Jia Zhangke in Melbourne, New Film Screens Tonight

Leading Chinese director Jia Zhangke (left), with his wife and lead actress Zhao Tao (centre), and a friend in Melbourne last night. Jia and Zhao are in town for a screening of their new film A Touch of Sin at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Image Dan Edwards.

As all Melbourne cinephiles will be aware, the annual Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is in full swing as I write. Excitingly for Chinese cinema aficionadoes, leading director Jia Zhangke, along with his wife and lead actress Zhao Tao, are guests of the festival.

Radio National Interview on Chinese Films at GOMA

Life amongst the ruins: Jia Zhangke's Still Life, screening at Brisbane's GOMA as part of the APT cinema program.

On Saturday 2 February 2013 I was interviewed by ABC Radio National's Jason Di Rosso about a pair of Chinese films playing at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA).

Newsbites: Sheffield, Censorship, Jia Zhangke’s Beijing Cinema, and Salacious Gossip

Me, sorry? Never! The new documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry has been getting the Chinese embassy in London hot under the collar.

It’s been a very long time between posts here at Screening China. Fear not, the blog is still alive – I’ve just been a little swamped by thesis and article writing, various curating duties and five weeks in China. There’s been a lot going on in Chinese film, so here’s a quick round up of news over the past month or two (apologies for the fact that some of this is quite old!)

Chinese Delegation Pulls Out of Sheffield Doc/Fest

Earlier this week the Chinese diplomatic service launched another offensive in its campaign to confirm the image of the Chinese government as repressive, censorial and generally uptight by demanding that Sheffield Doc/Fest, one of the world’s best known documentary festivals, drop Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry from its program. RealScreen reports:

Newsbites: Flowers of War Rakes in the Cash, Content Restrictions Tighten & Ai Weiwei Speaks

Happy new year! Too many end-of-the-year deadlines and too many festivities mean Screening China has been very quiet of late. So let’s kick off 2012 with a look at the China film news.

The big event of recent weeks has been the unveiling of Zhang Yimou’s latest epic, The Flowers of War. With a budget reportedly between US$90-100 million, Zhang's film is the most expensive ever made in China. Flowers hit Chinese screens on December 16 and stars Christian Bale as a priest sheltering in a church with a group of Chinese women during the Japanese seizure of Nanjing in 1937. Predictably, the film has been criticised for its heavy nationalistic tone. It’s perhaps a measure of Bale’s naivety that when he was asked about the film’s nationalism at the premiere in Beijing, he claimed, “I hadn’t ever considered that question.” He also rather laughably claimed he thought Zhang Yimou wouldn’t have wished for the film to be taken that way either.

Christian Bale stalks through the ruins of Nanjing in Zhang Yimou's new epic The Flowers of War.

Newsbites: Jackie Chan's 100th Film, China's Big Presence at Venice, and the CCP's Renewed Interest in Culture

Kevin Spacey checks out Gong Beibi in his first Chinese feature, Inseparable, unveiled this month at Busan.

I’m conscious Screening China has been quiet for the past month, as I’ve been tied up with my thesis and a few other things such as the recent World Cinema Now conference at Melbourne’s Monash University, where I gave a paper on Chinese documentaries. I’ve also been busy catching up on a whole lot of older Chinese film titles which I’ll blog about in the coming weeks. But first a news round up of what’s been happening in Chinese film over the past month. You may also notice the blog has a new look, which is hopefully more reader-friendly.

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.

2010: Chinese Cinema in Review

Documentary maker Ai Xiaoming filming in the studio of painter Yan Zhengxue in Beijing, September 2008. Image Dan Edwards.

While 2010 is rapidly receding into the past, earlier this week dGenerate Films paused for a moment to look back over the past year with a compilation of comments and “best of” lists from a range of filmmakers, critics and academics. Although I was on holiday in Australia when they were compiling contributions, I managed to knock  together a quick entry comprising titles, moments and events that sprung to mind when I thought about the past twelve months. It's been a busy year!

Other contributors include the dGenerate team, academic Michael Berry, Beijing-based festival programmer Shelley Kraicer, and filmmakers Xu Tong, Hu Jie and Huang Weikai. My effort is reproduced below – you can click here for the complete entry on the dGenerate Films site.

Gong Li & a Sixth Generation Love-in at Beijing's BC MOMA

Gong Li in her most recent film Shanghai, in which she co-starred with John Cusak.

 While Feng Xiaogang's IMAX blockbuster Aftershock (Tangshen da dizheng) was opening on 3,500 screen across China last Thursday (July 22), Beijing's BC MOMA cinema was hosting a big night of its own. Gong Li was spotted shooting outside and several star directorial talents – including Jia Zhangke – were on hand for the Beijing premiere of Wang Xiaoshuai's Chongqing Blues (Rizhao Chongqing).

Thoughts on Yin Lichuan's "Knitting"

I saw Yin Lichuan's Knitting (牛郎织女, Niú lán zhī nǔ) on Saturday night (April 17) up at Beijing's Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and, sad to say, I was quite disappointed. Yin's debut The Park (公园, Gōng yúan) was a sensitive, low-key melodrama that traced the importance of family ties in China, as well as the cross-generational tensions wrought by the enormous, rapid social changes that have redrawn the contours of contemporary Chinese society. Knitting is a similarly small-scale work, but lacks the emotional insight of Yin's earlier effort.