New Works of Independent Documentary in China
Flowers
Producer/Director/Camera/Editing: Song Tian
Year of Production: 2008
Running Time: 90 min.
About the film
In 1934, Japanese pathfinders established Tianli Village in the suburb of Harbin and built Tianli Shrine. Seventy-three years later, students in primary and middle schools of Daowai District, Harbin city, started a three-day’s “Training Camp”, as a part of “Quality Education” in China. The aim of the "Camp" is to make students “Remember National Disgrace”, to make them persevere in the military training, and to train their spirit of collective collaboration.
SONG Tian, born in 1980 in Heilongjiang, China. Graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Teachers' University in 2001. Then studied at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2002, she went to France and in 2003 she began the "Cinema and Audiovisual Studies" at the University of Provence, and obtained the Professional Master's Degree of "The Métiers of Documentary Film" in 2006. Now she lives in Beijing and Harbin.
Her first independent documentary film “Tian Li” (2006, DV, 96 minutes) won a prize in “China Village Self-Governance Film Project” and "the First Film Prize" at "the 17th International Documentary Film Festival of Marseille", France.
A Hundred Patients of Dr. Jia
Director: Wang Hongjun
Adviser: Wu Wenguang
Technical support: Guo Xiaoming, Wang Wenli
About the film
A small clinic, an elderly doctor, a crowd of patients, all in line for one request: To be cured. Over the course of the year 2008, the filmmaker, from a fixed camera position, captured the comings and goings of the Dr. Jia’s one hundred patients.
Filmmaker’s Statement:
In the summer of 2006, I returned home for a period of recovery after undergoing surgery in Nanjing. Upon the first of many daily visits to Dr. Jia’s clinic, which took place over a month’s time, something about the scene struck me ? the image of a small overcrowded clinic, no trace of the sterility and order of a big hospital, patients laughing and jostling to be seen, social status divide blurring at its edges. Perhaps this sort of true congeniality can only come to bear within the confines of the small, overcrowded clinic. And perhaps this is what compelled me to start shooting!
Wang Hongjun, was born in 1981, in Jin Hu County, Jiansu Province. He was service in the army for two years. He studied in Nanjing Fine Arts Academy and China Theater Academy. Now he’s living in his hometown as a freelance. A Hundred Patients of Dr. Jia is his first feature length documentary work.
Mom
Director: Zou Xueping
Length: 60 minutes
Production: 2008
About the film
This documentary film is about my plain and ordinary mother. My mother lives in a rural village. She works the land and raises pigs for a living, and cares for my grandmother. She has no grand ideals or lofty goals, and desires nothing more than to pass her days in calm contentment; to raise and care for her family. My mother has no education or cultivation, but she knows how to live and how to approach life. When I asked her what the meaning of life is, she answered, “To live is to eat, is it not?”
Filmmaker’s Statement
Having lived by my mother’s side for twenty-some years, I had never carefully looked at her before. Images of what she looked like in her younger years have all but faded in my memory. Now to see her age ? her white hair, wrinkled face, and callused
hands -- my heart aches. When I first started shooting her, I almost couldn’t bear to continue, I felt so much pressure. But an inner impulse allowed me to carry on. To have a simple life by my mother’s side, I discovered, was exactly what I was looking for. When Grandma wasn’t around, her and I, we’d sit together on the bed and chat for hours. When the topic of Grandma was broached, she said, quite unexpectedly: “Why, how could I not take care of her? Your father and uncle are not here; they are working far away. We can’t be the laughingstock of the village!” Her simple words made me think, a lot. The let me understand a lot of things, like her sense of responsibility towards her family, and finally be able to comprehend what a simple woman from a rural village wants out of life.
Zou Xueping studied at Yangxing First Highschool in Shandong Province. Now, she is in her fourth year in the New Media Department of The China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Mom is her first feature length documentary.
My Mom and Dad and Brothers and Sisters (2001-2008)
Directed by Hu Xinyu
Length:90 min.
Production: 2008
About the film
Mom and Dad are retired. During winter and summer breaks, my eldest sister entrusts her child in their care. They often tutor him with his homework.My second eldest sister drops in every now and then to check up on them, helps out with some housework. Petty arguments arise as easily as pots and pans, plates and ladles should clamor and touch. Of course, this is to be expected. Mom and Dad's happiness is dictated by the progress in work, studies, or health of the members of their two generations below them. Mom and Dad's happiness are also dictated by the matter of my marriage.
