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Chinese Independent Documentary :
CIDFA012:
DANCING IN THE CITY
Directors: Fan Jian
Length: 118min
Production Year: 2006
Synopsis:
An idealist simply wants to speak for Chinese farmers; a countryman makes great efforts to live as city dwellers; a girl shuttles between city and village; a traitor looks like a mixture of money and literature. They have village blood, but their chained souls are dancing in cities. They came back to their hometowns for hundreds of times but meanwhile, they escaped from their home for hundreds of times. They struggled for their identity freedom for thousands of times but finally they went back to their origins. Where are their ways to home? And where is the harbor of their souls? They can not find the answers but sigh in metropolitans instead.
Like any other vast metropolis, Beijing is a city of big promises. Dancing in the City tells the story of four Chinese people, each exchanging their village for the big city in hopes of finding a new identity. They are not really welcome, though; only a few dreams will come true in Beijing. Graphic designer Wang Zhiguo spends his time struggling to find clients. In the meantime, the young and uneducated Yang Yang is commuting between her native village and Beijing. There, she works relatively uninspiring jobs she never keeps for long, jobs which contrast starkly with her literary aspirations. Han Gang is a braggart and an optimist pur sang. As a representative of a pyramid scheme and questionable food supplements, he is hoping to rake in a fortune. His opposite is Chen Jun, a farmer's son who is taking a stand for farmers' rights in Beijing, but without much success. In tranquil sequences, director Fan Jian portrays and questions the four fortune-hunters. Gradually, they seem to have lost their identity, rather than found it. They cannot go back anymore, but also lack a distinct future. In Beijing, villagers are actually treated as foreigners that no one ever really expects will master the big-city mentality.
The film has been screened at:
IDFA ( International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) 2006
OXDOX:MK documentary film festival 2007
DOCUMENTA MADRID 07
YUNFEST 2007
China documentary film festival 2007
Director’s Bio:
Fan Jian, born in 1977, graduated from directing department of Beijing Film Academy (BFA). Fan Jian entered CCTV In 2002 and began with his documentary career. Until now, he has made more than 20 documentaries in CCTV including Grapes of Wrath which has won the Chinese Documentary Prize.
Fan Jian also has made a few independent documentaries. His first independent documentary is SARS Reflection, which has been showed in China-France culture interflow image exhibition. Electioneering is his second independent documentary. Dancing in The City, his third independent documentary, has been selected in International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2006 and many other documentary film festivals.