WHAT was missed: The 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival (BIFF)

WHEN things went down: August 23rd (scheduled to run through August 31)

WHERE films were to be shown: Beijing’s Songzhuang artists’ district, at the Li Xianting Film Fund

HOW MANY films were denied an audience: 76. 76!!

BIFF, as the Beijing Independent Film Festival is onomatopoeically acronym-ed, has delivered on the drama — just not cinematically, as the eight-day festival was scheduled to do.

Although 76 films were denied an audience, BIFF still offered a corporal challenging of ideologies. On kick-off day, friendly local police escorted festival organizers back to theirs, where they all had a spirited chat about the indie film scene. For about five hours. Meanwhile, back at the theater, plainclothes enforcers adopted a “please turn off your cellphones and no flash photography” approach to the screenings. They wanted to ensure that the films were given the appropriate amount of respect – by not allowing anyone to watch them. As BIFF’s artistic director, Dong Bingfeng, said last year: “Film is the most dangerous thing by far.”

This street theater might be as good as the films themselves, but we’ll never know. So how about a gag review? Because: absurdity. Here is a taste of what never was, broken down by could-be categories and awards of subversion, dreamed by yours truly, selected at random for no reason (this is what you get when the professionals are silenced):

Best Ensemble/The Porn Cup

The VaChina Monologues by director Popo Fan

Though the pedestrian titling may encourage a troublesome pronunciation for non-native English speakers, kudos to the women involved who learned to love their 阴道.

Best Animation/The Compromise of Our Children’s Innocence Award

The Chaotic Space of Nihility and Dissolving, Melting and Shattering Phenomenon of Time by director Wu Xiang

A dark-toon depicting human nonexistence. Show it to your kids next time they seem a little too well-adjusted.

Best Musical/Political Satire, Weirdness Winner

DSA XXX: Nothing Ever Changes in the Ever-changing Republic of Ek-Ek-Ek by director KHAVN

The Mighty Boosh meets dissonance about ongoing political strife in the Philippines. True to Pinoy form, everybody sings and dances.

Best Romance/HIPSTERS.

Why Spend The Dark Night With You by director Antoine Mocquet

Everything we love about Gulou. Or hate. #Whatever.

Sounds awesome, no? Get your tickets… NEVER.

For readers with acute F.O.M.O. (fear of missing out), you’re probably close to tears. What a phenomenal selection of artists and films, such potential! To the embattled filmmakers and their crews brave enough to try and take part, jia you!  Hope to catch you in a theater near us, someday. BIFF!!

Danielle Sumita writes, directs, and produces the video series Sindicator. She lives in Shanghai.

Han Han: like his work, a mood piece

Witty but otherwise empty, The Continent manages to show again that its director-scriptwriter, Han Han, is a dab hand at word games, but possibly little more. Dwelling on the dreams and confusion of modern Chinese youth, a theme that features tirelessly in his novels, the writer (and occasional race-car driver) chooses to tell his tale story from behind the wheel — another safe zone. But directionless and self-absorbed, the journey is more drag than race. Its title song, “The Ordinary Road,” says it all.

[SPOILERS ALERT] Wishing to explore the world outside and look for a pen pal he has fallen in love with, Ma Haohan (William Feng, Painted Skin 2) leaves the small island he grew up on, with two friends: Jiang He (Wilson Chen, Buddha Mountain), a nerdy geography teacher, and Hu Sheng, the narrator (who disappears from the screen after day one). Jiang, a hopelessly naive idealist, soon loses his heart to Su Mi, a “call girl” (May Wang, Driverless), while Ma, who turns out to be less well-rounded and sophisticated than he claims, finds that his epistolary ‘dream girl’ Liu Yingying (Yolanda Yuan, Like a Dream) is actually his half-sister, who’s been hiding the ugly truth about their father from him for decades.

Not discouraged by the lies upon lies they are told, the bumbling pair pick up yet another stranger in A Lyu, an astronomy fan and former motorcyclist who claims to have “lost” his bike and wife. Just as the two begin to trust him, he steals their car. And that is pretty much it. [ENDS SPOILERS]

The deliberate juxtaposition of the two travelers in their crisscrossing countryside escapades guarantees conflict – Ma is a supposedly street-smart taxi driver turned security guard, while Jiang is instantly recognizable as a wenyi qingnian (“cultural youth”), bearing ridiculous glasses and poems learned by heart (even his job sounds straight out of a Cultural Revolution memoir). Yet for the best part of the film’s 100 minutes, the two live in all-but-parallel worlds, only occasionally trading snarky comments with each other. “Cheaters can be trusted partially too!” says Jiang, after their car is stolen by Lyu: Han hopes such lines depict the multiplicity of his character’s inner lives, but should realize by now that telling a story on paper is different from on the screen.

Poster for ‘The Continent’

The females appear, by comparison, better developed. Certainly, their struggles are more compelling than those of Han’s listless, dreamy men. Su’s fraudulent ways are the desperate act of a mother dreaming of giving birth in a foreign country while Yingying chooses to calmly spell out the brutal truth over pool, rather than admit her feeling for Ma. The relative success of their characters only destabilises the drama, making the men look even feebler.

And when the actors start uttering carefully crafted dialogue about life and love (“You haven’t even viewed the world, how can you have a worldview?” asks one. Another consoles, “If you like someone, indulge. But if you love someone, refrain”), it sounds like chicken soup for the soul, served up at a rural Henan funeral. The Continent only offers the kaleidoscope of modern society a road film demands when the two leads are off-camera.

Zhou Mo, for example, a friend they visit, works as an extra in an anti-Japanese war film, a genre encouraged by the government since the 1990s. Su Mi, when told by Jiang that he’s a teacher, mimics a student (“Hello, teacher”), echoing the Dongguan nightclub role-play scene in Jia Zhangke’s infinitely superior A Touch of Sin. Su Mi’s life plan is also a true-to-life epitome of the middle class Chinese Dream (‘get rich and get out’). But what entertained the audience in the Beijing cinema I went to was a line from motorcyclist Lyu, who says his first road trip was delayed in Beijing because “the traffic’s so bad, even the motorcycles can’t move.”

