Chinese Box Office Figures for 2012 Released

A steamy moment from Painted Skin 2: The Resurrection, the second highest grossing domestically-made film in China in 2012.

SARFT has published the box domestic and overseas box office performers for 2012, and CMM-I have re-published the results in English here and here - or you can see the top ten results below.

As noted in a Newsbites post earlier this week, the low-budget comedy Lost in Thailand was the shock winner in the domestic box office stakes last year, pulling in a cool RMB 1 billion by the end of the year. The film is still in cinemas, so that figure has no doubt grown considerably in the first weeks of 2013.

Art, Activism and Ai Weiwei - Alison Klayman’s "Never Sorry"

Ai Weiwei sends the authorities a message from his hospital bed after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage following a blow from a policeman in Alison Klayman's documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.

Alison Klayman's documentary Never Sorrry, about China's most controversial contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, has garnered acclaim around the world and was short-listed for the Best Documentary Academy Award this year (unfortunately it didn't make the final list of nominees). After screening at last year's Melbourne International Film Festival it enjoyed a brief theatrical season at Melbourne's Nova Cinema. It has now been released on DVD in Australia by Madman.

I interviewed Klayman when she was in Melbourne last year, and reviewed her film for the Dec-Jan issue of RealTime magazine. The RealTime article is reproduced below - you can see the piece in its original context here.




Art, Activism and Ai Weiwei - Alison Klayman’s Never Sorry

Ai weiwei has been accused of bigamy, charged with tax evasion, condemned as a subversive and dismissed as a clown. Although infamous as the artist the Chinese authorities love to hate, his critics are by no means only from government ranks.

Newsbites: Shock Box Office Hit, Wong Karwai Returns, and More Cancelled Festivals

Zhang Ziyi in Wong Karwai's new martial arts feature The Grandmaster.

Screening China’s regular roundup of Chinese film news.

Happy 2013! It’s been a very long time between posts here at Screening China - I got a little overwhelmed with the end-of-year rush in the final months of 2012. Among other things, I attended the annual Visible Evidence documentary conference in late December in Canberra. I'm pleased to say the event featured several papers focussed on Chinese documentary, by luminaries such as Paola Voci and Ying Qian.

Here’s a roundup of Chinese film news over the past few months.

Caged Interactions and Silent Tears – Zhao Dayong’s "Rough Poetry"

Sometimes a film that is initially underwhelming lingers in your mind, the echo of the images slowly transforming into more than they appeared in the moment of viewing. Zhao Dayong’s 50-minute Rough Poetry (2009) is, as its title implies, a unpolished experiment more than a fully fledged movie. But there is something in its meandering, apparently unscripted conversations and lingering close ups that resonated for days after I watched it.

Melbourne Film Festival Pics and Coverage of China Docos Program

Dan Edwards and Ou Ning at the Melbourne International Film Festival last month (Image: Luisa Mirabilio, www.thinkloco.com.au)

As I reported extensively here at Screening China back in August, the Melbourne International Film Festival hosted a small retrospective of Chinese documentaries this year curated by myself, entitled Street Level Visions. The program attracted considerable interest, and dGenerate Films have now published a full summary of media coverage of the program, which included stories on television and radio, and in newspaper and magazines.

I’ve also got some pictures here of filmmakers Ou Ning (Meishi Street) and Wang Jiulaing (Beijing Besieged by Waste), who were in Melbourne as guests of the festival. The images are from a panel that took place in the festival bar on 14 August.

All image by Luisa Mirabilio (www.thinkloco.com.au).

Locked Out of His Own Country – Short Interview with Ying Liang, Director of When Night Falls

Director Ying Liang, currently threatened with arrest if he returns to mainland China.

As I noted in a "Newsbites" post back in June, director Ying Liang was threatened with arrest if he set foot back in mainland China earlier this year, following the unveiling of his film When Night Falls (Wo hai you hua yao shuo) at South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival on April 28. The threat received some press back in May, but little has been reported since.

I wrote about Ying’s case in an article for Crikey last week, and interviewed the director via email about his predicament. He confirmed that the threat of arrest still stands. Ying is currently living and working in Hong Kong. I have reproduced his answers from our online chat below with his kind permission.

“A Rare and Precious Opportunity” – La Frances Hui on the China Exposé Program in Nepal

Last month the Film Southasia festival, showcasing documentaries from around the South Asia region, took place in Kathmandu, Nepal. China Exposé, a program of six independent Chinese works, was a prominent part of this year's festival. La Frances Hui of the Asia Society, New York, curated the China Exposé program, and I interviewed her last week via email about her work and the problems documentary maker Hu Jie experienced when he tried to travel to the event.

The interview with Hui was conducted as part of my research for an article last week for Crikey about some of the problems certain Chinese filmmakers are currently experiencing. Thanks to Hui for kindly allowing me to publish her interview here at Screening China.

Chinese Independent Film Culture Under Pressure - Article in Crikey.com

Ying Liang, director of When Night Falls, currently threatened with arrest if he returns to mainland China.

As mentioned in my “Newsbites” post yesterday China’s independent film culture has been under pressure in recent months, with documentarian Hu Jie prevented from leaving China and the Beijing Independent Film Festival opening shutdown through a power cut last month. Back in June I noted that feature film director Ying Liang had been threatened with arrest if he returns to mainland China following the debut of his film When Night Falls in South Korea in April. That threat apparently still stands.

Yesterday the Australian news site Crikey published an article by me detailing these issues. Here’s an excerpt: