First Wave Of Films Announced For Chinese Cinema Season
The first wave of titles and sections for the first edition of the Chinese Cinema Season. Launching for three months from 12th February (Chinese New Year), it will be the biggest online screening event that specialises in Chinese language films in the UK and Europe. The season will showcase Chinese language films never seen before in the UK and highlight overlooked gems to cinema-lovers in the UK and Ireland.
Over 50 films will be on offer over the course of the season, giving the opportunity for audiences to access to the best of Chinese cinema, and enriching the diversity of films available on VOD. The season will be divided into themed sections and mini retrospectives, with the aims of recontextualising titles, enriching UK lockdown life and presenting Chinese culture in a fresh way with new perspectives. Ultimately, the season is a love letter to Chinese Cinema.
Shanghai Animation Film Studio Retro
12 February until 28 February
The Shanghai Animation Film Studio Retro section will showcase 10 Chinese animation classics dated from the 1950s to the present. All films have recently been remastered to the highest quality (2K) and will appear in the UK for the very first time. SAFS is the oldest and the most respected animation studio in China.
While animation fans in the West are more familiar with Japan’s Studio Ghibli, it in fact owes its inspiration to Chinese animation tradition. The master Hayao Miyazaki visited the Shanghai studio in 1984, before he set up his own a year later. Throughout the years, many in China have invited the master to deliver classes, but he always refused, saying “I don’t have anything to teach, you have the best studio in Shanghai. It is I that have to learn from the Shanghai studio.”
Iconic titles in this programme include The Monkey King: Havoc in Heaven (1961). Based on the well-known novel Journey to the West, taking almost four years to complete, its 3D restored version has been chosen to be the opening film at the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2019. The artistic and technical standard demonstrated by The Monkey King is extremely high; one that is yet to be met by other adaptation attempts since the 1960s. There will also be the opportunity to watch the original version of Ne Zha Conquers The Dragon King (1979) for the first time in the UK. BBC 2 aired the film in 1984 with an English dub, different soundtrack and credited the film as the work of a different director. Chinese Cinema Season is delighted to present the original version alongside a Q+A with the last surviving director of this influential classic.
Viewers will have a unique opportunity to learn about the tradition of Chinese animation which is aesthetically distinctive and certainly different from Disney. Art enthusiasts will appreciate traditional art techniques used in these films such as water-ink and papercutting. All films shown in this programme are hand-drawn and made, which brings a sense of warmness that is missing in contemporary computer-generated animation.
FISHING CHILD (1959, 30 mins) * UK PREMIERE *
WHERE IS MAMA? (1960, 15 mins) * UK PREMIERE *
MONKEY KING: HAVOC IN HEAVEN (1961, 92 mins) * UK PREMIERE OF ORIGINAL VERSION *
THE COWBOY FLUTE (1963, 15 mins) * UK PREMIERE *
GOLDEN CONCH (1963, 35 mins) * UK PREMIERE *
NE ZHA CONQUERS THE DRAGON KING (1979, 65 mins) * UK PREMIERE OF ORIGINAL VERSION *
THE STORY OF MR NANGUO (1981, 18 mins) * UK PREMIERE *
FEELING FROM MOUNTAIN AND WATER (1988, 20 mins) * UK PREMIERE *
LOTUS LANTERN (1999, 85 mins) * UK PREMIERE *
BLACK CAT DETECTIVE/MR. BLACK (2010, 76 mins) * UK PREMIERE *
To celebrate the Chinese New Year on 12th February , Chinese Cinema Season will also show a 15-minute documentary about the history of Shanghai Animation Film Studio, free for audiences from around the world to view.
Approaching Reality
12 February to 12 May
In this documentary section, four films will be released this month (with at least six more to come): Double Happiness Limited (2018), A Yangtze Landscape (2017), Bazzar Jumpers (2012), and Daughter of Shanghai (2019). These are documentaries focusing on different sides of Chinese society and Chinese culture: family and marriage, geographical landscape, minority youth groups, and the international diaspora female figure. This section is in collaboration between CCS and Cathayplay, an international Chinese documentary film platform.
Double Happiness Limited
Taiwanese director Shen spent seven years detailing eight couples’ lives from falling in love, getting married and having children, getting them to ask each other questions that they would not touch on in their daily lives, and leading the audience to reflect on their own definition of marriage and happiness.
A Yangtze Landscape
Setting off from the Yangtze’s marine port, passing Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, the huge Three Gorges Dam, and Chongqing, all the way to the Yangtze River’s source in Qinghai/Tibet over thousands of kilometres, this unique work of sound and vision utilizes the “Yangtze”, in the director’s words, as a metaphor of the current chaos in China.
Bazzar Jumpers
Three Uyghur buddies in love with parkour fight prejudice and family opposition to train for China’s most popular and dangerous parkour event in Beijing.