If Jia Zhangke’s masterpieceweaves together the fates of four disparate wanderers, all from the underclass of modern China, Han draws instead on a single generation, the balinghou (post-80s) he grew up with. What these people share is not elite exploitation but insecurity about the future. Cynical cabbie Ma may seem to be the fictionalized race driver himself, but the artistic and clearly more thoughtful Jiang seem closer to the younger, idealistic defiant Han. He was loyal to his faith pushing the boundaries of his dreams; he made it. But the sceptical and pessimistic Ma is what’s left after years of fighting the Man— the government, critics, those who like him, those who don’t. He’s tired and in the end, surrenders.

The book The Continent most resemblesis Han’s 2010 road fiction 1988: I Want to Talk with the World, about a young man driving a Jeep,“1988,” to pick up its owner. As in The Continent, there’s a petty romance with a prostitute – Han likes to present this modern Chinese society through their dejected tales –but also darker, political themes. AIDS, corruption, the death of a dissident in a Tibetan jail, the slaughter of ’89, are all alluded to in Han’s dexterous wordplay (a technique initially developed to evade censorship) but he’s clearly incapable – or unable – of translating that visually.

For millions, myself included, he is still the defiant 16 year old who dared to challenge authority with his sarcasm and smirks. He represented the bravery and integrity we longed to have ourselves. Young adults liked him not only because he was cool but it was cool to like him at the time. Whether Han still is (cool) or not, the sight of fans of Guo Jingming, whose much-derided Tiny Times 3 premiered a week before The Continent, can still induce disdainful sneers at these “wannabe materialists.”

That makes us feel good about ourselves. What shouldn’t engender much pride is how lacking in superiority Han’s product is to Guo’s trilogy (and the only thing preventing the pair from box-office domination is Transformers 4). “I wasted too much essaying in the past years…although they carried my thoughts and may perhaps have had its social meaning.” Han told film critic Cheng Qingsong last week. “Artworks last longer by comparison… Essays are like one night stands, but films and novels are like love… I think I should do more of them.” As an actor, maybe.

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Er… what?

Described by one excited attendee as “the stupidest, most Z-list thing ever… a fake award ceremony with fake red carpet,” the “expat Oscars” (as no one is calling it) was hosted by this nubile pair:

On the right is Mark Regan, a “Weatherman Anchor” at CCTV. (Mark’s previous role was “Import / Export Manager at Beijing W&G Trading Co,” so TV was the obvious next step.) His co-host is Shenzhen TV’s Yue Xu.

Other expat luminaries going viral on the interwebs are “uprising actor Greg Schroeder” (video apparently exists)

Greg, tell us about your uprising

“Mr. Albania Rolando Lekja”

So, you’re Mr. Albania – or your first name is Albania? It’s confusing

“Well-known actor Ludi Lin” (whose credits include The Shannon Entrophy)

When Ludi proposes, you say YES (or you don’t get your hand back)

And Frank from This is Sanlitun, who apparently turned up in character. Awesome do-rag.

Did you know Frank’s real name is Chris?

Our source told us, “Everyone seemed nice ­– it was all just a little bit sad.” And how. No Cao Cao; not even Carlos Ottery? Saaaaad.

Were you a guest at the Expats in Chinese Film and TV Awards? Did you win an award? Please do not get in contact with us.

Called “the stupidest movie of the year” and “one of the most atrocious movies I have ever seen in my life” — so bad that even Peter Travers, a man who loved King Kong, urged viewers to not watch it – Transformers: Age of Extinction just might be the frontrunner for worst movie of the year. Funny thing: it’s also the frontrunner for highest grossing movie of the year, after Chinese audiences just made this film the No. 1 movie in China of all time.

That’s right, move aside, Avatar and James Cameron, because Michael Bay’s fourth Transformers film has just surpassed you. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

After only 10 days in release, Paramount’s Transformers: Age of Extinction has become the top-grossing movie of all time in China with $222.7 million in ticket sales, eclipsing the $221.9 million grossed by James Cameron’s Avatar. The 3D tentpole achieved the milestone over the weekend.

I have not and will not be watching this film unless I’m black-out drunk and ensured of not remembering any of it, but a friend that did see it recently watch raved (is that the right word?) about the “fellatio” of Chinese products. Apparently China Construction Bank now has ATMs in Texas?

As Quartz points out:

A co-production between Paramount and Chinese studios, the film includes Chinese actors and Chinese product placements, from Lenovo computers to Yili milk and some of China’s largest banks.

The box-office success of such an epic cinematic failure makes us think though: there just might be hope yet for Empires of the Deep.

China Box Office: ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ Is No. 1 Film of All Time (The Hollywood Reporter)

Editor’s note: Empires of the Deep, with a budget exceeding $100 million, was supposed to be China’s Avatar. But as our correspondent, Dale Irons, found out on set, this extravagant 3-D epic was plagued from the beginning by incompetence and misfortune — to say nothing of dangerous working conditions, a rampaging horse, and the tide. Five years after production began, there’s little reason to believe this film will ever see a big-screen release.

This is Part 2 of Dale’s two-part diary from the set of what might be China’s most expensive — and worst — movie ever. Catch up with Part 1 here, in which our correspondent fibs his way into a role before realizing he’d be forced to cut off his locks to play a merman. -RFH

~

As promised, the day of reckoning has finally come. I had managed to avoid my appointment with the razor for almost three weeks but couldn’t hide any longer. I would be reborn as a merman.

This is when things genuinely turned ugly. The eight or so merman extras were told to be ready by 4:30 am in order to get to the studio for make-up. Our previous night’s shooting had only left us in bed by 2 am, so we were more than a little tired. We arrived and put on our rubber suit for the first time. Not the most comfortable thing, but the novelty of becoming some type of mermaid soldier was exciting for about an hour. Perhaps unsurprisingly to anyone who’s observed how lowly Chinese employees are often asked to don ill-fitting costumes, the suit proved baggy around the neck, arms and legs. Their solution was to glue the suit to our skin, starting with the legs.

