MCLC: Ai Weiwei visits BIFF

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Kevin B Lee <alsolikelife at gmail.com>
Subject: Ai Weiwei visits BIIF
***********************************************************

Source: dGenerate (9/2/13):
http://dgeneratefilms.com/film-festivals/no-apologies-ai-weiwei-makes-surpr
ise-visit-to-biff-closing-night

No Apologies: Ai Weiwei Makes Surprise Visit to BIFF Closing Night
By Lydia Wu

On August 31st in the secluded courtyard of the Li Xianting Film Fund in
Beijing’s suburb of Songzhuang, the 10th Beijing Independent Film Festival
closed on a high note, and with an unexpected guest. Likelast year
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZkRl0NmGO4> a BBQ closing party brought
the Chinese independent filmmaking and contemporary art circles back
together. Chatting, beer and roasted kebabs created an atmosphere of ease
contrary to the stress of the opening. Into this scene walked icon of
Chinese contemporary art Ai Weiwei, accompanied by BIFF organizer Li
Xianting. Since his release from prison last year, Ai has been mostly
restricted to his quarters in Caochangdi, an urban village and arts
community on the northeastern suburbs of Beijing. His behavior has been
closely monitored by local authorities, who forbade him to enter
Songzhuang. Although the Ai Weiwei documentary biography Never Sorry was
selected by the 9th BIFF last year, he was unable to show up. There was no
expectation that Ai would visit, and it immediately caused a stir among
the attendees.

The ceremony officially started around eight o’clock with Li Xianting’s
remarks:

<<The festival went very well this year, even better than we thought. This
is exactly what we expected. Actually we don’t have many requirements. The
only thing we require is a platform for a minority of people including
artists, scholars and audiences who are interested in independent
filmmaking and who care for humanity and reality to discuss and exchange
ideas. But in reality, we constantly encounter interference. We need to
consistently emphasize independence, freedom and individual expression as
a normal mentality. It needs everyone’s effort to change the anomaly into
normality.>>

Then the festival announced all the awards which were decided by
documentary, fiction and experimental film jury committees:

- Stratum 1: The Visitors (Cong Feng) won the Jury Award for his
experimental spirit in documentary filmmaking. The film adopts the styles
of fiction, documentary and experimental film to depict a story happening
in an abandoned building and record its final demolition in a way to
portray destroyed buildings and cityscapes as the main characters of the
film.

- The Outstanding Documentary Film Award went to Jia Zhitan’s Investigate
Jia Zhixiu. As a peasant filmmaker, Jia excavates grassroots memories of
the Cultural Revolution in 1970 when villagers in Jia’s hometown
persecuted each other.

- The winner of Jury Special Award is Chen Changqing’s The Son of Adam.
Through the lens of a Christian, the lives of both homeless people and
Christians are revealed within China’s ‘legend of urbanization’.

- Wu Jie’s Hutoushan Village won a Special Mention Award of Outstanding
Film. When Wu Jie heard of the extremely high lung cancer rate in
Hutoushan village, he decided to visit the place with his camera and find
out what happened. He wished to raise the public awareness on
environmental pollution in the village and create a better living
condition for local villagers.

-  Two awards for Outstanding Fiction Film went to Ma Xiang’s Hooligan and
Dai Zong’s A Lost Way.

- The Jury Award for Fiction was given to Guo Zhen’s Downstream, which
portrays an Indian Hong Konger and reflects the heterogeneity of Hong Kong
culture.

- In the competition for experimental films, Yumen co-directed by J.P.
Sniadecki, Huang Xiang and Xu Ruotao and Wu Chao’s Happen won Experimental
Innovation Awards. Yumen is an ethnographic documentary visit by the
directors to the ghost city of Yumen which once was a thriving and oil
rich place in Gausu province. It’s a film about roaming in an abandoned
city and its past. Happen is an experimental animation which tries to
generate a viewer-stimulating site where multi-panel animation, sound
effects and reconstruction of viewers’ interpretation are used to arouse
the original sensibility and imagination to daily life.

- The festival culminated in awarding Ai Weiwei the Independent Spirit
Prize for Ping’an Yueqingproduced by Ai Weiwei studio. Mr. Li Xianting
presented the award to Ai Weiwei and delivered the comments of the
committee.

<<film explores the meaning of truth, life and fear under our current
circumstances. The filmmaker use his own way to witness our times, which
pushes us to re-examine ourselves. Who are we? What are we doing? What
should we do? Ai Weiwei brings Chinese independent documentary to a wider
platform where he engages in Chinese social change through activism.>>

Ping’an Yueqing is one of the projects of citizen investigation produced
by Ai Weiwei Studio, investigating the death of Qian Yunhui, who was a
dissident and a popular village leader.  He was crushed by a construction
truck, an event which was widely interpreted as a government sanctioned
assassination, though officials deny it. Instead of objectively recording
what happens in the town, the filmmaker and his camera are bound together
in activism to investigate the accident by interviewing Qian’s family,
villager and officials trying to reveal the truth hidden behind government
obstruction and the fear of the villagers.

Independent film in China itself faces increasing danger and difficulty.
In the time since last year’s Beijing Independent Film Festival, the 9th
China Independent Film Festival in Nanjing, the 3rd Beijing New Youth Film
Festival and 2013 Yunfest have all been shut down. Some media
<http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinese-magazine-mocks-governments-c
ancelation-617710> even use the term ‘the death of independent cinema in
China’ to describe the situation. Awarding Ai Weiwei the Independent
Spirit Prize doesn’t just encourage his work but also makes a powerful
counterstatement to the crack-down.

The BIFF also brings much hope that Chinese independent cinema would
struggle to survive no matter what kind of pressure they might suffer.
Lydia Wu is a doctoral candidate in film studies at Newcastle University,
currently researching independent film festivals in China.