9:30-11:30am Panel 1 Reconsidering Independent Film Festivals and Grassroot Exhibition in China since 2001
Chair: Sabrina Qiong Yu
Panellists: Zhu Rikun, Cao Kai, Feng Yu, Wu Man, Zhang Yaxuan, Wang Xiaolu
CAO Kai, practitioner and researcher of contemporary art and film. He lives and works in Nanjing, China. Since 1994, he has been involved in the field of contemporary art, mainly in the creation, curation, and writing of video art and experimental media art. He has attended numerous contemporary art exhibitions at home and abroad as an artist. Since 2001, he has participated in the Chinese independent film movement and is the main founder and organiser of the China Independent Film Festival (CIFF) (2003-2017). He has also served as curator, academic chair, and juror for numerous art projects in China, and has curated various exhibitions related to Chinese independent cinema and experimental media art overseas. His research and curatorial texts have been published in various academic journals and forums, and in 2019 he started to write the academic column ‘Reflections’.
Feng Yu, curator. In 2007, he founded the Cylinder Art Space in Shenzhen, and was engaged in promoting Chinese- language independent films across the Taiwan Straits. In 2018, he was the curator of the 7th Shenzhen-Hong Kong Urban Architecture Biennale. He planned programs beyond screening in normal spaces, expanding to urban ruins, factories, public places, rural ancestral halls, granaries, etc.
Wang Xiaolu is senior researcher of China Film Archive. He is also a film critic and a curator. Graduating from Beijing Film Academy, he holds a PhD degree in film studies. His research interests include film history and independent cinema. He also writes for The Economic Observer and Southen Weekly as a columnist. He is the author of Diseases of Our Time: Witnessing Independent Film Culture (2008), The Politics of the Cinema (2014), and The Will of the Cinema (2019).
Wu Man is in charge of the Beijing Queer Film Festival since 2013. She has curated various film screening programmes at French Cinematheque (Paris), French Institute (Beijing), UCCA (Beijing), the Helsinki Festival, the Beijing Design Week, and so on. The films presented in these programmes create space for reflection on the inequalities of contemporary Chinese society and the lack of attention to issues such as gender, women, poverty and capital.
Zhang Yaxuan is a film critic, a film curator and an independent film producer. She got her master degree from Beijing Normal University in 2000 and started her critical and curatorial practices in creative visual art since then. She has followed and witnessed the development of Chinese independent film in the past two decades, and has produced a large amount of reviews and interviews on this subject, published in various media.
Zhu Rikun is an independent film director and producer, and a film festival curator. He is the founder and artistic director for Fanhall Films and Fanhall Canter for Arts. In 2001 he founded Fanhall Films for film production, distribution and film festival organizing. He produced and distributed many important Chinese independent films that contributed a lot to the film art in China. Zhu Rikun established DOChina – Documentary Film Festival China in 2003, one of the earliest independent film festivals in China. He is also the co-founder and program director of Beijing Independent Film Festival (since 2006 ). From 2005 to 2010 he is the artistic director for Li Xianting Film Fund. In 2007 he co-founded and joined Huangniutian Film Group. He has been the jury for Hong Kong International Film Festival (2012), Locarno Film Festival (2011), CinDi-Seoul Digital Cinema Film Festival.
11:30-11:50 Coffee break
11:50-1:50pm Panel 2 Overseas Circulation of Chinese Independent Films since the 1990s
Tamako AKIYAMA teaches at Kanagawa University and is widely known for her scholarship on, and subtitling of, Chinese language cinema, as well as her Chinese interpretation for the art world. She has been a close observer of Chinese thought, cinema and art since the 1990s, supporting these artists’ efforts through writing, translation and interpretation. She is a co-editor (with Ma Ran) of Chinese Independent Cinema Observer, Issue 1: Sino-Japanese Connections in Independent Film Cultures (1989 – 2020), and a contributor to Chinese Cinemas in Translation and Dissemination (Routledge, 2021), Ibunka Shakai no Rikai to Hyosho Kenkyu (Cross-cultural Understanding and Representation Studies, Senshu University Press, 2022). Among her many translations is the book-length Dust in the Wind: Hou Hsiao-hsien Talks about Films（Misuzu Shobo, 2021; original from 2008), by Hou Hsiao-hsien.
Karin Chien is the founder and president of Art & Action, a global production company. She is the recipient of the inaugural Cinereach Producing Award, the Humanitas Prize and the Piaget Independent Spirit Producers Award, given to “producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity, and vision required to produce quality independent films.” Karin is the founder and president of dGenerate Films, the leading U.S. distributor of independent, contemporary Chinese cinema. The dGenerate Films collection is proud to distribute over 80 narrative and documentary films from mainland China and Hong Kong in partnership with Icarus Films.
Tammy Cheung is a Hong Kong documentary filmmaker. She studied Sociology at Shue Yan College in Hong Kong and Film at Concordia University in Canada. In 1986, she founded the Chinese International Film Festival in Montreal and held the position of Director of the Festival between 1986 and 1992. After moving back to Hong Kong in 1994, she was involved in commercial film production, film criticism, teaching and translation. In 2004, Cheung founded Visible Record Limited with other like-minded individuals from the fields of film, culture and education. In 2008, she founded the Chinese Documentary Festival, which is the first annual film festival in the world that focuses on Chinese documentaries. The festival has become one of the most important exchange platforms for film professionals, scholars and enthusiasts.