After they had finished gluing my hands, I began to experience some minor irritation. I examined the bottles they were using and, sure enough, found a large warning in bold caps: Avoid contact with skin.” By the time they’d finished affixing a fin to my naked scalp, my entire body was experiencing a mild burning sensation. My scalp, freshly denuded and exposed to the elements for the first time in years, was undergoing God knows what culture shock: I could picture the toxics pouring like Viking raiders through my vulnerable pores and into my bloodstream.

By the time the face make-up had been completed, it was 9 am. We emerged into the studio to find not a single member of the crew present. It wasn’t for another seven hours that shooting finally began at 4 pm; I was told to “get used to it.”

The filming itself took 30 minutes, before it was time to remove our suits and accessories. Some type of alcohol was used for the avoid-contact-with-skin glue. My head fin wasn’t done with me: it left an angry, horseshoe-shaped mark behind. I was told not to “worry.”

We arrived home around 2 am again only told to be ready to get fishy again at 4 am.

After a few weeks of this nonsense, we set off to film somewhere in a cave. Only it wasn’t so much a cave as an abandoned quarry. Given China’s safety record with mining, this didn’t feel like the most safety-conscious shoot, but, hell, I was no longer being doused daily in toxic glue, so I went along with it.

Back in my curly wig and acting helpless, I noticed that every single crew member was wearing a hard hat. Every. Single. One. Except us — neither the pirates (our enemies!) nor my fellow villagers had been offered any means of keeping our precious skulls safe.

I’d already been marked down as a troublemaker, so when the pirates settled down to a feast at a picnic table, and we were chained to a wall, I said nothing. Then in came the horse again (that bloody horse); I was surprised it didn’t have a hard hat on, too. The animal had somehow been instructed to jump over the feasting table. After several failed attempts, I was glad to be bald, chained to the wall and persona non grata, rather than in the path of those hooves — which were under the command of local personnel who clearly had no concern if anyone else died or had their bones crushed.

Then, with a sudden almighty crash, the reason for all those helmets became apparent. A chunk of rock, around a meter across, came crashing down from somewhere on high and landed, destroying a spotlight. The cry went up immediately from the crew: “Don’t worry!”

Yet someone clearly was worried, because after a few more days, eventually even our crew of Jackass rejects were wondering whether the disused quarry was just too dangerous a work environment. As extras we were simply expendable. It was now the depths of winter; the conditions could not have been worse. The last thing we heard was that they would return in spring to finish the quarry shooting.

By this time, my hair was beginning to grow back, except for around the site of the horseshoe welt on my scalp. “If you don’t like it, go back to Beijing,” the casting director would now snap at my every approach. I was no longer viewed as an annoying gadfly but an actual menace to production. My complaints had annoyed just about everyone on set and my inappropriate amusement at the storyline and script hadn’t done me any favors either.

[Ed.’s note: the original script was written by the film’s main cheerleader and wallet, 43-year-old supposed "billionaire mogul" Jon Jiang. By 2010, it had gone through “40 drafts with the help of 10 Hollywood screenwriters,” according to the New York Times]

By this time, we’d relocated to Fujian province: namely, a small town called Qinyu, which you may have seen sometimes on the news in recent years for its infamous, deadly floods. Our hotel had spared no expense with a large red “big character” banner to welcome the production. Other than the aforementioned flooding problem, not much happens in Qinyu, so the Empires shoot was big news in the town. The locals, led to believe they would catch a glimpse of some famous actors, had already begun loitering around the hotel in clusters. How wrong they were: Cao Cao hadn’t even turned up yet.

[Ed.'s note: Stars would be in short supply, anyway. After numerous Hollywood actors turned down roles, the lead went to Italian actress Monica Bellucci. Belluci pulled out and was replaced by Bond girl Olga Kurylenko: she remains the headliner. Rest of the cast, including Angry Villager, here.]

So it wasn’t for another week that filming would begin, this time on the beach. This was a welcome change from the dullness of the studio and the dangers of the quarry. The whole scene was essentially an invasion: mermen emerging from the water and running along the beach till someone told them to stop.

Unfortunately, the shoot was marred by a daily Act of God no one could possibly have ever envisaged: the tide. We would arrive in the morning; the usual confusion would mean we began filming in the afternoon, and then the twin enemies of fading natural light and the rising tide would wreak havoc upon every plan for that day. We would literally film for a maximum of one or two hours each day. The extent to which the quotidian twin events of sunset and tide plagued filming – events you could literally set your watch by — was far worse than any pirate raid, mermen invasion, or maritime war.

By now, we must have been at least three months behind schedule. Actors and crew were threatening to leave daily, due to not being paid and the production running way over schedule. The director at the time, Jonathan Lawrence, had clearly had enough.

[Ed.'s note: Lawrence was shortly to leave the shoot. After five months’ filming in difficult conditions (“aside from slippery wet rocks in pouring rain, this included a cave that was falling apart and dangerous crushing equipment,” according to an “anonymous source” quoted in a sci-fi blog), his contract expired and somehow did not meet the requirements for renewal. Lawrence’s exit followed the earlier walkout of the singularly named director Pitof, of Catwoman infamy (Catwoman for Chrissake!), along with the sideways promotion of Empire Strikes Back and Robocop 2’s Irvin Kershner from director to executive producer, which didn’t stop him from eventually bouncing, either. IMDB now lists two directors, Michael French -- who we’ve never heard of but has something called Heart of a Dragon to his cinematic credit -- and Scott Miller (ditto; did camera work on 2000’s Bus Driver’s Union).]

Meanwhile, the stunt director was frustrated at dealing with a plethora of unprofessional action experts like myself. Like the troubled underwater productions of Titanic and Waterworld, everything seemed to be turning into an expensive disaster movie.

On what felt like Day 236, we were informed that the empire would be marching up a neighboring mountain in order to film a line-up scene. The minibus twisted and turned up the dangerous winding paths with the blaring horn as the sole safety device. Upon reaching the summit, we donned our fish suits, although this time I refused to apply their glue to my neck due to a rash. This seemed to go unnoticed (the make-up artists had had enough of my non-stop bitching by this point).

