Press Release
Avant-Garde Micro Film Festival
As one presentation of the cultural ecology of the e-age, numerous film-makings will surely lead to an indistinctive flooding of images. It seems that the era of junk-images cannot be avoided. At the same time, films of folks, individuals, and non-organizations, are always being made from artists’ studios. When these films are collected and exhibited, they not only show their ‘micro’, but also involve abnormal ‘avant-garde’.
The exhibition at K11 is such a show, which is filled with four artists’ works in four waves. Those artists are Liu Jian, an independent animation director, Wu Qing, a freelance poet and writer, Shen Chaofang, an experimental filmmaker and Mao Chenyu, cross-media documentary worker. They made distinctive works in different ways, but all of these works show the same style of ‘avant-garde’ —-they are trying to walk as far as they can in their respective field, expanding to the edge and vibrating there.
The four waves of this micro film festival will be showed in two periods, which include premieres, repetitions of classics, and many other surprises. There will be a psychological challenge for audiences due to the four different experiences.
Wave 1: Liu Jian, One Man’s Independent Animation
Date：April 22nd ~ 28th , 2013
Time：10:00 ~ 22:00
Lu Xun, Lu Xun
Director : Liu Jian
Producer: Lynne Wang
Duration：7’22’’
Two years ago, I read a short story by the Chinese writer, Lu Xun called, “In the Wine Shop”, which I really enjoyed. I wanted to make it into an animated film, and I even imagined a scene with Lu Xun sitting in the wine shop watching the snow-covered landscape, chatting to an old friend. Since at the time I was busy working on the feature-length animation, “Piercing”, I had to put the project to one side.
After being invited to an exhibition in memory of Lu Xun by the Zhejiang Art Museum this year, I remembered my idea to make a film about Lu Xun’s story, “In the Wine Shop”. Since I was working on another the feature-length animation called “University Town”, I had to put the project aside once again. But I did not give up. So I finally made a short animation film on what Lu Xun was like in real life, called “Lu Xun, Lu Xun”, based on one hundred depictions of a portrait of Lu Xun. What was Lu Xun like in real life? The drawings of the portrait of Lu Xun were drawn by my ten-year-old son, Dale, whom I would like to thank.
CHAOS & ORDER
Director : Liu Jian
Producer: Lynne Wang
Duration：3’
A pre-formatted future is our future, there will be on countries in the world. Mankind will no longer distinguish between gender and race, and the only existent species will be “computer beings”. “Computer beings” are not robot. They are pre-formatted “people”.
face
Director : Liu Jian
Producer: Lynne Wang
Duration：1’53″
Wave 2: Wu Qing, The Escapee And His “Narrative Film”
Date：April 22nd~28th , 2013
Time：10:00 ~ 22:00
We Are Young
Director : Wu Qing
Duration : 16’
“We Are Young” was made at a hotel room in shanghai which cost me only one day but was the most complicated-structured one with most actors.
Wave 3: Mental Mirage, Shen Chaofang’s Experimental Film
Date：April 29th ~ May 5th 2013
Time：10:00 ~ 22:00
Floweriness and Disillusion
Director : Shen Chaofang
Duration：9’50″
2007
The contemporary young people written in Baudrillard ‘s consumption main social, fear nothing, although efforts, but eventually in vain, embarrassed. This is my confusion，caused by drifting from the south to the north half nihilism view. The boat, water, lady clothing and facebook in “Floweriness and Disillusion” accompanied with the growth of my childhood memories . I also came to Beijing for a better life with lingering childhood memories, but everywhere was landscape. All the cultural and poetic scene were humiliated and trampled everywhere in the landscape construction process.
In the Mood for Nostalgia
Director : ShenChaofang
Duration：3’19″
2012.7
Modern essence and war have no big difference, both deprive of our family life. I want to use a calm and lens language to thank our daily life. I also want to return to this kind of life.
My new images come back to our traditional and regional historical context, looking for a kind of folk art particularly and the limit of the material, and the return to daily life, to avoid a virtual and city landscape.
Zhuo Zhuo
Director : Shen Chaofang
Duration：3’07″
2012
Daughter was born completely different from a pop tone of the consumer society. The Sixth Hospital of Beijing has an old movie texture. It is her father’s love and hope that she forgives my choice. This is my expectations to my daughter, hoping her to establish the ideal, simple values.
Beauty from Dust
Director : ShenChaofang
Duration：6’14″
2012
The photographer of ‘Beauty from Dust’ is near my apartment in Beijing where there is no moral dimension trial. Only the friendship between the subject and me during the filming adds some pleasures to their same, desperate life. The people from the bottom of the society look forward to the future. Their bodies are so beautiful that I am willing to discover their beauty.
Wave 4: The Premiere of Mao Chenyu’s New “Paddy Film”
Date：April 29th ~ May 5th 2013
Time：10:00 ~ 22:00
I Have What? Chinese Peasants War:The Rhetoric to Justice
Deconstruct the logic of survival of the new Chinese peasants, reconstruction of the subject of the farmers. If I was a revolution Mole, holding sharp teeth.I will have harvest: self-justice, rhetoric products, poetry and nihility.
