allocated numbers and descend into caves dug into the desert floor, where earthen “beds” carved out of the wall await them. Welcome to the world of Wang Bing's The Ditch, surely one of the most stark depictions of the deprivations of the Maoist era ever committed to celluloid.

News Bites: No Word From Ai Weiwei, Hong Kong Festival Awards, & 3D Porn

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has not been heard from since he was arrested in Beijing on Sunday, April 3. Image the Guardian

Last week I posted about the arrest of China's most prominent contemporary artist (and documentary filmmaker) Ai Weiwei. There has been no word of Ai's current whereabouts since then, and yesterday afternoon the Guardian reported that Ai's driver Zhang Jingsong and his accountant Ms Hu are also now missing. Ai Weiwei's friend Wen Tao has not been heard from since he was arrested the same day as the artist.

News Bites: Chinese Films in Europe & Speculation on the Loosening of Foreign Film Imports

Screening China's regular wrap up of Chinese film related news from around the web.

As noted in my last post, Zhao Liang’s latest documentary Together was programmed for the Berlin International Film Festival this year. According to a report in Chinese newspaper Global Times on Friday, February 18, the film won “a rapturous reception” at the festival, and “moved many in the audience to tears.”

News Bites: Changes Afoot for Screening China & Zhao Liang's Together Selected for Berlin

Xin nian kuai le – or happy new year! Just got back from a week in China's far west visiting my wife's hometown for the festival of fireworks, food and crappy television galas that is Chunjie, or Chinese New Year. And with the arrival of the Year of the Rabbit some changes are afoot for Screening China.

Endless Tragedy, Endless Tears: Alex Law's Echoes of the Rainbow

Sandra Ng and Simon Yam as the long suffering parents in Alex Law's Echoes of the Rainbow.

 Although I was in Hong Kong earlier this year when Alex Law's Echoes of the Rainbow debuted at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, I was too busy catching films I thought would be tricky to see on the mainland to make an effort to see it. The film garnered good reviews, however, and even helped inspire talk of a Hong Kong film industry revival. A few weeks ago I finally laid my hands on a DVD copy and gave it a spin.