We were to stand in a row as the camera swooped over in a horizontal line, much like a football team during the national anthem. Things seem to go rather smoothly.

On the descent, though, I overheard a phone call where my name was repeated several times, accompanied by troubled groans from the recipient. Back at the hotel, word soon went round that I was in the soup.

The problem? That damn glue again.

On reviewing the day’s footage, my bare neck had been spotted by the crew. I was not given a chance to argue my point, or even point to my rash. The verdict was already in: “Tomorrow you go back to Beijing!” The empire had finally struck back.

My dismissal, while humiliating, had probably been a long time coming. My stunt acting and fight scenes had been lackluster to say the least: It had taken ten takes for me to simply fall from a rooftop on wires. I had failed to fire plastic arrows at imaginary targets. I couldn’t even look mean on camera. A week before, I had armed my fellow mermen with BB guns we found at a nearby toy store and recreated scenes from The Matrix in the hotel corridors. By a tragic and unforeseen accident, the casting director had gotten himself caught in the crossfire. My card was marked.

On the train home, though, I was smiling. All said and done, it was damn good fun and I would do it all over again. As one blogger, who seemed to have some impressive behind-the scenes access, optimistically noted in 2010: “Empires of the Deep is planned as the first of a trilogy [and] scheduled for a 2011 release. Hopefully, it will rise above accusations of resource mismanagement, financial issues, poor production decisions, corner-cutting, inexperienced extras and the other problems.”

I couldn’t agree less. Fingers crossed that the movie does live up (or down) to all the hype — after all, not many people can say they starred in the worst movie ever made; even fewer can say they were from sacked from it.

According to Douban, Empires of the Deep was rescheduled for an August 2013 release. It never happened. The latest IMDB update, from October 2013, lists it as under post-production.

Part 1 of Dale Irons’s account is here.

Editor’s note: Empires of the Deep is a much-delayed 3-D epic film that seems destined to disappear forever — for various unexplained but guessable reasons. Neither the film — known rather generously as “China’s Avatar,” starring Bond girl Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) – nor the full story may ever be officially released. The New York Times profiled the film as far back as 2010, reporting a summer 2011 release. Much later, word on Douban had it that that this supposed USD$150 million flick — financed by real estate mogul Jon Jiang — was slated for cinemas around August 2013. That date has clearly come and gone with no sign of the maritime epic’s splashdown.

It’s now been five years — an appropriate anniversary — so, tired of waiting, we here publish the “production diaries” of a young Australian-British man, Dale Irons, who found himself back in 2009, for various reasons, on the set of allegedly the most expensive Chinese film ever made — and possibly the worst. Big words? Read for yourself. -RFH

~

It all began with a distant classified ad calling for extras for a big-budget Hollywood-style movie about mermaids, or some such shit.

Desperate for cash and willing to sell any pride (and later, any bodily harm) at whatever price to keep me away from a room full of screaming, irritating spoilt brats, this former English teacher took down the address and time. I’d seen Splash with my mother once back in the day, so I was positively swimming with confidence: oh yeah.

Arriving at the audition at Beijing’s The Place [Ed.’s note: This is a ritzy strip mall actually called The Place] I rendezvoused with my old high-school chum, Ryan. We had moved to Harbin from Australia together in 2006, but unlike my own, unaccomplished self, he was managing a rather large nightclub, which he never ceased to shut up about. (Maybe that’s a bit harsh: give me a few drinks and I’ll bore you to tears with my so-called “near-death experiences” in that notorious Dongbei city.)

It became apparent rather quickly that I was at a cattle market for agents, with four or five frantically trying to grab their merchandise to make it clear which livestock they were representing.

The confused herd, about 80 souls in all, was eventually ready to be presented to the casting director, who we’ll call Chen; his rented office was awash with mysterious sea scenes, maritime props, and strange figurines.

Chen, who looked somewhat goblin-like himself, made a speech that at least 80 percent of us did not remotely understand. His assistant proceeded to dramatically reduce this into a few short, welcoming sentences, and then it was down to business.

Chen asked anyone with acting experience to raise their hands and fill out an application form. I had exactly zero background on set; I raised my hand. Filling the form, I populated my resume with fictional commercials, every Australian film we could remember, a TV series in which I was the lead, and thank God IMDB was blocked in China at that time.

After a brief reading, we were asked if we had any “fighting or action experience.” Yes: tons. For my friend — built like a tank with a voice so deep he was actually able to bass you out of a conversation — this wasn’t actually so far from the truth, although the acting was mostly of the “fucking and fighting” variety, in assorted bars and clubs. With my shoulder-length hair and somewhat effete manner, I cringed at the thought of a demonstration of such skills. Luckily, they took my word for it.

After our turn in front of a camera, we were told we would be contacted in a few days if we were successful. The huddle of agents warned their potential stars that we must mention their names if we were successful.

That same night, we went out to dinner to ponder our potential career shift. Around9 pm, Ryan’s phone rang. It was the agent: we had not been successful. Disappointed, we continued to drink. Thirty minutes later, my phone rang. It was Chen’s assistant: we had been successful. We were going to be “featured extras.” And, yes, our faithful agent had unfortunately been cut out of the deal.

After signing a six-month contract, we were told to pack enough belongings for the entirety of the contract and be at Fuxingmen subway at 3 pm a week later.

I flung some crap in a rucksack and was ready to set off for a city we had never heard of, somewhere in Hebei, to film a movie we had no idea about, by a director we’d never heard of, in a language we didn’t understand. It seemed like it would be a fairly typical China adventure.

Arriving at the shoot’s chosen hotel, a basic number, we were invited to relax for an hour before visiting the casting director’s room to hear who we’d be playing.

During the audition, we’d been told that extras would either be mermen or pirates; that much we knew. The crucial part was that the merman role required a complete removal of all head hair. The pirates, meanwhile, would get to keep all theirs. On the elevator down, one of the ripped-off agents from earlier told me I looked like Johnny Depp and would certainly be cast as a pirate. (I look nothing like Johnny Depp, though a drunk Dutch girl once told me I reminded her of Adrian Brody.)

