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).

Chinese Doco Special in "Senses of Cinema"

Wang Jiuliang's Beijing Besieged by Waste, one of seven independent Chinese documentaries appearing in the "Street Level Visions" program at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival.

As announced in my last post, a program of Chinese documentaries programmed by myself kicks off on 5 August as part of the 2012 Melbourne International Film Festival. "Street Level Visions: Chinese Independent Docos" is a retrospective of seven digital documentaries made over the decade or so, featuring work by Zhao Liang, Hu Jie, Ou Ning, Wang Jiuliang and Zhou Hao.

To coincide with Street Level Visions, the well known Australian film journal Senses of Cinema have run a series of articles in their new issue edited by myself and Adrian Danks focusing on independent Chinese documentaries.

Where Can Chinese Indies Be Purchased or Viewed Online?

The DVD cover for Zhao Dayong's The High Life, now available through Lantern Films.

Readers of Screening China often write to me and ask where they can obtain copies of the independent Chinese films I write about. Unfortunately it's not easy to get many of the titles, but some are now available on DVD for online purchase, or are available for viewing online, so I thought I'd do a post with a couple of tips on where these sites can be found. Please note I have no affiliations with any of the companies or websites listed and take no responsibility for their products or services. All the sites I've listed provide copies of films with English subtitles.

Zhao Liang Now “Celebrated” by the Chinese Government Claims New York Times

Zhao Liang (second from right) and Gu Changwei (far right) at a press conference about Zhao's documentary Together in Beijing earlier this year. The others pictured appear in the documentary.

Chinese documentarian Zhao Liang has been in the U.S. news recently with a somewhat critical profile of the director in the New York Times entitled, “Chinese Director’s Path From Rebel to Insider.” The long article by Edward Wong details Zhao’s supposed “evolution from a filmmaker hounded by the government to one whom it celebrates.” Zhao’s new “insider” status is said to be the result of his last documentary, Together, which was backed by China’s Ministry of Health and approved for release in Chinese cinemas.

Zhao Liang's "Together" Featured on China Radio International

Earlier this week I noted Zhao Liang's documentary on HIV in China, Together, screened recently at the Berlin International Film Festival. I'm pleased to say that as a result the film is getting some coverage here in China. On Wednesday China Radio International interviewed me about the film for a brief segment which also includes an interview with Zhao himself.

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.

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.

Fear, Loathing and HIV: Zhao Liang's Together

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a good Christmas break. I'm back in Beijing after a glorious couple of weeks back home in Australia. It was a warm 28 degrees when I left Sydney (that's Celsius for US readers - or 82 degrees Fahrenheit) and -11 when I touched down in Beijing (12 degrees Fahrenheit). All the more reason to stay inside watching films I suppose!

Towards the end of last year I published a short email exchange I had with documentary maker Zhao Liang about his new film Together. That exchange was background for an article I was writing for the January issue of the The Beijinger magazine, which came out while I was away. Readers in Beijing can pick up a copy from many cafes, galleries and bookshops around town – for everyone else I've reproduced the article below.

Zhao Liang on his new documentary Together

A tearful moment for Hu Zetao (left), one of the HIV+ volunteers working on Gu Changwei's drama Life is a Miracle, captured in Zhao Liang's new documentary Together.

Zhao Liang is undoubtedly one of the leading lights of the independent Chinese documentary scene, and in the past I've written about his films Petition and Crime and Punishment. Recently Studio-X, a space in central Beijing run by Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, hosted a series of screenings of Zhao’s earlier works, alongside a small exhibition of his photographs – more on this in a future post.

At one of the screenings, I was surprised to hear from Jillian Schultz of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre (an institution that has supported much of Zhao’s work) that Zhao had just completed a film about HIV in China that had been passed for official release. Given the controversial nature of Zhao's earlier documentaries I was surprised to hear his new work was going into cinemas, and frankly dubious about whether this information was correct. A few days later, however, my friend Wu Jing, programmer at Beijng's BC MOMA cinema, mentioned to me that they had a new documentary – which turned out to be none other than Zhao Liang's new film, Together.

The Vicious Circle of Justice: Zhao Liang’s Crime and Punishment

Zhao Liang's Crime and Punishment.

 Zhao Liang is one of my favourite contemporary Chinese documentary filmmakers. As well as mentioning him many times on this blog, I wrote about his most recent film Petition for RealTime back in June. Last week I contributed a review of Zhao's earlier film, Crime and Punishment (2007), to the dgenerate Films blog. You can read the review below, or see it in it's original context here.

Superstition and Cruelty: Xu Tong's Fortune Teller

Li Baicheng and his wife Pearl in Xu Tong's Fortune Teller.

Anyone living in major cities like Beijing or Shanghai is aware of the gaping chasm that exists between urban and rural life in China, but that doesn't make being confronted with the inequalities any less shocking. Xu Tong's new documentary Fortune Teller, screened recently at Beijing's Ullen's Center for Contemporary Art, delves into China's lower depths by spending a year with a crippled itinerant fortune teller and his deaf, mute, mentally impaired wife as they move around Hebei Province in China's north. The film is every bit as grueling as this description implies.

The Tribulations of Chinese Rural Life: Huang Mei's The Village Elementary

While many things have improved in the People's Republic since the death of Mao in 1976, access to public education for the poor isn't one of them. I recently saw The Village Elementary, a documentary by Huang Mei, that delves into this issue with a portrait of life in a tiny village primary school in Gansu Province, west China. This arid, mountainous region features breathtaking  scenery, but harbours villages so impoverished its hard to believe they exist in the same nation as the glittering skylines of modern cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

From the Dark Side of Economic Success: Zhao Liang's Petition and Guo Xiaolu's Once Upon a Time Proletarian

From the latest issue of the Australian art magazine RealTime.

“Bring down corruption, give me my human rights!” That’s the plaintive cry heard near the beginning of Zhao Liang’s film Petition (pictured left), a disturbing look at the brutality, violence and intimidation surrounding those seeking justice in contemporary China. Guo Xiaolu’s Once Upon a Time Proletarian similarly continues the Chinese independent documentary tradition of probing what lies behind the glittering facades of China’s economic success. Both films appeared at the recent Hong Kong International Film Festival, the only place in the People’s Republic where such critical works can play at such high profile events.