Daughter of Shanghai
A waltz through the life of Chinese English actress Tsai Chin: the daughter of the Peking Opera master Zhou Xinfang, the first Chinese student at RADA, and the first Chinese Bond Girl. The director Michelle Chen is confirmed to do a Q&A with other contributors TBC to celebrate the premiere of this film.
More exciting films will be announced for this section soon, including those of Wu Wenguang, the “father of Chinese independent documentary”. Audiences will have a rare opportunity to engage with the director with an exclusive Q&A section.
Debut Spotlight
12 February to 12 May
This section introduces contemporary Chinese directors and their striking debuts. Three films will be shown in the opening month: A First Farewell (2018) by Lina Wang, The Crossing (2018) by Bai Xue, and The Silent Holy Stone (2006) by Pema Tseden. Encompassing Mandarin, Cantonese (The Crossing), Tibetan (The Silent Holy Stone ) and Uyghur (A First Farewell )dialects and cultures, these films reflect how diverse life can be in the different regions of China.
A First Farewell * UK PREMIERE *
Isa Yassan, a young Muslim boy in Xinjiang Province, balances caring for his ailing mother, schoolwork, and farm duties, soon experiences “the first farewell” in his life – as his father decides to send his mother to a nursing home and they leave the village. Lina Wang, from Xinjiang, wrote and directed this film, which won the Crystal Bear and Special Prize of the Generation Kplus International Jury at Berlin International Film Festival, as well as several other awards at Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong film festivals
The Crossing
Sixteen-year-old Peipei crosses the border between mainland China and Hong Kong every day, customs officials waving her through with just a glimpse of her high school uniform and innocent face. She joins a gang to earn quick money by smuggling iPhones across the border, but soon finds herself in way over her head. The debut from BAFTA Leading Light writer-director Bai Xue, was nominated for Best First Feature Award and Crystal Bear at Berlin International Festival, won the NETPAC Award at Toronto International Film Festival, and best first film awards at Pingyao, Hong Kong, and Dublin Film Festivals.
The Silent Holy Stone
A young Tibetan monk returns home for the New Year and discovers a television which he intends to bring to the monastery and show to his master. Tibetan director Pema Tsedan’s debut, immediately preceding his recent feature Balloon (2019), shows how the director established his personal style from the very beginning.
Domestic Hits
12 February to 12 May
In recent years, the world has witnessed the rise of the Chinese mega-blockbuster and the seemingly unstoppable rise of the film industry in China. this section features commercial films that triumphed at the domestic box-office with relatively high production value. For the opening month the following are showing: Sheep Without a Shepherd (2019), Youth (2017), and The Captain (2019).
Sheep Without a Shepherd
Lee (Xiao Yang) and his wife Jade (Tan Zhuo) run a small video business in Thailand. They have two lovely daughters and live a happy life. However, when his eldest daughter kills a schoolmate in self-defence during a sexual assault, Lee has to bury the body and cover the truth, to protect his daughter and families, Lawan (an impeccably steely Joan Chen, The Last Emperor, Lust, Caution) is the feared head of the regional police, and she is dying to find her missing son. The contest between Lee and Lawan is beginning. The battle of wills between Lee and Lawan begins. The film’s box office reached more than 1.2 billion RMB in China ($185m), even as the start of the pandemic cut short the film’s release. The film is based on the 2015 Indian box office hit, Drishyam.
Youth
Directed by China’s most famous commercial director Feng Xiaogang, Youth takes a look at the lives of the members of a Military Cultural Troupe back in the 1970s Cultural Revolution, exploring their friendship, love, dreams, and devotion to their beloved collective and career. The storyline, to a large extent comprised of the director’s personal memories and nostalgia, also resonates with a generation in China who sacrificed their youth to the country and the ideology. The domestic box office of this film was 1.422 billion RMB ($220m).
The Captain
One of so-called “main melody” films, stemming from a true story, The Captain demonstrates a breath-taking moment: a commercial pilot and his crew try to save passengers and land their plane safely while the plane shatters at 30,000 feet in the air. Its box office reached more than 2 billion RMB in China (over $300m).
Also…
Lou Ye Mini Retrospective
As one of the “Sixth Generation” directors, Lou Ye has been regarded as a “true artist”, an “authentic filmmaker” and a “constant fighter” of censorship. Despite the controversies, he achieved great success both in China and worldwide. He was nominated and won numerous awards owing to his unique editing style and camera movement, as well as his sharp observations and narratives about marginalised people and typical, but often undocumented, social phenomena in China. In this section, we will premiere Lou Ye’s penultimate film, Shadow Play, which took two years of editing to get the greenlight from authorities.
The platform is powered by Shift 72 (Cannes Marché du Film, SXSW, Macao IFFAM, Tallinn Black Nights) and tickets can be purchased now at this link: www.chinesefilm.uk
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