IN SEARCH OF REALITY II
On The Edge: New Independent Cinema
Co-sponsors: Weatherhead East Asian Institute,
Columbia University Arts Initiative, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures

FRIDAY, APRIL 24

6:45 PM
Chongqing - dir. Zhang Lü
95 minutes, 2008

Director Zhang Lü originally intended for Iri and Chongqing to be a single feature, but found that the footage he shot in Chongqing, China was enough for a film of its own. The story provides a dark portrait of contemporary China, through the tale of a Chinese language teacher who becomes sexually involved with a policeman while living with her restless and unemployed father. The film's eponymous setting is China's most populated urban conglomerate, home to 40 million people. In the crowded and busy streets of industrial city Chongqing, the story depicts marginalized populations who have no hope or future. Images of shock, black humor, stark sexuality, and poetic contemplation make this film a memorable experience.

9:00 PM
The Other Half (Ling yiban) - dir. Ying Liang
111 minutes, 2007

Xiaofen lives in one of southwestern China's rapidly growing cities, but her work interviewing clients and documenting cases for a law firm is merely routine. When not at work, she must deal with her down-and-out boyfriend, an on-the-lam drunk and gambler. Life is also hard for her girlfriends and her mother, and Xiaofen is increasingly distressed by what she witnesses around her. In his second feature film, Ying (Taking Father Home, 2005) playfully pits youth culture against tradition as he interrelates one woman's reality with the changing economic and social structures of contemporary China.

 

SATURDAY, APRIL 25

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Panel Discussion
Dodge Hall, Columbia University. More info TBA.

1:30 PM
Er Dong - dir. Yang Jin
150 minutes, 2008

In this sober story about a teacher in a poor district of China, Yang's commitment to those who seem have missed out on economic progress is clearly visible. His second feature, named after the protagonist Er Dong ("winter child"), is a documentary-style portrayal spanning several years in the life of a simple country boy looking for his roots. Er Dong lives alone with his mother in a small village. Frustrated with his misbehavior, his mother takes him to a Christian school with the hopes that he will find God as well as a new direction in life. Ultimately, Er Dong is a meditation on life uncertainties in contemporary China.

4:30 PM
Ma Wujia - dir. Zhao Ye
95 minutes, 2007

Director Zhao makes use of grim realism to reveal the dark side of human relations in Ma Wujia. Ah Jia is a youth who loves his family to a point of desperation. He lives with his ailing mother and younger brother Wu Ding in a small town in Guangxi, and couldn't do more for the brother, who has a kidney disease. Caught between interpersonal struggles and growing pains, he begins to rebel with growing discontent. Persuasively acted by the non-professional cast and expansively photographed in widescreen, Zhao's (a former animator, here making his feature debut) film is an engrossing and morally challenging experience. Set in southern China's unique landscape, the beautifully shot scenery of small town serenity provides a sharp contrast to the human drama that unfolds with a shocking ending.

6:45 PM
Little Moth (Xue chan) - dir. Peng Tao
99 minutes, 2007

Peng Tao's eloquent film simply and powerfully "melds the anger and storytelling scope of Dickens, the documentary-influenced immediacy and sensitive gaze of the Dardenne brothers, and the best tendencies of recent Chinese cinema" (Variety). An impoverished country couple, whose motivations are more mercenary than merciful, "adopt" a young girl (the Little Moth of the title) who suffers from a crippling blood disease, to work with them as a begging companion. Falling victim themselves to local extortionists they move into the territory of the dubious Mr. Wang, whose one-armed boy seems to have been acquired for similar purpose. The imploding story of the poor exploiting the destitute takes an unexpected turn when the children befriend each other. The performances of the non-professional cast are as devastating as they are mesmerizing.

