April 11, 2014 – April 13, 2014
Unless otherwise noted, all events will take place at The NYU Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway, Michelson Theater on the 6th floor.
Participant bios can be read here.
The Reel China 2014 poster can be seen here.
FRIDAY April 11
1:30pm Welcome & Introduction by ZHANG Zhen/张真 (NYU) and Angela Zito (NYU)
1:45 Stratum 1: The Visitors/地层1：来客 (CONG Feng/丛峰, 2013, 127m)
The two parts of “Stratum 1: The Visitors” combine fiction, documentary and experimental elements. In Part A, two men (the visitors) meet one night in an abandoned building, and share their memories about early lives in their hometowns. They leave this building and continue to roam in the night, then finding themselves back at the abandoned building: it looks more unfamiliar now, then it collapses and disappears. They leave this place, pass by more demolition ruins and finally reach the edge of the city, and arriving at a hill made of piled-up construction waste. On the top of the hill, they see the railway that leads to their hometown. Part B is about the demolition of the main site shot in Part A.
A note on the use of music for Part B in Stratum I: Visitors: At the closing ceremony of the 10th Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2013, avant-garde musicians Liu Sola and Liu Yijun (Lao Wu of the band Tang Dynasty) were invited to make an improvisational performance. Festival organizers arranged to have Part b of Cong Feng’s Stratum I: Visitors projected during the performance. Without any prior knowledge of the film, the music they performed strikingly echoed the film’s style and content, generating an impressive effect. Having obtained the permissions of the musicians as well as Li Xianting Film Fund, 7th Reel China @ NYU will project the film with the recorded music. Our sincere thanks to Ms. Liu Sola and Mr. Liu Yijun for their kind permission and generous support. Copyright of the music resides with the musicians. Recording on any devices during the exhibition is strictly prohibited.
4-4:30 Q&A with director CONG Feng/丛峰, moderated by ZHANG Zhen/张真
5:00 Detachment of Women/开房找我 (WANG Nanfu/王男栿, 2014, 60m)
Taking its title from the popular folk song “Red Detachment of Women” widely sung during the Communist Revolution years, the film updates this message of resistance by documenting today’s female soldiers in China – the ones who dare to stage public protests in the name of human rights and who are willing to suffer the consequences.
6 – 6:30 Q&A with director WANG Nanfu/王男栿, moderated by Angela Zito
8:00pm Cop Shop II/差馆 II (ZHOU Hao/周浩, 2011 76 min)
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SATURDAY April 12
1:00 Born in Beijing/京生 (MA Li/马莉, 2012 240m)
Screening will be located at 721 Broadway, room 108.
This film about petitioners’ lives and struggels over years in China’s capital takes its title from the name of the lead character, “Jing Sheng” – literally meaning “Born in Beijing.” Jing, who was born during her mother’s petition process to Beijing, has accompanied, Mrs. Hao for more than three decades as she has pursued justice for her case in the capital. But the film’s scope is wider than their single story: It shows the peculiar experiences and inner struggles of an entire group of people who return repeatedly to, or simply camp out in, the national capital seeking redress for local crimes. This “petitioner village” provides a collective story that director MA Li, as an artist and public intellectual, presents with a clear sense of mission and compassion.
5-5:45 Q&A with director MA Li/马莉, moderated by Angela Zito
7pm The Piano in a Factory/钢的琴 (ZHANG Meng/张猛 2010, 105min)
Screening will be located at the NYU Skirball Center for Performing Arts. (map)
When Chen’s estranged wife reappears asking for a divorce and custody of their daughter, the musically inclined girl decides she will live with whoever can provide her with a piano. Chen’s struggle thus begins. As efforts to borrow money and even steal a piano fail, Chen concocts a preposterous plan – he’ll make a piano from scratch! He persuades a bunch of reluctant, but loyal, misfit friends to help him forage the instrument from a heap of scrap metal in a derelict factory. Though crude in design and tune, the factory piano awaits its first and final performance from his little girl. This luminous reanimation of a dying workplace and an abandoned life brought director ZHANG Meng critical and popular acclaim in China.
9:15 Q&A with director ZHANG Meng/张猛, moderated by ZHANG Zhen/张真 (NYU)
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SUNDAY April 13
10:30 Juvenile Laborers Confined in Dabao/大堡小劳教 (XIE Yihui/谢贻卉, 2013, 106min)
After Sichuan Daily reporter Zeng Boyan was labeled a rightist in 1958, he was sent to Shaping Farm in E’bian County, Leshan, Sichuan to be re-educated through labor. There he was shocked to witness children as young as ten years old being forced into hard labor in camps deep in the forested countryside, reclaiming wasteland or hauling coal from the mines. Since this period coincided with the three years of the Great Famine (1958-1961), memories from the filmed survivors burn with stories of not only longing for their families, but of simple hunger. As the state today tries to reform the entrenched, extra-judicial aspects of its prison system, this film reminds us of the horrors of its past.
1:15 A Lao’s Village/阿姥的村庄 (LI Youjie/李有杰, 2012, 74 min)
Alao returns to the village where he grew up, this time to film. We watch while he attempts to get closer to his family and his own identity even as he senses the village drifting away from his life. As he struggles to come to terms with the inner turmoil of his own uncertainties, he discovers the harshness of the village, which in his eyes seems to be a shadow of the place he knew as a child. His bittersweet, lyrical recuperation features his grandmother, parents, fellow villagers and the director himself in a sort of culmination of the thirty years of his life. This personal memoir also documents the emotional consequences of the gap that people find when they return to a countryside left behind in their move to the city.
3:30 Beijing Independent Film Festival Shorts Program (90min) selected and introduced by DONG Bingfeng /董冰峰
Freud, Fish and Butterfly/弗洛伊德，鱼和蝴蝶 (WANG Haiyang/王海洋, 2010, Animation, 3 min)
Drawing with pastel and eraser up to more than 600 times on one piece of sandpaper merely 70 centimeters long and 90 centimeters wide,the director achieved this animation. Winner of the Grand Prix at the 25th Holland International animation film festival.
One Night in the Capital City/北京之夏 (GUO Hanfen/郭漢芬, 2012, Narrative, 29 min)
A young Hong Kong gangster, Chong, stole all the money from his gang, and fled to an unfamiliar Beijing to lead a new life with his newly met Beijing girlfriend. His ex-girlfriend follows his trail to the Capital, to unravel the mystery…
Battle (WEN Muye/文牧野, 2013, Narrative, 11 min) A Dili, a Uyghur youth working in Beijing, disobeys Islamic doctrine by getting a tattoo, and thus enters into a conflict with his father who comes to visit him.
The Hunter and the Skeleton/猎人与骷髅怪 (Gyatso Gentsu/白斌, 2012, Animation, 26 min)
Adapted from one of the folk stories widely spread in the eastern Tibetan area, the film tells a story of a hunter who encounters a skeleton monster while hunting in a mountain.
All The Lines Flow Out/所有的行流出来 （LIM Yi – yong, Charles / 林育荣,2011, Experimental, 21 min）
All The Lines Flow Out takes the viewer for a tour through the vast network of ‘longkangs’, of the monsoon drains of Singapore, which form an unintended map of the city state. The film charts the journey of a mysterious person who travels through the longkangs searching for a way home.
5:30-6:30 Panel Discussion with all guests and Professor Dan Streible (NYU), moderated by ZHANG Zhen/张真 and Angela Zito