US PREMIERE BEIJING FLICKERS 2012 有种

OCTOBER 23, 2012 8:30 PM

Co-presented by the UCLA Confucius Institute and REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater California Institute of the Arts US PREMIERE BEIJING FLICKERS 2012 有种 Tue Oct 23 | 8:30 pm Jack H. Skirball Series

Director/Producer: Yuan. Screenwriter: , Kong Ergou, Li Xinyun, Yang Yishu. Cinematographer: Zhang Yuan, Cai Tao. Production Designer: An Bin. Editor: Wu Yixiang. Sound: Zhao Bo. Cast: Duan Bowen, Lv Yulai, Shi Shi, Li Xinyun, Han Wenwen. HDCAM, color, Putonghua with English subtitles, 96 min.

With his 13th film,Beijing Flickers, one of the most original and audacious voices of the Sixth Generation/Urban Generation of Chinese filmmakers returns to his inspiration in the 1990s, and artfully mixes documentary and fiction to delve into youth subculture in a society changing at full blast. In the last 20 years, however, disparities between rich and poor have become even starker. And Zhang Yuan is no longer the skinny young man who didn’t have enough to eat. In Beijing Flickers, he makes a cameo appearance as a drunken “big brother” that a penniless young driver has to bring back home - one generation of misfits looking the other in the eye with gentle irony.

The film stems from interviews Zhang conducted with hundreds of 20-somethings when he was working on his photography exhibition; the sitters’ stories are the foundation of the screenplay. Dumped by his girlfriend for a rich man, San Bao descends into a self-destructive spiral and meets several other kindred souls: a narcissistic drag queen addicted to cosmetic surgery and poetry; a female singer kicked out by her band because the other musicians hope to win a record contract by hiring someone else; a girl jilted by her corporate boss/lover. In Beijing’s melting pot of social contradictions and hybrid cultural values, Zhang Yuan captures the vulnerability, but also the energy, the idealism and the romanticism of the new “lost generation” bypassed by ’s entry into the globalized market economy. — Bérénice Reynaud

Los Angeles is the first city in the world to host the completeBeijing Flickers project, with a pop-up exhibition of Zhang Yuan’s recent photography - presented with support from the Chinatown Business Improvement District and Mandarin Plaza, and curated by Los Angeles gallerist Lois Lambert (Oct. 20-28) - as a companion event to the US premiere of the film these photographs inspired. Mandarin Plaza, Suites 109-110 970 North Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90012 Information: www.chinatownla.com, 213.680.0243

“Internationally acclaimed director and producer Zhang Yuan has become one of China’s leading cinematic voices with his urban realist works.” - Harvard Film Archive

Beijing Flickers is co-presented with the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens 2013 film series.

Beijing Flickers will be preceded by

West Coast Premiere SOME ACTIONS WHICH HAVEN’T BEEN DEFINED YET IN THE REVOLUTION 2011 一场革命中还未来得及定义的行为 Director/Producer/Screenwriter: Sun Xun. Editor: Xu Chong, Sun Xun, Tang Bohua. Composer: Jin Shan. Animated using woodblock prints, SOME ACTIONS uses pulsating, hallucinatory imagery to evoke a Kafkaesque atmosphere of grotesquery, anxiety and vague ideological constrictions. “I only ask questions,” says animator Sun Xun. “It’s up to the viewer to think about what he has seen. And to come up with his own answers.” — Tom Vick HDCAM, color, 13 min.

Born in , Zhang Yuan received a BA in Cinematography from the in 1989. Refusing his assignment to the August Film Studio, he directed Mama (1990), the first Chinese independent film since 1949, triggering what became known as the Sixth Generation. Zhang fused documentary and fiction in (1993) and Sons (1996), and directed the first Chinese gay film, East Palace West Palace (1997), which showed at Cannes. He started working in the official studio system with Seventeen Years (1999), and directed two films inspired by the “hooligan” writer Wang Shuo: I Love You (2002) and (2006).

Born in Liaoning Province in 1980, Sun Xun studied printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, then founded the animation studio Pi in 2006. To make his meticulous animations, Sun uses traditional calligraphy techniques to produce drawings on canvas, silk and printed matter; these are then hand-copied frame by frame to create flickering effects and complex, multilayered textures. Sun’s films have been shown in festivals in China, France, Germany and at New York’s Anthology Film Archives. His original drawings, meanwhile, have been exhibited in galleries and museums in China, Europe and the U.S. The China Onscreen Biennial (COB) events take place at venues across Los Angeles from October 13-31, 2012, including at the UCLA Film and Television in Westwood, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Hollywood, Pomona College, REDCAT in Downtown Los Angeles, and a pop-up gallery at the Mandarin Plaza in Chinatown. For a complete program schedule and theater and ticketing information, please visit the UCLA Confucius Institute’s website at: www.confucius.ucla.edu/cob

The program at REDCAT is curated by Cheng-Sim Lim and Bérénice Reynaud. The Jack H. Skirball Series (Film at REDCAT) is funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

UPCOMING FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS AT REDCAT FALL 2012

Fri Oct 26, Sat Oct 27 & Sunday Oct 28: Platform International Animation Festival Mon Oct 29: Silent Mountains, Singing Oceans, And Slivers Of Time: Six Films By David Gatten Mon Nov 5: Poetics of Place: Films By Rose Lowder Wed Nov 7: Revival Screening: Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Surname Viet, Given Name Nam Mon Nov 19: Thom Andersen Meets Souto de Moura: Reconversão

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