 

SUNDAY, APRIL 26

6:20 PM
Good Cats (Hao mao) - dir. Ying Liang
103 minutes, 2008

The name of the film is taken from reformist politician Deng Xiaoping's principle that it doesn't matter if a cat is black or white - as long as it catches mice, it's a good cat. The ends justifying the means mentality paints a picture of modern day China tainted by a money-hungry rat race. Good Cats follows the life of its irresponsible protagonist, a chauffeur for the head of a real estate agency, while showing the changes that rapid urbanization has brought to Sichuan. In the director's vision, human existence is dominated by impalpable paradoxes, and day-to-day life is permeated with surreal events playing out on the border between reality, absurdity and hallucination.

8:45 PM
Iri - dir. Zhang Lü
108 minutes, 2008

A companion feature to Zhang's Chongqing. The Chinese-Korean director Lü's first film in South Korea is set in the industrial city of Iksan, known as Iri before a devastating 1977 train station explosion. Iksan's citizens still struggle to cope with the aftermath of trauma while attending to the social implications of the country's stunning economic growth. Born shortly after the disaster thirty years ago, Jin-seo (Yoon Jin-seo) has the mental capabilities of a child. She lives with her cabbie brother Tae-woong (Eum Tae-woong) atop a Chinese language school and works as a cleaner in a retirement home. Easy prey for men, Jin-seo - presumably a metaphor for South Korea - is less bothered by the coercion than her brother is; he ultimately gets pushed to the limits of endurance.

DIRECTOR BIOS

Peng Tao was born in Beijing in 1974. He received his bachelor's degree from the Art Department of Beijing Film Academy in 2004.

He received the Outstanding Short Film Award at the Beijing Student Film Festival in winter 2002; his short film Story was shown at the 14th Festival Internacional De Arte Eletronica. His graduate project, a 35mm short film called Goodbye Childhood, won first prize at the 1st JINZI Awards established by Art Department of Beijing Film Academy, and it was screened at the Yokohama International Film Festival in 2004.

He wrote and directed his first feature Little Moth (Xue Chan), completed in March 2007. This film was screened as part of the "Here and Elsewhere" program of the 60th Locarno International Film Festival in August 2007 and won the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) Award, the Golden Award in International Competition for digital feature films at the 31st Cairo International Film Festival, the Norwegian Peace Film Award at the Tromso Film Festival, and the Silver Digital Award in the Asian digital competition at the 32nd Hong Kong International Film Festival. Peng was also nominated for achievement in directing at the 2007 Asia Pacific Screen Awards and Best Screenplay at the 2008 Asian Film Awards. Little Moth has been screened at over forty international film festivals and received thirteen awards.

In March 2008, he finished a short film Wait (produced by Jia Zhangke) as part of a longer collaborative feature with four other young directors. His second feature Floating In Memory (2009), developed with the assistance of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program and produced with support from the Hubert Bals Fund, was screened in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition at the 2009 International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Yang Jin was born in 1982 in Shanxi. In 2000, he enrolled in the Shanxi Film School's photography program. In 2003, he enrolled in the College of Art And Communication at Beijing Normal University, where he majored in directing. He made a few of documentaries and some short feature films during his time there. Yang's first film The Black and White Milk Cow (2004) won the Ecumenical Jury Award and FICC Jury/Don Quijote Prize of the International Federation of Film Societies at the 19th Fribourg International Film Festival. He became a member of the Network for The Promotion Of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) at the 7th Osian's-Cinefan Festival.

Ying Liang was born in 1977 in Shanghai. He received degrees in directing from the Chongqing Film Academy and Beijing Normal University. His short film The Missing House (2003) won the Best Script Award at the Beijing Student Film Festival and the Critics Award at the Hong Kong Independent Short Film Festival. After the success of his short films, he directed his first feature Taking Father Home (2005), which won awards at Tokyo Filmex, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the Singapore International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Taking Father Home was also an Official Selection at over thirty international film festivals including the Tiger Awards Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Vancouver International Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, and Fribourg International Film Festival, among others.

In 2006, Ying completed The Other Half with support from the International Film Festival Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund (HBF). The film won awards at Tokyo Filmex, the Singapore International Film Festival, Jeonju International Film Festival, and Jogja NETPAC Asian Film Festival. It was screened at New York's Museum of Modern Art as the opening film of the ContemporAsian showcase. The Other Half has also been selected for more than thirty international film festivals including New Directors/New Films at MoMA, Rotterdam, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival. Ying's new feature Good Cats received the FIPRESCI Prize at the Brisbane International Film Festival. Ying is currently working on a new feature film entitled Salty Memories.

