Friends Film Club: Chinese Animated Shorts
Wednesday 2 December 2015 7 - 11.59pm
Sir Hugh Casson Room, The Keeper’s House, Royal Academy of Arts
£12 (including popcorn and a drink). Friends only.
Friends of the RA book first
Terms and conditions
Friends Film Club presents the UK debut of ‘China Now: Independent Visions’, curated by Cinema on the Edge. The daring spirit and creative innovation of independent filmmakers is celebrated in this screening of animated short films from mainland China, showcasing the best of recent Chinese independent cinema.
We are privileged to present a programme of animated short films to Friends of the RA at our Friends Film Club from Cinema on the Edge. The imagination of independent filmmakers draws on techniques including cut out and line drawn animation, pen-and-ink drawings and claymation to present stories unable to be screened in China.
Booking is essential for this event, if you wish to bring a guest please book one ticket for each person.
Tickets include a welcome drink and popcorn. Total running time 108 minutes.
Full programme of films
苹果树 / Xingguo shu
Directed by Bai Bin, 2013
10’43”
A Tibetan fable, in vivid colours, of an indomitable tree, assailed yet triumphant.
双簧 / Shuanghuang
Directed by Ding Shiwei, 2013
4’38”
A black-and-white vision of the industrial surreal: bodies float between familiar bureaucratic monuments above; sunflowers grow below.
馬拉自在 / Ma la zizai
Directed by Chen Li-hua, 2012
18’
A-mei, a Taiwanese aboriginal woman working in a factory, is called home for the Harvest Festival, but her boss refuses. In Chen’s imaginative tale, illustrated with cut out and line drawn animation, a daughter’s powerful dreaming saves all.
在哪儿 / Zai nar
Directed by Zhang Yipin, 2013
5’07”
Traditional pen-and-ink drawings, animating a fuzzy-haired, ruddy-cheeked girl’s imaginative world of terror and freedom.
猎人与骷髅怪 / Lieren yu kulou gua
Directed by Bai Bin, 2012
26’07”
A spectacular animated version, flash plus thangka, of an Eastern Tibetan folk tale: when a hunter meets a fearsome skeleton monster, are they friends, or enemies?
镜室 / Jing shi
Directed by Zhou Xiaohu, 2012
7’35”
Master clay animator Zhou fashions a bathroom of hallucinatory reflections, where Lacan meets fascism.
新山海经 2 / Xin shan hai jing
Directed by Qiu Anxiong, 2007 - 2012
29’35”
Animating classic-styled ink and pen drawings, and filling them with quasi-nightmarish animal-machine forms, Qiu suggests a world under ecological collapse, where genetically tampered animal forms expire on earth and colonize the stars.
花好月圆 / Hua hao yue yuan
Directed by Zhong Su, 2014
5’26”
A gorgeous 3D animation unscrolling through Chinese history, from grey urban collapse to ultra-coloured consumer dystopia.
A film series unlike any other, Cinema on the Edge celebrates the daring spirit and creative innovation of independent filmmakers and festival organizers in mainland China.
This film series features 18 programs of outstanding recent Chinese independent cinema, showcasing the work of such acclaimed filmmakers as Ai Weiwei, Li Luo, Hu Jie, Zou Xueping and Yang Mingming. The series is organized and curated by three of Chinese independent cinema’s most committed supporters: producer and distributor Karin Chien, critic and curator Shelly Kraicer, and filmmaker and anthropologist J.P. Sniadecki. Seven of NYC’s most revered film and cultural institutions will present these works: Anthology Film Archives, Made in NY Media Center by IFP, Asia Society, Maysles Cinematheque, Museum of Chinese in America, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and UnionDocs.