By Julia Pierrepont III
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- The 2018 fourth edition of the China Onscreen Biennial kicked off Friday night at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater in Los Angeles to a mixed capacity crowd of film-lovers, scholars, and students, both American and Chinese.
"I'm interested in Chinese filmmakers - they have a unique voice and lots to say," said Scott, a UCLA film student attending the Biennial.
The Biennial was launched in 2012 to redress the lack of quality Chinese cinema in the U.S. and to promote U.S.-China dialogue and greater cross-cultural understanding through the art of the moving image.
"What better stage than Los Angeles to bring together a rich array of Chinese film, to celebrate artistry, and mutual cultural understanding in the city where filmmaking is such an integral part of our lives," explains COB's Artistic Director, Cheng-Sim Lim.
Heralded as part film festival, part film series, and part film tour, the unique event is LA' s preeminent showcase of the best in current and iconic Chinese cinema.
To align their organizational policies with their goals, the Biennial adopted a unique team-curatorial approach, eliciting recommendations from such diverse, high profile partner institutions as, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), The Film at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre), the Asia Society Southern California, The AFI Fest, and the Asia World Film Festival.
Their grand experiment has paid off handsomely, resulting in a stellar showcase of exceptional Chinese works - some drawn from the top ranks of existing Chinese filmmakers with a handful of breakout newbies, as well as other artists and formats.
"This year we have not only a selection of the best new short and feature films from china, but an accompanying array of music, arts, conversations and celebrations all curated with care by an extraordinary team of programmers," Paul Malcolm, programmer at UCLA' s renowned Film and Television Archive told Xinhua Saturday.
Opening night unveiled the West Coast premier of Bi Gan's haunting "Long Day's Journey Into Night," a China-France co-production which world-premiered in May in Cannes's high profile Un Certain Regard section. It's being released in North America by Kino Lorber.
Well-written, with startlingly-fresh, uniquely-crafted scenes and stunning cinematography, Gan's sophomore film pulls viewers into an evocative, labrynthian dreamscape reminiscent of such directorial greats as Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Fellini, Scorsese, and Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad," but which he makes uniquely his own.
The brooding protagonist, played intensely by Huang Jue, sets out to track-down a lost love, played compellingly by Tang Wei, but ends up trapped in an oneiric maze complete with karaoke-caroling king-pins, smart-ass urchins, and tantalizing glimpses of the love that could have been.
A convincing star-turn by the iconic Taiwanese-born Silvia Chang and Gan's tour-de-force, 59-minute single-take sequence in 3D that literally forces the audience into drifter Luo Hongwu's dreamscape are icing on the cake.
Artistic Director Lim points out, "Bi Gan is a poet. Maybe it takes a poet who didn't go to film school to upend our schooled associations, to audaciously propose the camera as a devise to explore time and editing as a way to imagine space."
She continued, "His dream-state may be closer to reality than what we call reality." She encouraged viewers as they watch to "forget clinging to the construct of plot or, as the Buddhists might say, the Self."
But not everyone was mesmerized. One young Chinese film student, Sha Zhang, dismissed the film in an interview with Xinhua as, "derivative of other great directors."
He felt Gan's use of well-known actors and "his juxtaposition of stylized, poetic dialogue with gritty, Tarantino-type scenes made the film feel inauthentic and contrived."
This year's China Onscreen Biennial's "Best of" showcase also includes first-time director, Yang Mingming's, more personal dramedy, "Girls Always Happy," which highlights the love-hate emotional yoyo that governs many mother-daughter relationships.
"It's a relationship I understand," Yang revealed to Xinhua.
"But in my own culture and country. I'm not sure of anywhere else," she explained, adding that she thought she'd have to stay in the U.S. for at least years to get a sense of how similar relationships worked here.
COB's Artist-in-Residence program will feature the renowned, Jia Zhangke, one of China's more famous and prolific sixth generation directors and the winner of the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion Award.
Many of his seminal works will be screened in LA, including "Still Life," "Ash is Purest White," "A Touch of Sin," "Xiao Wu," "Platform," "The World," and "Revive."
"We're thrilled to present the most expansive and culturally significant selection of films in the history of our event," said Cheng-Sim Lim.
The bicoastal event will run from Oct. 19 through Nov. 11 in LA, screening at multiple venues across the city, then travel to Washington D.C. from Nov. 2 to 11, and wrap up in New York on Dec. 2.