Zhang Lü was born in 1962 in Jilin province. He graduated from Yanbian University and was a professor of Chinese literature as well as a novelist. He currently resides in Beijing. His 2006 film Desert Dream was invited to compete at the Berlin International Film Festival, as well as the Hong Kong Film Festival, the Paris Cinema International Film Festival, and the Pusan International Film Festival. Zhang's 2005 feature Grain in Ear was selected for International Critics' Week in Cannes where it received an award from the French Association for Distribution of Independent Cinema (ACID), and was also honored at the Pesaro Film Festival, the Vesoul International Film Festival, and the Cinema Novo Film Festival (Karibu Award) with much praise.

Zhao Ye , born in 1979 in Beijing, is a graduate of Beijing Film Academy. He directed his first film Ma Wujia in 2007, winning the Grand Prize at the China Independent Film Festival. This film was also an Official Selection for international film festivals in Hong Kong, Vancouver, Tokyo, Osaka, London, Seoul, Portugal, Vienna, and Montreal.

ORGANIZER BIOS

Weihong Bao , assistant professor of Chinese film and media culture, received her Ph.D from the University of Chicago (2006). Trained in both film studies and East Asian literature and culture, she focuses on early Chinese cinema, with broad interests in Chinese cinema, drama, and visual culture from late Qing to the contemporary period as well as international silent cinema, film theory, and film history. Her book manuscript deals with questions of spectatorship and aesthetic affect across Shanghai (1896-1937) and Chongqing (1938-1945) cinema and their impact on New China cinema. Her research and teaching interests center on film and intermedial aesthetics, spectatorship and the history of perception, visual and acoustic modernity, and genre connections across modern Chinese literature, drama, and cinema. Her recent publications include "In Search of a Cinematic Esperanto" (forthcoming in Journal of Chinese Cinemas); "Biomechanics of Love: Reinventing the Avant-Garde in Tsai Ming-liang's Wayward 'Pornographic Musical,'" Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 1:2 (2007); "From Pearl White to White Rose Woo, Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927-1931," Camera Obscura 60 (2005); and "A Panoramic Worldview: Probing the Visuality of Dianshizhai huabao," Journal of Modern Chinese Literature 32 (March 2005).

Lydia H. Liu is W. T. Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. She teaches in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Her work has focused on translation theory, the movement of words, images, and artifacts across cultures, and the evolution of writing, textuality, and technology. Her current research is on writing and digital media. Professor Liu has published numerous books and articles in English and Chinese, including Translingual Practice (1995), The Clash of Empires (2004), and an edited volume called Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations (1999).

Gregory Mosher served as Director of Lincoln Center Theatre (1985-91) and Artistic Director of the Goodman Theatre (1977-84) before coming to Columbia in 2004, and was a producer and director on Broadway, the West End, and in film and television. Many of his nearly 200 stage productions were premieres of work by emerging and established writers, among them Samuel Beckett, Leonard Bernstein, Spalding Gray, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, Richard Nelson, Wole Soyinka, Julie Taymor and Tennessee Williams. He is the director of the films The Prime Gig (Ed Harris, Vince Vaughn), A Life in the Theatre (Jack Lemmon, Matthew Broderick), and produced the film of American Buffalo (Dustin Hoffman). He has received every major American theatre award, including two Tony's for his work on Broadway.

Richard Peña has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. At the Film Society, Richard Peña has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Aldrich, Gabriel Figueroa, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Kim Ki-young and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Chinese, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Soviet and Argentine cinema. Since 1996, he has organized together with Unifrance Film the annual "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Today" program. He is an Associate Professor of Film at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and since 2006 has been a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of Channel 13's weekly Reel 13.

SERIES COORDINATOR

Mike Fu is an MA student in Chinese Literature & Cinema at Columbia University.