My big brother has come home from abroad; he wants to develop in China. My third eldest sister came home twice for New Years'. Her American values become the central topic of conversation amongst the family, and yet their practical application can't change the 60 square meters of personalities and tempers of its family members.
Eldest sister's children are all in college; Second eldest sister's kids are also in college; Big brother returned to America, then returned home again; Third eldest sister came back at the end of the year, had a fight, then went back to work; Dad's temper gets worse and worse. As always, the nagging and complaining in our household are like gunpowder ready to explode.
Filmmaker's Statement:
Every family has it's own photo album. It doesn't matter whether in black and white, or in color, in the picture, all you see in a photo are the smiley faces put on for the sake of the camera. When I started shooting my family with my video camera, I found out my footage was not like this. Why doesn't the poetry, the lyricism of films reveal itself in the story of my own family? Perhaps the self-righteousness of the cinematic art is not suitable for my family. I have yet to direct the story of a neat and tidy family, complete with a refined and urbane cast. I just want to figure out what makes my family so out of the ordinary.
Hu Xinyu: Filmmaker. Birth: April 22,1969, Music Department Taiyuan Normal Unversity. In 2000, began to produce the DV movie Transition, which unfortunately came to a premature end. The DV movie <The Man>is his first completed work. March and April 2006, secondly film<Zigui>. Short Film: Corridor(5min,2003) ,Cat(9min,2003),Apple(8min,2006), Luck Taiyuan (35min,2007).
Cinedans wants to bring both art forms, dance and film, closer to each other.
Beginning last century the camera has been made to film movement! Now in 2008 we are ready to explore the full potential of all the possibilities to film and explore dance and film!
Cinedans is an annual international dance film festival in Amsterdam. Cinedans promotes the genre of dance films and offers a platform for film makers and choreographers. At the same time, it aims to strengthen the bonds between the worlds of film and dance.
Furthermore Cinedans travels to around 15 Dutch cities and tours internationally has a tour in ?to Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming, Cape Town, Bilbao en Sydney.
Each year a prize of a ?1.000,- is given to the new and upcoming dance filmmaker.
Cinedans has made the following categories for the dance films shown.
- Dance specially made for the camera
- A film based on a live performance
- A dance film with ‘special effects’ or manipulation of the image
- Documentaries of choreographers and dancers.
The films will be presented by Cinedans director Janine Dijkmeijer . Janine enjoyed eighteen years of an inspiring modern dance career as a dancer and choreographer. A ‘crown’ to her work was receiving the Golden Dance Prize in 1999. After her dance carreer she became a website builder and a designer. She is cofounder and director of Cinedans, the international dance film festival in Amsterdam and is working as a co producer of several dance and film projects.
Cinedans’ special guest this year is Ria Marks, theatre maker and actress with Dutch theatre company “Orkater” (www.orkater.nl). Ria will give a lecture on the transformation from the theatre stage to the film screen, based on her experiences? with False Waltz, a theater production and award-winning dance film.
Special thanks goes to all filmmakers and distributers that made these screenings possible.
PROGRAM 1 : CINEDANS SHORTS 1 and 2
Looking Forward
NL, 2007, 8 minutes
Director & Choreography: Roberta Marques
Looking Forward is the first film of a trilogy that investigates the reversing of movement and time.
Another Building # 1: Quarantine
United States, 2007, 10 minutes
Director: Gabri Christa
Choreography: Kyle Abraham
An older man watches a younger alter ego finding his way through an old quarantine building on Curacao, in the old days used for slaves on their way to America.
If Time Pass
Japan, 2007, 5 minutes
Director: Teppei Kuroyanagi
Choreography: Yannick Hugron, Kae Kurachi
If Time Pass paints the relationship of a man and a woman with color in such a way that an abstract painting emerges.
Prototype
France, Switzerland, 2007, 2 minutes
Director & Choreography: Yves Ackermann
Prototype shows a man in the process of being shot. The hail of bullets shakes his body, his hands cramp, he reels round, end of the film.
Downlove
Greece, 2007, 10 minutes
Director: Euripidis Laskaridis
Choreography: Euripidis Laskaridis, Aris Servetalis, Lina Sakka
In a virtual world where emotions are forgotten two avatars fail to fall in love while their cardigans come to life with unexpected results.
Dancing Swords
Canada, 2007, 2 minutes
Director & Choreography: Luke Langsdale
High above The City, two masked warriors are locked in a deadly ballet of modern dance, traditional kung-fu and sword play.
