MCLC: BIFF report

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kevin lee <kevin at dgeneratefilms.com>
Subject: BIFF report
***********************************************************

Source: dGenerate Films;
http://dgeneratefilms.com/chinese-cinema-events/shelly-on-film-fall-festiva
l-report-part-one-keeping-independence-in-beijing/

Shelly on Film: Fall Festival Report, Part One: Keeping Independence in
Beijing
By Shelly Kraicer

I¹m often asked how it is that I keep track of new Chinese independent
films. One answer: just be in China for a few weeks in October and
November. The film festival season here is packed right now. Two major
indie film festivals have just concluded: the 6th Beijing Independent
Film Festival (BIFF, in the Beijing exurb of Songzhuang) and the 8th
China Independent Film Festival (in Nanjing). In Beijing itself, we¹ve
had the 4th First Film Festival (an international festival for films
by first-time directors) at various campuses in China including Peking
University, and the 6th Chinese Young Generation Film Forum. Coming up
is the 5th Chongqing Independent Film and Video Festival (CIFVF).

That¹s a lot of films and festivals. Of course there is substantial
overlap, especially between the three main indie film festivals (BIFF,
CIFF, CIFVF). BIFF and CIFF each had its own issues this year:
external and internal conflict that showed just how much pressure
independent filmmakers are under in China at the moment. These
conflicts, which I¹ll describe below, also demonstrated the urgency
with which these filmmakers conceive of their practice, their
autonomy, their mission, and their very existence.

The Beijing Independent Film Festival¹s (15-22 October 2011) opening
night adventures have already been reported here and in a few English
language media outlets. I think it¹s worth going into some detail here
to set the record straight: several of the published accounts got some
key details wrong, and it¹s important to be precise.

The organizers of the BIFF, the Li Xianting Film Fund, spent the weeks
before the festival searching for a workable venue. An increasingly
tough regime of political control here in China ­ concurrent with
events such as Liu Xiaobo¹s Nobel Prize and the Arab Spring revolts,
and non-events like the so-called ³Jasmine Revolution² ‹ has severely
restricted the space available for non-official public organized
activities. The venues BIFF used in the past, the independent Fanhall
theatre complex and Songzhuang Art Museum, were this time both off
limits, due to pressure from local government officials. A week before
BIFF was to start, it looked like the organizers arrived at a clever
solution: to go just outside the Beijing Municipality limits to an
international hotel complex in Yanjiao, Hebei province (effectively
still the Beijing exurbs, but outside of the purview of the Beijing
government). But that was also cancelled by the local government
there, according to the organizers.

So, back to Songzhuang. In three days, the interior of the Li Xianting
Film Fund headquarters, a small, charming courtyard complex, was
completely remodeled into two screening rooms; offices were shunted
into side buildings. The new screening spaces were modest in size but
superbly equipped, with the highest quality projectors, sound, and
computer-driven projection available.

So the opening night show did happen at Film Fund ­ that is until the
cops showed up just at the conclusion of the opening ceremonies,
before the screening of the opening film, Lee Yong¹s Embracing Not
Sleep. This led to more delays, with lots of negotiation, until the
proceedings resumed, this time unofficially re-branded as a series of
³private screenings² in exactly the same space. The opening film,
which detailed, in fairly direct fashion, an erotic triangle between
two male miners and the mistress of their exploitive boss, was not
screened until the closing day of BIFF. The next two screenings
scheduled for opening night did go ahead, but were delayed in the
middle. This was a bit farcical: advance word of the cops return was
received, whereupon the screenings stopped and the audiences trooped
out to the open air courtyard where a spontaneous ³party² was created,
with lots of beer, roast lamb, and singing, all for show. The cops
looked around, saw a party and left, and the screenings resumed.

I don¹t want to make light of the official interruption of BIFF. This
is the first time I¹ve experienced something like this (though police
raids on indie Chinese cinema events such as the first two editions of
the Beijing Queer Film Festival are well documented). And there were
serious consequences: the door to the Li Xianting compound was locked
for a couple of days, to preserve the appearance of private screenings
(all you had to do was knock to get in, though); press and publicity
activities were severely curtailed. This had a definite effect on the
size and makeup of the audience who did show. A black unmarked gongbao
(Security Police) car parked just outside on the lane, maintaining a
kind of lazy quasi-surveillance presence (a plainclothed secret police
guy would leave for lunches and dinners, and sometimes chatted amiably
enough with BIFF¹s manager, who checked up on him each day). But after
a few days the door was unlocked again, the car eventually left, and
things continued undisturbed.

If this year¹s BIFF was compelled to sacrifice audience size and
broader public access (each room held at most 50 people, though more
could be jammed in for particularly ³hot² screenings), it didn¹t
sacrifice its program. Every film scheduled to be screened was shown,
including controversial works like Wang Bing¹s The Ditch, a fiction
film about so-called rightists who were starved to death in Maoist
labor camps in the early 1960s (this drew an absolutely packed house,
and occasioned a very heated debate between audience members and Wang
Bing himself, who came to defend his first work of fiction that
night).

The degree of interference and surveillance was dependent on which
level of government and police agency was involved. Local Songzhuang
cops, apparently quite respectful of Li Xianting, stayed on that first
evening but didn¹t get involved (they drank a lot of beer in the
courtyard while SMSing their superiors that all was well). The
uniformed policemen from the raid took people¹s names, because that
was the bureaucratic thing to do. Gongbao (the secret police) watched
from a distance. A district government cultural cadre did his pathetic
best to fill the role of an official bully, yelling at the audiences
(³What are you doing here?² ³Everyone disperse!²) to no apparent
effect. The overall result was to let the organizers and attendees
feel a certain limited pressure. ³We can make things difficult for you
(but we¹re not going to go as far as to shut you down)² was the mixed
message most of us picked up.

One notable and very exciting new piece of infrastructure (though its
construction was not related to BIFF¹s last minute location scramble)
is the Film Fund¹s new digital film archive. Under the Fund¹s manager
Zhang Qi, substantial resources have been expended to design and equip
this brilliant new resource on independent Chinese cinema. One can
visit the Fund¹s headquarters, sit at one of six newly equipped
viewing stations and watch films streaming from their server. Most of
this year¹s BIFF films were available, with English subtitles; so are
many films from past editions of BIFF and other works collected at the
archive. Additional bilingual information is also available about the
films and filmmakers. This works brilliantly as a festival video
centre, and is also available for researchers who visit Songzhuang.

The story continues with the next installment: the China Independent
Film Festival from Nanjing, where controversy emerged from within,
rather than being imposed from the outside.