We assembled to await our filmic fate. After the Depp comment, I was confident I’d get to keep my shoulder-length hair and movie-star looks. Alas, as the pirates’ names were being read out, I realized mine was not among them. And after much arguing, moaning, whining, and outright bitching, my name still wasn’t among them: like it or not, I was going Full Mer.

On Day One of the shoot, I was roused from slumber by a rhythmic moaning to find my gorilla-sized pal curled around an unopened water barrel (I later discovered he’d inexplicably pilfered it from reception). The sight of his hairy back, glistening with beads of sweat, was almost harsher than the prospect of a full day’s shooting.

An early-morning minivan took us to the set, where I was introduced to our main role in the production: hanging around, waiting. Followed by more waiting, followed by sudden mass confusion, followed by further waiting. Eventually, the entire production crew gathered to point incense sticks in each nautical direction for good luck.

This was the first and only time when spirits were high.

For the first few weeks, the featured extras (including me) were tasked with playing what could best be described as Roman guards or Spartans in a village scene from 300. Much of the downtime waiting was thus spent kicking each other in the stomachs and shouting: “This is HEBEI!”

The set was populated by various poorly treated farm animals, plus some Russians who were bussed in daily. They were never the same Russians — so let’s hope no one pays too much attention to the blacksmith or butcher in the background.

My first close-up was simple: I had to confront the hero of the movie, who was demanding to be let through the town gates. “You shall not pass!” I told him bluntly and, to my money, theatrically. I was immediately informed that my lines would be dubbed, as I didn’t have a speaking-role contract; I wasn’t that surprised, except by the fact that they appeared to be taking the contracts seriously.

A week later came my first taste of some of the film’s continuity problems. I was informed that, as well as playing a village guard and a merman soldier, I would also be playing one of four helpless villagers who would be captured by the pirates. Wow, they really are getting their money’s worth, I thought.

Obviously, my face had already been captured on camera not letting any damn man pass, but it wasn’t until I was adorned in my Helpless Peasant robes and ready for action that someone else spotted that fact. The obvious solution, which I presented immediately, would simply be to recast me as a pirate — but the crew had other plans. The make-up team was called in to uglify me. I pondered the possibilities: prosthetic nose? A nasty, prominent scar? They decided on a curly wig — the perfect disguise.

For the first scene featuring the pirate raid, a wooden cage had been constructed, which was dragged in by a very unwilling and somewhat angry horse. The animal first came charging into the studio unheralded, and to the alarm of a crowd of Russian extras who had to scatter wildly. After a good half-hour spent calming the beast down, the crew told me to jump up and sit on top of the cage. My first taste of danger in the empire, and my fate was in the hands (or rather, hooves) of an untrained stallion. The cage gained momentum as the nag flew into the village, myself perched perilously atop. Cut. Phew. Danger over… Take two. Wait, what? It would take many more terrifying takes before the horse hit its mark and we were allowed down to live another day…

Continue to Part 2 of Dale’s diary on the set of Empires of the Deep, China’s most expensive — and possibly worst — movie.

I’m back writing about Ai Weiwei, which isn’t what I particularly want to be doing, but as he seems to be the only Chinese artist known or cared about by a wider (Western) audience, here we are. This continued, and likely mutually beneficial, publicity for AWW has led to yet another documentary focusing on the trials and tribulations — well, mostly the trials — of him as he continues to work as an artist and professional dissident. Less than two years since the release of Alison Klayman’s comprehensive and engaging Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, filmmaker Andreas Johnsen has decided the time is ripe for the public to be updated on the further adventures of Weiwei beyond his own very active engagement with his fans via Twitter, Instagram, and other virtual platforms.

The product, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, has been declared by many to be a documentary sequel (or some awkward portmanteau to that effect), and it does indeed pick up almost exactly where Never Sorry left off, with footage of AWW returning home after his release from prison. The film follows Ai’s attempts to seek answers and justice after his detention in 2011, when he was held for 81 days before being charged with the dubious offense of tax fraud. In order to retain both his good name and hold the Chinese government to its stated standard of judicial proceedings, Ai seeks to prove his innocence even as his lawyers are threatened and abandon his case, he is kept under house arrest and secretly tailed, and his art practice is all but completely shut down.

Those seeking insight into Ai’s current work as an artist will mostly be disappointed: this documentary is much more the chronicle of a censured political activist than the typical artist bio-doc that Never Sorry was. Johnsen expects, and probably rightly so, that the audience will be familiar with Ai’s background — his early life and history, his time in New York, his rise to international fame – and instead focuses solely on AWW’s daily life under house arrest. Johnsen paints the picture of a despondent and frustrated man: Ai seems crushed by boredom and exasperated with his inability to create. While his struggle is undeniably an important aspect of his life, it does make for somewhat monotonous viewing. The audience feels, perhaps by design, as trapped in the doldrums as Weiwei. However, Johnsen fails to convey both the artist’s urgent sense of purpose and creeping fear that dogs him, and so misses the opportunity to shake us out of our complacent stupor and into supportive action.

But one aspect of The Fake Case that feels fresh and stands out is its emphasis on Ai’s family life: his mutually supportive relationship with his mother and his bond and protective feelings toward his son, Ai Lao. Although we met Lao briefly in Never Sorry, Johnsen dedicates much more time to scenes of father and son: splashing in a pool, playing in an amusement park, and meeting neighborhood pets. Johnsen’s focus on this aspect of Ai’s life since arrest underscores not only the danger that looms over all of those standing by him, but also the uncertain future of Lao and his contemporaries who have been directly affected by oppression. The portrait of Ai Weiwei as a father is an unexpected one, and throws into sharper relief the personal sacrifices he faces by continuing to antagonize the government.