FEIST
United States, 2007, 3 minutes
Director: Patrick Daughters
Choreography: Noemie Lafrance
Pop artist Feist and a group of 45 dancers create a series of tunnels, sideways and shapes. Award-winning one take music video.
Frying Pan
United States, France, 2007, 7 minutes
Director: Valère Terrier
Valère Terrier’s work embraces all disciplines related to image and movement: photo, experimental video, performance, theater, dance and music video. Fascinated by natural and urban landscapes, he began his career by directing a series of documentaries about extreme sports while creating experimental videos and films.
He also works as a VJ in prestigious Parisian and Chinese night-clubs, using the dance-floor as an experimental field that allows him to test his own video effects directly on the audience.
Niu Niu's Story
China, United States, 2007, 6:22 minutes
Director: Mariel Louise McEwan
Choreography : Jia Wu
Dance, animation, and humor reveal the training and career of a young Chinese girl who was “born to dance”
Shelter
Netherlands, 2006, 8 minutes
Director: Boris Paval Conen
Choreography: Shusaku Takeuchi
A man and a woman, who take no notice of each other, search for shelter in a desolate forest. While the rain pours down, intimacy ignites between them. The leaking roofing doesn’t bother them, on the contrary: the augmenting torrent of raindrops inspires their intimate dance. When the rain stops, the magic dissolves; they both leave, feeling uneasy and ashamed.
Car Men
Netherlands, 2006, 28 minutes
Director: Boris Paval Conen
Choreography: Jíri Kylían
Car Men is a collaboration between the world famous choreographer Jíri Kylían and filmmaker Boris Paval Conen. Based on the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet they shot a hilarious and poetic short film in the destroyed landscape of a Czech brown coal mine. The actors in this film are older dancers (around 50 years old) and the main prop is a 'TATRA 87', a famous car from 1937.
PROGRAM 2 : CINEDANS Classics and Documentary
Era Mela Mela
Luxembourg/France , 2000, 6 minutes
Director: Daniel Wiroth
Choreography : Lionel Hoche
Dancers:Lionel Hoche et David Drouard
Music: Mahmoud Ahmed
The bodies lightly touch each other,
The hands communicate, the glances love.
A delicate poem for the other,
Whom we would be nothing without.
Blue Yellow
GB, 1995, 12 minutes
Director: Adam Roberts
Choreography Jonathan Burrows
'Sylvie Guillem, the celebrated prima ballerina, asked Jonathan Burrows to make her a piece. Jonathan came up with material which I filmed for televising as part of a co-production between BBC 2 and the French broadcaster France 2, which would be collectively entitled Evidentia. Our film, titled blue yellow, would be sandwiched between longer, very conventional films. Transmission was in the winter of 1996, in a prime slot, with a video release on the NVC Arts label which continues to sell well.' Adam Roberts
Musique de Tables
Belgium, 1999, 8 minutes
Director: Thierry De Mey
A short film for three pair of hands and three tables, based on the famous composition by Thierry De Mey. In this film, Thierry De Mey investigates the boundaries between music and the movement that produces the music, the visual dance aspects in equilibrium with the sound and the musicality of the interpretation.
REINES D'UN JOUR,
Switzerland, 26 minutes
Directed by Pascal Magnin
Original concept by Pascal Magnin, Marie Nespolo, Christine Kung
Choreography and Performance by Veronique Ferrero, Marie Nespolo, Christine Kung, Mikel Aristegui, Antonio Buil, Roberto Molo
In this sensual and joyful film by French filmmaker Pascal Magnin, six dancers tumble down the steep slopes of the Swiss Alps, amongst cows and shepherds, somewhere between heaven and earth, to join in a traditional village festival. The villagers welcome these scruffy newcomers into their festivities, where mischief, pranks and love run rampant. Inspired by a folk tale about three maidens who vanished because they ignored the prohibition against public dancing.
PROGRAM 2 : CINEDANS DOCUMENTARY
Krishna’s Dancer
IN/DE, 2007, 16 minutes
Director: Dirk Hilbert
Choreography: Kasturi Mishra & Dirk Hilbert
Time:16 minutes
Krishna's Dancer is a homage to the vivid culture of north-indian kathak dance and shows a portrait of a young female dancer, living in Kolkata, India.
Pina Bausch
DE, 2006 , 44 minutes
Director: Anne Linsel
Choreography: Anne Linsel