1,720,992 research outputs found
Porous circuits: Tsai Ming-liang, Zhao Liang, and Wang Bing at the Venice International Film Festival and the interplay between the festival and the art exhibition circuits
No full textFrom the perspective of film festival studies and on the basis of my first-hand experience at the Venice Film Festival, this article sheds some light on how the works of Tsai Ming-liang, Zhao Liang, and Wang Bing elucidate the interplay between the art exhibition and film festival circuits. These artist-filmmakers have contributed to and taken advantage of the porosity between the two circuits. Taking the Venice Film Festival as a vantage point of observation, this article discusses how their works have been able to move in and out the festival circuit to reach art exhibition spaces. Against a changing production and exhibition back-drop, they have fruitfully expanded their activities, reached a broader audience and expanded their production and exhibition network. What are the advantages and limitations of such porous systems? What is to be found that facili- tates the dissemination of certain works across the two circuits? How do reputation and international prestige – here read as an expansion of Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” – translate into more production and exhibition opportunities? This organic discussion by taking into account the changes in the political economy of film production and exhibition in relation to certain aesthetic features, investigates the contrasting ways in which the festival and art circuits provide their own specific framing, produce different modes of meaning- making and result in quite different audience receptions. Furthermore, some observations on the works of the three artist- filmmakers suggest that festivals have progressively included these “festival and gallery films” in their regular programmes despite the challenges they present. This reinforces the idea of a virtuous circuit of increasing crossovers through which, artist-filmmakers capitalize on the reputation and prestige earned in one of the two circuits and invest it in the other. At the same time, film festivals have to take up new challenges, programming works with unconventional features that can be slower paced and of longer duration compared to what a festival audience is used to
Extracting narratives from reality: Wang Bing's counter-narrative of the China Dream
No full textWang Bing’s work provides a peculiar example of ‘engaged filmmaking’ without being openly oppositional towards the Chinese state. Although not easily included in the category of activist filmmakers, Wang Bing conveys political statements undermining the rhetoric of the People’s Republic of China. From Tiexi qu. West of the Tracks (2003) on the dismissal of the industrial district in Liaoning, to Three Sisters (2012) and ‘Till Madness Do Us Part (2013), both shot in remote areas of Yunnan, his work can be read as a corpus of works that address the contradictions imbued in the rise of China as a super-power. They bear witness to inequalities, uneven development and – as most of Wang Bing’s works do - also testify to the changing conditions of labour in China and their impact on people’s lives. His recent Bitter Money (2016), shot in a large textile district of Zhejiang, takes labour as its focus and reaches one of the centres of China’s wealth. Through a discussion of Wang Bing’s filmmaking and the trajectory articulated by his documentaries, this article argues that Wang Bing’s cinema provides a striking counter-narrative to the ‘China Dream’, the slogan that epitomizes the current leadership of President Xi Jinping
Wang Bing’s Shared Spaces of Labor
No full textSince the early 1990s, independent filmmakers have dealt with representations of labor to investigate China's rapid transformation. Since the turn of the century, the increasing awareness of the limits of cinematic representations to tackle the contradictions of the Chinese system has led to more challenging approaches, with Wang Bing's cinema among the most effective. This article focuses on Wang Bing's work and discusses it as “cinema of labor.” Indeed, since his long documentary Tiexi qu/Tiexi qu. West of the Tracks (2003), on the closing down of a huge industrial area in the northeastern region of Liaoning, Wang Bing's cinema has created a shared experience involving both the viewer and the filmmaker. For over a decade, he has revitalized the concept of cinema as a tool of investigation and social intervention as confirmed by his feature film on the eponymous labor camp Jiabiangou/The Ditch (2010). With his most recent documentaries San zimei/Three Sisters (2012) and Feng Ai/'Til Madness Do Us Part (2013), shot in the rural areas of the Yunnan Mountains and in the enclosed space of a mental asylum, he has further challenged the intersection of documentary and drama to expose the paradoxes of the fast-paced Chinese development
Il cinema cinese a Venezia tra arte e diplomazia (1955-1990)
No full textThrough the lens of the Venice Film Festival and a set of documents preserved at the festival archives (ASAC), this essay discusses the process through which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has achieved its prominent position in the international film scene. Thanks to a combination of informal and informal exchanges before and after the establishment of bilateral relations between Italy and the PRC on 6 November 1970, the Venice Film Festival could offer a prestigious platform for screening Chinese films to an international audience while, at the same time, serve as a site for cultural diplomacy
Schermi a più dimensioni. Soft power e presenza cinese alla Mostra del cinema di Venezia (2012-18)
No full textFilm festivals, as international events with media resonance, offer an interesting platform for the discussion of soft power in relation to films and film presentation activities. This article provides a brief overview of the complex and uneasy interplay between soft power dynamics and film festivals through the lens of the Chinese participation at the Venice Film Festivals in the years 2012-18
Storytelling gets into action: the film 'Dushi fengguang' or a Shanghai phantasmagoria through Western lenses
No full textThe analysis of Cityscape (Dushi fengguang, 1935), the film directed by actor Yuan Muzhi and produced in the cosmopolitan Shanghai of the 1930s, could reveal interesting aspects of the early discourse on the city space. Moreover, it confirms how the position and the status of the author (or the filmmaker) was an important factor in the early cultural scene; as much as today it plays an important role in the Chinese cultural scene affected by a fast-paced process of economic and cultural transformation
Storie di un futuro (quasi) impossibile. Cinema e fantascienza nella Repubblica Popolare Cinese
Full text linkA discussion of the features of sci-fi in contemporary Chinese cinema
The 4th Xi’an China International Folk Video Festival (or an alternative way to screen documentaries in China)
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“Mature at Birth”: the Beijing International Film Festival between the National Film Industry and the Global Film Festival Circuit
No full textThis chapter discusses the state-driven Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF) that was established in 2011 as a major international film event. Through an adaptation of structures, managerial features and marketing strategies well established by top-tier international films, Pollacchi argues that the BJIFF attempts to translate the model of the long-established European film festivals to the Chinese context. By looking at the BJIFF through the lens of an intangible asset such as reputational capital, the author tackles the strategy and the impact of such a large-scale event both in relation to the domestic market and the international film festival scene
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