Hu Wei’s Butter Lamp wins 70 prestigious film awards

Hu Wei’s cultural film Butter Lamp has been capturing the heart of the film world and was praised by the film committee at Cannes Film Festival for its bold attempts in film language. This was not the only respected film festival to take notice of this exciting film, as it has achieved the grand total of 70 film prestige film awards and was selected by over 200 film festivals including Cannes, Sundance, Rotterdam Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, quite a feat for a little film from China.

In the Butter Lamp, a young photographer and his assistant suggest to Tibetan nomads to take their picture. Against diverse and mote of less exotic backgrounds, families appear to the photographer. Through these shots, the photographer weaves unique links with each of the various villagers.

Butter Lamp’s director Hu Wei was born in Beijing, China, he lives and works between Beijing and Paris. Wei graduated at La Femis, the National School of Fine Arts in Paris and Le Fresnoy. Butter Lamp is only his third film, although this multi-award winning movie is only his second fictional short and now this talented director is currently directing his first ever feature film. AFI Film Festival selection also praised the film, “The Grand Jury prize for Live Action caught us by surprise with its spellbinding and poetic simplicity. Traversing hundreds of miles of geography and spanning generations of time without leaving one central location, this film functions as a profound mediation on the practice and effects of image making.”

This live action short was written by the director Hu Wei, stars real life Tibetan nomads and was produced by Julien Feret, the beautiful cinematography was created by Stephane Degieau and Jean Legrand. Some of the 70 awards include; the Grand Prize at the Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the Golden Plaque Award at the Chicago Film Festival, the prestigious Grand Jury Award at AFI Film Festival (American Film Institute), a winner at London’s Raindance Film Festival, Best Short Film at Mexico’s Guanajuato International Film Festival and it was selected for a EFA (European Film Awards) nomination.

Wei wished to create a film between fiction and documentary, reality and drama, modern civilization and traditional habits. This award winning film and his outstanding work has captured the attention of the worldwide film industry, making his initial wish quite the reality.

We’ve Been Fortunate to have been given an opportunity to watch Butter Lamp and we’re very impressed and Jenn Spiers one of our sister site Cinehouse has reviewed the film, you can check out her review here.