The 10th Chinese Documentary Festival, which runs from 9th September to 19th October, is screening 34 films across several programmes: Competition (Shorts and Features); Hong Kong Selection; The New Taipei City Documentary Awards Selection; International Selection; and Retrospective. The documentaries encompass a wide range of themes including art, politics, religion and current affairs. Several directors will be attending the Festival to share their experience with the audiences either after the screenings or at seminars.
A festival prelude on the 6 August features two films and a talk from Shen Ko-shang. The director’s critically acclaimed documentary A Rolling Stone and feature film End of A Century: Miea’s Story will be screened and after the screenings, Shen will give a talk about his creative life during which he will present his short film A Nice Travel.
The Shorts and Features Competition includes 13 films from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Local productions in the Shorts Competition include Call Me Mrs Chan, co-directed by Chan Hau Chun and Chui Chi Yin about the endless toil of a cleaning lady, and This is The Man Fu directed by Tse Nga In, in which the filmmaker tries to get to know her estranged father by filming his life. Other shortlisted entries include four works from Taiwan: Happy Birthday advocates the benefits of natural childbirth; About the Maritime Drifters records the struggles of foreign fishermen; Cheng Hsing Tse’s 48 hours chronicles a death row prisoner’s release after a decade-long struggle for freedom, and BRIGADE27, portrays a Taichung voluntary brigade that resisted the Kuomintang army after the 2.28 Massacre. Craftsmen of Coffin is an entry from Gansu, China that shows the increasingly obsolete craft of coffin-making.
The Features Competition has six titles, two from Taiwan and four from China. The Taiwanese entries are Small Talk, a mother-daughter dialogue on mom’s sexual orientation, and Boys in Pixelation, a story about juvenile delinquents from Taoyuan’s Halfway House. Competing Mainland titles include We the Workers, a report on union struggles in a wharf; Old Couple and Old House, a tale of an old villager’s effort to save his village from demolition orders; Factory Youth, an examination of the everyday lives of factory workers in Shenzhen, and Songs from Maidichong, a testimony of the Miao ethnic group’s strong Christian faith under brutal repression.
The Festival’s 10th anniversary sees the addition of two new programmes: International Selection and Retrospective. The International Selection features the local premiere of documentaries from Europe, India, Thailand and Myanmar respectively: A Family Affair is a story about complicated family history; We Come as Friends depicts how the African continent is exploited by foreign countries; Cities of Sleep portrays the destitute homeless in India; Sinmalin follows a Myanmarese migrant family working in Thailand, and My Leg documents a group of disabled army veterans-turned prosthesis makers in Myanmar.
The Retrospective programme presents popular titles from previous Festivals including: Though I Am Gone, Survival Song, Emergency Room China, Farewell Beijing, Someday, My Fancy High Heels and The Moment.
Continuing it’s collaboration with The New Taipei City Documentary Awards the festival will screen four of their award-winning films.
The seminars at this year’s festival are The Craft of Storytelling (10 September) with Taiwanese producer Gary Shih and winners of The New Taipei City Documentary Awards as guest speakers. On 12 October, The Future of Chinese Independent Documentary invites mainland directors to discuss the future prospects of the genre under the influence of state politics. On the 15 October, On the Road with Taiwanese Documentary sees directors in a dialogue about the relationship between commercialism and artistic creation in Taiwan.
10th Chinese Documentary Festival
Date: 9 September – 19 October, 2017
Venue: Hong Kong Arts Centre’s agnès b. CINEMA, Hong Kong Space Museum’s Lecture Hall, Hong Kong Science Museum’s Lecture Hall, The Grand Cinema.
Tickets: $100, $70, $60
More info: www.visiblerecord.com