If you missed the festival, you can watch some films online for a fee in the virtual cinema.“These new filmmakers are of course facing a lot of challenges, both financially and politically, but I’m very optimistic about their future and can’t wait to see their new works.”ĬineCina is already “in the early process of looking for films for next year’s festival.” It’s also looking for “collaborating venues” in New York to do encore screenings. “Almost all the films we showed this year are either feature debut or sophomore works and I think this is a strong statement about the new generation of filmmakers and their creativity,” he said. Organizer Frank Yan said that their “greatest achievement” this year was simply getting the event together: “We actually held an in-person-only film festival, and one of the first film festivals to do that in New York, after a whole year of pandemic and lockdown!”ĭespite an increasingly strict environment for cultural products, Yan is sunny about the future of independent filmmaking in China. “I missed the feeling of watching a Mandarin-spoken film on the big screen, especially titles we cannot find on Netflix,” said one moviegoer. Many of them were celebrating the return, if slow, of cultural life in New York, and also the rare chance to see Chinese films in a theater.
Image courtesy CineCina.Īround 1,000 people attended CineCina 2021. Optimistic about independent Chinese film The CineCina staff. The film gained 12 nominations at the 2021 Golden Horse Awards in Taipei. Drifting 浊水漂流, by Jun Li (李骏硕 Lǐ Jùnshuò), a portrait of a homeless man in Hong Kong, in Cantonese.(The whole film is currently available on YouTube here, but it’s not clear if that is a pirate version.) Tracing Her Shadow 又见奈良, by Péng Fé i 鹏飞, a 2021 China-Japan co-production of a story of a Japanese orphan who was adopted by a family in Northeast China after WWII.Striding Into the Wild 野马分鬃, directed by Wèi Shūjūn 魏书钧, an autobiographical road movie featuring a rebellious film school student that was included in the Cannes 2020 Official Selection.Other notable films screened at CineCina 2021 included: The new digital film will be screened in theaters in Taiwan in December. The biggest name in the festival was a new 4K digital restoration of Lan Yu 蓝宇, a queer classic by Stanley Kwan (關錦鵬 Guān Jǐnpéng) set in 1980s Beijing, based on a 1990s internet novel, and first released in 2001. Elephant in the Car, by Ikram Nurmehmet, about a Beijing woman who finds herself sharing an on-demand carpool ride with two Uyghurs.Friends, by Mirzat Abduqadir, shot in Mandarin and Uyghur, portrays a group of students from all over China who gather at a bar in Beijing to celebrate the birthday of Kamran, “the only gay person among them.” The film shows them gradually falling out as they “openly discuss various topics including men, women, sex, adultery, incest, racial discrimination, and other thorny issues.”.
Many of them struggle to fund, screen, or sometimes even produce their work in China because of their works’ political subject matter or non-commercial nature. The festival is run by a nonprofit, and showcases films by younger generation Chinese-language filmmakers, and directors from China. But this past September, CineCina resumed in-person screenings with a week of Chinese film at the SVA Theater in Manhattan.