Although not an especially gripping film, especially because the chronicle of events from two and three years ago already seems woefully behind the times, fresh developments in Ai’s case and work are being seen and discussed in real time, so there are possible benefits to this seemingly unnecessary sequel. If The Fake Case is able to bring more light to not only Ai’s plight but those of other Chinese artists and their supporters who have been attacked, then it just might be worth the retread. Johnsen hopes to have secret screenings of the film in China if he is able to reenter the country, and Ai Weiwei, defiant as ever, has volunteered to host them. The Beijing crowd should listen for whisperings about that in the near future.

Hilary Chassé is a Brooklyn-based writer and archivist with a Masters in Chinese Art History. Follow her @chasseh

Matthew Niederhauser, who’s putting finishing touches on a film called Kapital Creation that documents Beijing’s development, recently uploaded a Vimeo featuring stunning aerial footage of this city. It’s interesting how a simple rotation of perspective can completely change how we view a place — and makes you realize the value of a window office atop a skyscraper (or a blimp). Watch the video; you’re unlikely to find urban Beijing rendered more beautifully.

The music is greeN by White+. Some screenshots:

In case you didn’t click through the Kapital Creation link, here’s the excellent preview for Niederhauser’s movie (made in conjunction with director/cinematographer John Fitzgerald):

When a movie makes Steven Spielberg cry, you can be sure of one thing: it was written for the express purpose of making people cry. Please take a look at the trailer for Coming Home, the new film by Zhang Yimou starring his muse Gong Li and the distinguished Chen Daoming. Then consider how Sinosphere described one particular audience’s reaction after a screening:

At a private screening in Beijing, many viewers sat for a long time after the end, dabbing their reddened eyes, especially elderly ones, and it’s one of the film’s extraordinary strengths that it deals with the process of aging so sensitively — a major challenge for China, where the population is graying fast.

Watching the trailer, there are two things you immediately notice: it’s beautifully shot, a period piece that gets all the colors right; and it seriously mashes the “more emotion” button, not so much tugging heartstrings as wrenching them.

There are movies that are moving, what one might even call sad, because it treats matters of the human heart with a necessary light touch, understanding the best way to connect with an audience is by speaking to what is truest in all of us. These are films that are evocative, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and that final scene in Toy Story 3. And then there’s Zhang Yimou’s idea of moving: putting characters behind the biggest 8-ball and pulling out the trick shots. Characters convulse and drip and howl, and in the end — win or lose — their heroic inner strength shines. Yes, you’ll probably cry, but will you remember why? Will you lie awake imagining for characters a future happiness? Will you cry for your grandparents, as opposed to simply with them?

Zhang also, it seems, uses a narrative gimmick that’s more befitting a romantic comedy or Christopher Nolan flick: amnesia. Here’s Kevin Jagernauth reviewing the film for Indie Wire:

Released during the last days of the Cultural Revolution, he finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife has amnesia and remembers little of her past. Unable to recognize Lu, she patiently waits for her husband’s return. A stranger alone in the heart of his broken family, Lu Yanshi determines to resurrect their past together and reawaken his wife’s memory.

“He” is Chen Daoming’s character, Lu Yanshi, and his wife is Wanyu, played by Gong Li. In the above trailer, the first words of dialogue go thusly:

Lu: “Wanyu, I’ve returned.”

Wanyu: “Please leave.”

Lu: “What’s the matter?”

Wanyu: “Go.”

It’s like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel without any magical realism or flustering redolence or the smell of almonds. Although I will say: Chen and Li give great facial expressions.

“How long have you not seen her?” a doctor in the film asks Lu.

“Twenty years,” he replies, stoicly.

And here’s a younger Yu, labeled a Rightist, being dragged away as he calls out the name of his beloved.

And here’s obligatory weeping in the rain:

There also appears to be a lot of shouting. Even after a title screen pops up beseeching “an eternal love,” the next scene is of… more shouting. Despite assurances from producer Zhang Zhao (not related to Yimou) that, “You can survive everything, that’s what the director is trying to say,” I’m not sure how viewers are to survive all this verbal strafing.

That being said, what do I know? I’m basing these opinions solely on a 90-second preview. I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing this, actually. This post will be updated afterwards.

Here’s a different trailer, with barely any dialogue so that the emotions speak louder, if that’s possible:

Youku version of the above:

We publicized a Kickstarter on April 1 of a 10-minute dystopian sci-fi film set in Beijing by TED Talks director Jason Wishnow that was advertised as “starring” Ai Weiwei. It blew past its $33,000 goal in no time, probably thanks to the attention that Ai Weiwei — China’s most visible artist — garners around the world. But now the Kickstarter has been removed and the preview for the movie, The Sandstorm, is only available on YouTube. What gives?

The Washington Post explains:

But rather than spark a debate about resources and government authority, the project has blown up into a dispute over copyright and crowdfunding, as Ai downplayed his role in the film Monday. Through his representatives, Ai claimed he’d agreed only to a small part in the movie.

The Kickstarter campaign promoting “The Sandstorm” goes much further, portraying Ai as the star. The crowdfunding page — which has been taken down, but a cached version is available here — explains how the filmmaker, Jason Wishnow, secretly recruited Ai to a two-week production session during which the crew “used code names and ever-shifting modes of communication, tapping cloak-and-dagger pulp-fiction playbooks” to avoid alerting Chinese authorities to their work.

“When the air is toxic and your lead actor is under surveillance, you make a SHORT film and you shoot it FAST,” the project page reads.

Despite now being blocked from public view, the Kickstarter has already exceeded its $33,000 goal by more than $60,000. That’s little comfort to Ai, though, who accuses Wishnow of stealing his name and image — as well as photos Ai posted to Instagram — to promote the movie.

Ai Weiwei’s studio sent a letter to Wishnow — via Twitter, of course — that asks, among other things, for a public apology “acknowledging that you have engaged in the activities discussed above without Ai Weiwei’s consent and therefore misled potential providers of funds to your project.” You can read the full letter here.

We’re not sure why it took 30 days for Ai’s studio to protest so harshly against Wishnow and company. But now we also wonder about the director’s motives, specifically why he bothered to make a dystopian sci-fi flick in Beijing. Was it just for some viral attention? Wishnow appears to have the cache to produce something bigger, on the right side of legitimate — heck, The Sandstorm employed Wong Kar-wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle – so why risk blowing future opportunities to do work in China by producing a drive-by short about pollution?

