2007 marks the 10th anniversary of the historic handover of Hong Kong to mainland China. A great deal has changed since then in both politics and cinema.
Evident of the convergence, the New Chinese Cinema series now features a variety of film productions originating from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Today kicks off this ambitious series of films, which was put together by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and California Institute of the Arts.
Twenty-one films will be shown over the course of October, running Oct. 5-26 at Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum and October 10-13 at Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Walt Disney Concert Hall.
“We are now 10 years after 1997, which was the year of the restoration of Hong Kong to mainland China. This is not without a very strong impact on culture and on the film industry,” said Bérénice Reynaud, co-curator of film/video programs at REDCAT. “We are actually showing a film by Jia Zhangke called “˜Ten Years’ which is a metaphorical exploration of what has happened between Hong Kong and Mainland China in these 10 years.”
In screening films from these “three Chinas,” Reynaud and his co-programmer Cheng-Sim Lim, co-head of exhibition and public programming at the Archive, sought to present a realistic portrait of the nature of filmmaking in the region.
“You have a Taiwanese DP (director of photography) working on a mainland Chinese film. You have a sound engineer from Taiwan working on a Hong Kong movie. … From the very beginning, (there was) a very strong exchange … between Taiwan and Hong Kong,” said Reynaud. “Until a few years ago, a movie made in Taiwan couldn’t be shown in mainland China” and vice versa.
“All this sort of “˜border crossing’ was going on, but the way in which the cinema was presented to audiences ““ in the West for example ““ (was) still hewing to the old political divisions,” said Lim.
Films from a variety of genres will be screened to offer an array of choices to viewers, ranging from documentaries to socially conscious dramas to crime thrillers.
“We did not differentiate between documentaries and fiction films, and what is important is the cinematic value of the film,” Reynaud said. “So we looked at everything that was critically important.”
There is also a large number of digital video productions among the films to be screened.
“Particularly in mainland China, the availability of low-cost digital cameras has really helped to fuel the spread of independent filmmaking beyond the traditional hub of Beijing,” Lim said. “There are lots of independent filmmakers all over the country now making movies because they can afford to do so.”
“Cui Zi’en, the godfather of queer underground cinema in Beijing, makes three or four movies in a row for less than $5,000 because he’s working digitally,” Reynaud said.
Not only is this year the 10th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover, but series co-programmers Lim and Reynaud have also worked together for the past 10 years to curate several film series. Lim noted the advantages of this year’s collaboration.
“Traffic in Los Angeles is as such that it is very difficult to get from one end of the town to another. We thought this would be a great opportunity for the program to become a crosstown venture so that we could expand beyond screenings at the Billy Wilder Theater on the Westside to the screenings downtown at REDCAT.”
And while international films might not pique everyone’s interest, Lim believes that this series will appeal to students.
“If you’re curious about what’s going on in the world…these are films made by filmmakers who are very engaged and have a lot to say about what’s going in their neck of the woods,” Lim said.