Shelly Kraicer is a writer and cinema curator based in Toronto Canada. Educated at Yale University, he lived for twelve year in Beijing. He has written film criticism in Cinema Scope, Positions, Cineaste, the Village Voice, and the New York Times. He has been programmer for Chinese language films at the Vancouver international Film Festival since 2007, and has been a consultant for the Venince, Udine, Dubai, and Rotterdam International Film Festivals. Shelly co-founded Cinema On the Edge in 2015, an organization deveted to promoting and screening independent Chinese films around the world.
Luisa Prudentino is a lecturer at INALCO University (Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales), in charge of the history of Chinese cinema since 2008. She is also an active member of the research laboratory called CERLOM (Centre d’étude et de recherche sur les littératures et les oralités du monde) since 2012. Besides, she provides teaching at the Le Havre Sciences Po College at the University of Lorraine in Metz. After graduating at “L’Orientale” at the University of Naples with master’s degree, she went to China where she was living for 4 years between 1985 and 1989. Her stay in Shanghai made her realise that a new cinematography was actually arising in China. Back to Italy, she runs the first film festival devoted to contemporary Chinese cinema. She wrote many papers and essays about cinema and, in 2003, she published Le Regard des ombres (Shadows’ Eyes), her first book which was completely devoted to contemporary Chinese cinema.
1:50-3pm lunch
3-5pm Panel 3 How to Exhibit Chinese Indies Overseas? A Forum of the Young Generation of Chinese Film Curators in Europe
Niu Xiaowa, based in France, works in film production and distribution. She is co-founder of the “Festival Allers-retours” in Paris and co-founder of Memoria Films production company.
Sheng Hanqi is a filmmaker who is currently based in Hamburg, Germany. She’s the President of the Chinese Film and Media Art Association in Hamburg. In 2022 she co-founded the independent Chinese film showcase “ShowcaseRiparian” and the Chinese Film Festival Hamburg. In 2016, she earned her first Master’s degree in Film and Television from the China Academy of Art where she received the Art School Alliance Scholarship. In 2021, she obtained a second Master’s degree in documentary filmmaking at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg, with Oscar-winning filmmaker Prof. Pepe Danquart. Her films have been screened and awarded at international festivals, including the Visions du Réel International Film Festival in Nyon, DOK Leipzig, Dokumentarfilmwoche Hamburg, among others.
Tang Xuedan is a Berlin-based film curator and cultural worker originally from Chengdu, China. She obtained her Master’s degree in Arts and Cultural management at King’s College London. After graduation, she worked as a documentary producer in China and produced a series of short documentaries across China. Her passion for documentary filmmaking dovetails with her keen interest in non-fiction writing. During university years, she initiated “Gapper30,” an interview series that became the first of its kind in mainland China to spotlight the experiences of gap-year participants. This led to her role as the chief editor and primary writer of a book published in 2016, which garnered recommendations from public figures including renowned Chinese writer and political scientist Liu Yu. In 2021, Tang was selected for the German Chancellor Fellowship and moved to Berlin as a research fellow. There, she launched CiLENS in 2022—a fellowship project that synthesizes her research interests in cinema studies, feminism, and socially engaged practices.
Lydia Dan Wu received her Doctoral degree in film studies from Newcastle University for her thesis “Chinese Independent Film Exhibition Culture: Legitimacy and Sustainability” in 2017. After working as a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Hull for three years, she returned to Newcastle University in 2019. There, she continued her research on the dissemination of Chinese independent cinema, the transformation of the Chinese film industry in the post-independent cinema era, and the resurgence of art cinema as a research associate in the project “Chinese Independent Cinema: Nation, Market, and Film Culture.” As part of the project, she also organised, categorised, and digitised materials and related information on Chinese independent cinema and film festivals and exhibitions, following the requirements of a professional archive, for the establishment of the Chinese Independent Film Archive. Currently, Wu is a NUAcT fellow at Newcastle University, and she is about to commence her 5-year research project entitled ‘Decolonizing “Asia”through Film Curation.’
Zhou Yunyun is an Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, Norway. She received her doctorate in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford. She is a political sociologist with a feminist analytical approach and is exploring the use of ethnographic films in her research. Her research focuses on gender and political institutions, feminism(s), affective governance in contemporary China. Her latest publications could be found in Culture, Communication & Critique, Politics & Gender, and The Made-in-China Journal. She is the co-founder of the Norwegian non-profit organisation FRA ØST TIL NORD which is bringing the first Alternative Kina Cinema Week to Oslo in October 2023.
Feng Yu, curator. In 2007, he founded the Cylinder Art Space in Shenzhen, and was engaged in promoting Chinese- language independent films across the Taiwan Straits. In 2018, he was the curator of the 7th Shenzhen-Hong Kong Urban Architecture Biennale. He planned programs beyond screening in normal spaces, expanding to urban ruins, factories, public places, rural ancestral halls, granaries, etc.
Wang Xiaolu is senior researcher of China Film Archive. He is also a film critic and a curator. Graduating from Beijing Film Academy, he holds a PhD degree in film studies. His research interests include film history and independent cinema. He also writes for The Economic Observer and Southen Weekly as a columnist. He is the author of Diseases of Our Time: Witnessing Independent Film Culture (2008), The Politics of the Cinema (2014), and The Will of the Cinema (2019).
Zhang Yaxuan is a film critic, a film curator and an independent film producer. She got her master degree from Beijing Normal University in 2000 and started her critical and curatorial practices in creative visual art since then. She has followed and witnessed the development of Chinese independent film in the past two decades, and has produced a large amount of reviews and interviews on this subject, published in various media.