Timely enough, The L Magazine recently published an article called, “The Problem of Using Ai Weiwei to Sell Crap.” The Sandstorm may actually be an entertaining film, possibly even an important one. But if the people involved really believed that, they should have marketed it as thus instead of using Ai Weiwei for cheap heat.

UPDATE:

Ai Weiwei Kickstarter movie campaign back online – with groveling apology https://t.co/W0vM90MRUF @beijingcream

— Mark Dreyer (@DreyerChina) June 6, 2014

Brian Yang, who produced the 2012 documentary Linsanity (directed by Evan Jackson Leong), is in Beijing for the Beijing International Film Festival, which means now’s a good time as any to remind everyone that you can watch his 88-minute doc for free on iQiyi (embedded above; just turn off your VPNs, China people).

Jackson was following Lin before his career took off in a two-week flurry in February 2012. You might remember that time: Lin, then playing for the New York Knicks, took the world by storm (no hyperbole), averaging 27.2 points over five games and making the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time. It was a gold mine for the filmmakers: Linsanity debuted at Sundance last year and was an official selection at SXSW.

Lin, now with the Houston Rockets, scored 14 points — including a few key late buckets — in 34 minutes in the opening game of his team’s playoffs series against Portland. Houston lost 122-120 in overtime.

The fourth Beijing International Film Festival opened on Wednesday, and it looks like it’s already less boring than last year’s. For that we have the Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone to thank, who on Thursday in a panel discussion spoke provocatively on Mao Zedong and urged the Chinese to confront their history. As The Hollywood Reporter reports:

“Mao Zedong has been lionized in dozens and dozens of Chinese films, but never criticized. It’s about time. You got to make a movie about Mao, about the Cultural Revolution. You do that, you open up, you stir the waters and you allow true creativity to emerge in this country. That would be the basis of real co-production,” said Stone, speaking at a panel on co-production which also included Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron and Paramount Pictures COO Frederick Huntsberry, and was moderated by Zhang Xun, president of China Film Co-production Corporation.

He continued:

“You talk about co-production but you don’t want to face the history of China. You don’t want to talk about it,” said Stone.

“Three times I’ve made efforts to co-produce in this country and I’ve come up short. We’ve been honest about our own past in America, we’ve shown the flaws.”

Clearly on a roll…

“It’s all platitudes. We are not talking about making tourist pictures, photo postcards about girls in villages, this is not interesting to us. We need to see the history, to talk about great figures like Mao and the Cultural Revolution. These things happened, they affect everybody in this room. You talk about protecting the people from their history. I can understand you are a new country since 1949. You have to protect the country against the separatist movements, against the Uighurs or the Tibetans, I can understand not doing that subject. But not your history for Christ’s sake,” said Stone.

“We’re talking about the essential essence of this nation of how it was built, this whole century, you’ve not dealt with it.”

The audience, “mostly film and media professionals, many Chinese,” Sinosphere notes, “clapped loudly” at his comments.

Perhaps we could pause here to point out that Hollywood is mostly platitudes these days, too: “tourist pictures” — i.e. summer blockbusters — that are heavy on entertainment but superficial in almost every other way. But American cinema is self-regulating, so for all those movies that appeal to mass audiences, seeking to please the common denominator, there are plenty that dare to be artistic and brutally honest. One of those films won an Oscar for Best Picture very recently, I believe. Twelve Years a Slave is the sort of film that will never be made in China, because those in charge of the film industry here must answer to people higher up, people who are much too immature to handle ponderous, critical, far-reaching subject matters that dare reflect any semblance of truth. In China, there are simply too many intellectual cowards. If Stone was too polite to say that out loud, we’ll do it for him: censors are destroying this country’s culture because they take orders from milksops and dummies.

We all know it, including the Chinese, if the audience response is any indication: censorship deadens art, waters it down. The only people who remain clueless — willfully, I think — are conservative hardliners within the Party who would rather wait out the world’s changes and die in their leathery skin rather than consider the possibility that censorship is unnecessary and oh yeah the earth is round. They maintain that cultural emasculation is a necessary price to pay for stability, purely unable to question whether the price we’re paying is too steep.

Guess who has the power to make things change? It’s not Stone, and it’s really not the people clapping at his comments. If Farewell My Concubine, possibly the most critically acclaimed mainland Chinese film of all time, can remain blocked in this country, then nothing else really has a chance. Quality is a secondary consideration when examining art in this country; adherence to CCP dogma is first.

It was good on Stone for making those comments, but really, he wasted his breath. There is no art without politics in China. There is no art.

POSTSCRIPT: I wrote about the closing ceremony of last year’s Beijing International Film Festival, which I attended. An excerpt:

The extravagance, unfortunately, served to prove yet again that glitz is often merely farce dressed up. What we witnessed was the red-carpet-film-awards equivalent of a Chinese factory owner hiring a white face to accompany him on an inspection tour. We were treated to a comedy of miscommunication that would have made residents of Babel grimace. Less a showcase of the cinema than a self-congratulatory trade show, the audience reacted accordingly, supplying often mistimed applause more tepid than you’d find from an American crowd at a cricket match.

There are some serious amateur filmmakers working for the United States’s Federal Bureau of Investigation — I can think of no other reason why Game of Pawns would exist: a nearly half-hour mini-movie that tells the story of Glenn Duffie Shriver, who was bribed by Chinese officials when he was studying in Shanghai to pass along sensitive information. Shriver made $70,000 before he was caught. He’s now in the US serving out a four-year sentence in federal prison.

I could only get through the first minute of the film — the voice-over set to generic Oriental music was all I needed. But the full story’s on the FBI’s website, so you can read the script if you’d like, which begins:

Narrator: There is an old Chinese proverb–”Life is like a game of chess, changing with each move. And to win the game you must often sacrifice your pawns.”

As Business Insider notes though, this film — which went up on YouTube yesterday and has 2,255 views as of now — is pretty unnecessary, not to mention “unintentionally hilarious, as many government-sponsored ostensibly cultural artifacts tend to be. It basically looks like an updated version of the shlocky anti-Soviet films the government used to pump out during the Cold War.”

