China Onscreen Biennial: Beijing Flickers 有种 US Premier

BEIJING FLICKERS is inspired by interviews Sixth Generation auteur Zhang Yuan conducted with hundreds of 20-somethings when he was working on his photography exhibition of the same title.

Part of the UCLA Confucius Institute's inaugural China Onscreen Biennial （银幕中国双年展）project, an unprecedented bicoastal collaboration among seven distinguished American educational and cultural organizations to promote US-China dialogue through the art of film. October 13-31, Los Angeles | October 26-11, Washington, DC.

BEIJING FLICKERS

Director/Producer: Zhang Yuan. Screenwriter: Zhang Yuan, Kong Ergou, Li Xinyun, Yang Yishu. Cinematographer: Zhang Yuan, Cai Tao. Production Designer: An Bin. Editor: Wu Yixiang. Sound: Zhao Bo. Composer: Liu Yijun. Cast: Duan Bowen, Lv Yulai, Shi Shi, Li Xinyun, Han Wenwen.

BEIJING FLICKERS’ screenplay is inspired by interviews Sixth Generation auteur Zhang Yuan conducted with hundreds of 20-somethings when he was working on his photography exhibition, Unspoiled Brats. (Now renamed to share the same title as the film, the photography show goes on COB display from October 20-28 at a pop-up gallery in Chinatown.)

Dumped by his girlfriend for a rich man, San Bao descends into a self-destructive spiral and meets a few other kindred souls: a drag queen addicted to cosmetic surgery and poetry; a female singer kicked out by the musicians in her band; a girl jilted by her boss/lover. Zhang (BEIJING BASTARDS) captures the vulnerability, but also the energy and romanticism of the new “lost generation” bypassed by China’s entry into the globalized market economy. – Bérénice Reynaud

HDCAM, color, Putonghua with English subtitles, 96 min.

Preceded by

West Coast Premiere

SOME ACTIONS WHICH HAVEN’T BEEN DEFINED YET IN THE REVOLUTION   2011
一场革命中还未来得及定义的行为

Director/Producer/Screenwriter: Sun Xun. Editor: Xu Chong, Sun Xun, Tang Bohua. Composer: Jin Shan.

Animated using woodblock prints, SOME ACTIONS uses pulsating, hallucinatory imagery to evoke a Kafkaesque atmosphere of grotesquery, anxiety and vague ideological constrictions. “I only ask questions,” says animator Sun Xun. “It’s up to the viewer to think about what he has seen. And to come up with his own answers.” – Tom Vick

HDCAM, color, 13 min. 

Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies, Confucius Institute