But in its statement on the production, the FBI says it wants American students traveling overseas to watch the movie before leaving the U.S. “so they’re able to recognize when they’re being targeted and/or recruited.”

A better option would probably have been directing students directly to David Wise’s excellent write-up of Shriver’s case for The Washingtonian in 2012. 

Just your friendly neighborhood FBI reminding you, kids, to not accidentally become a spy, betray your country, and do time in the clink.

A recently produced short film from GVAcreative has gone viral, built on the idea that Hong Kong, since being “passed over” to China in 1997, is becoming less like what it was and that its past will eventually be gone. “The city is dying, just like a man who has lost a lot of blood,” says one of the characters in voice-over.

In the seven-minute, 28-second film, Hong Kong is threatened by a meteor predicted to hit in 33 years, 2047, exactly when the constitutional principle “one country, two systems” is scheduled to end. With this threat, 70 percent of the population flees and multinational companies retract their businesses. The film directly cites black traders from the mainland as a source of evil.

Eventually, Hong Kongers save themselves by inventing a laser to destroy the meteor.

At this point, the film is nearing 650,000 views on YouTube, with more than 1,400 comments — though many of them appear to be completely oblivious to the political message, per YouTube commenters.

The meteor as metaphor for China wasn’t lost on mainland censors, however. As the Diplomat reports:

After telling the relevant media organizations to delete “information related to supporting and rescuing Tang Jitian and other missing lawyers,” the message from the propaganda authorities ordered the deletion of “video, text, etc. that advocates the short sci-fi film about Hong Kongers ‘saving themselves’ titled Hong Kong Will Be Destroyed in 33 Years.”

Yik Kan Cheung, a VFX artist and post-production supervisor with GVAcreative told The Diplomat, “The reason the video is being censored by authorities is, we believe, that they think what they’re doing is keeping the society peaceful. But, what we think they are doing is keeping people away from knowing the truth, that China is trying to suffocate Hong Kong to death by importing Mainland Chinese into Hong Kong until there’s enough people for them to control the elections. After that, there will be no open elections in Hong Kong.”

Indeed, the movie is inaccessible on Chinese websites. (Searches for the Chinese name, 香港将于33年后毁灭, do return results on Baidu and Sina Weibo though.) Still, just because this satirical sci-fi short can’t be watched within the mainland doesn’t mean the question shouldn’t be asked: what will become of Hong Kong’s future? And on that note — what was the deus ex machina in the form of a laser supposed to represent?

(H/T Global Voices)

Follow Margaux @schreursmargaux

It’s not often that a press release makes us perk up, but earlier today TimeOut publicized its list of 100 best films made in mainland China, and it’s really impressive. As editor James Wilkinson writes:

Some 88 experts from around the world – including celebrated directors such as sixth generation pioneer Wang Xiaoshuai (The Days) and Cannes Camera d’Or winner Anthony Chen (Ilo Ilo), and critic/director Mark Cousins – contributed to the poll, with their favourites being compiled into the final list.

You can check out screenshots of the films, a look at who voted, and other fun information over at TimeOut’s website. For now, the complete list is below — and yes, there are so many good ones, led by Chen Kaige’s stellar story of two Peking Opera stars over the course of the Cultural Revolution (one of the most brutally honest portrayals of that time period). How many have you seen? And how many will you now try to find?

1) Farewell My Concubine

2) Spring in a Small Town (1948)

3) Devils on the Doorstep

4) In the Heat of the Sun

5) The Pickpocket (aka Xiao Wu)

6) West of the Tracks

7) Yellow Earth

8) To Live

9) The Goddess

10) Street Angel

11) Still Life

12) Red Sorghum

13) Raise the Red Lantern

14) The Blue Kite

15) Blind Shaft

16) Platform

17) Suzhou River

18) The Sun Also Rises

19) Hibiscus Town

20) Summer Palace

21) Ju Dou

22) Black Snow

23) Two Stage Sisters

24) Havoc in Heaven

25) The Horse Thief

26) Petition

27) Oxhide

28) Let the Bullets Fly

29) Crazy Stone

30) Hero

31) The Big Road

32) Unknown Pleasures

33) Mr Zhao

34) Woman Demon Human

35) Sacrifice of Youth

36) King of the Children

37) Peacock

38) Mountain Patrol

39) Spring Fever

40) The Life of a Peking Policeman

41) The Crows and Sparrows

42) Back to Back, Face to Face

43) The Spring River Flows East

44) The Story of Qiu Ju

45) Prince Nezha’s Triumph Against Dragon King

46) In Expectation

47) City of Life and Death

48) Shower

49) Early Spring in February

50) The Dream Factory

51) A Touch of Sin

52) Beijing Bicycle

53) 24 city

54) Emperor Visits the Hell

55) Miserable at Middle Age

56) The Days

57) The Troubleshooters

58) New Women

59) My Memories of Old Beijing

60) Father

61) For Fun

62) Taking Father Home

63) Keep Cool

64) Oxhide II

65) Girl Basketball Player No 5

66) Purple Butterfly

67) On the Beat

68) The Search

69) The Missing Gun

70) Third Sister Liu

71) The World

72) A World Without Thieves

73) The Black Cannon Incident

74) Winter Vacation

75) House of Flying Daggers

76) If You are The One

77) People Mountain, People Sea

78) 11 Flowers

79) Doctor Ma’s Country Clinic

80) Disorder

81) East Palace, West Palace

82) The Legend of Sealed Book

83) Assembly

84) Long Live the Mistress

85) Lin Jia Pu Zi

86) Karamay

87) Princess Iron Fan

88) Fortune Teller

89) Cow

90) Drug War

91) The Next Life

92) Song of the Fisherman

93) Waves Washing the Sand

94) Zero Thousand Li Under the Clouds and Moon

95) Ermo

96) Last Train Home

97) The Swordsman in Double-Flag Town

98) Beijing Bastards

99) The September of Mine

100) The Message