Rights to ‘Man in Black,” one of two documentary films by China’s Wang Bing to appear in Official Selection at Cannes this year, have been picked up by specialty sales agency Asian Shadows.
The 60-minute film, which will debut as a special screening, is a portrait of 86-year-old Wang Xilin, one of China’s most important modern classical composers and is now lives in exile in Germany. It was made in close collaboration with French cinematographer Caroline Champetier, whose credits include Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors,” Amos Gitai’s “Promised Land” and Andre Techine’s “Alice and Martin.”
During the 1960s, when China’s Cultural Revolution forced intellectuals into the fields and stripped the middle classes of their wealth, Wang Xilin was the was the target of severe persecution, including beatings, imprisonment and torture. The film examines the body and soul of a man scarred by a life of suffering,...
The 60-minute film, which will debut as a special screening, is a portrait of 86-year-old Wang Xilin, one of China’s most important modern classical composers and is now lives in exile in Germany. It was made in close collaboration with French cinematographer Caroline Champetier, whose credits include Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors,” Amos Gitai’s “Promised Land” and Andre Techine’s “Alice and Martin.”
During the 1960s, when China’s Cultural Revolution forced intellectuals into the fields and stripped the middle classes of their wealth, Wang Xilin was the was the target of severe persecution, including beatings, imprisonment and torture. The film examines the body and soul of a man scarred by a life of suffering,...
- 4/21/2023
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
My Own Private HellThe titles for the 47th International Film Festival Rotterdam are being announced in anticipation of the event running January 24 - February 4, 2018. We will update the program as new films are revealed.SIGNATURESInsect (Jan Švankmajer)Asino (Anatoly Vasiliev)Lek and the Dogs (Andrew Kötting)The Bottomless Bag (Rustam Khamdamov)Mrs. Fang (Wang Bing)Readers (James Benning)The Wandering Soap Opera (Valeria Sarmiento, Raúl Ruiz)Lover for a Day (Philippe Garrel)Bright FUTUREThe Flower Shop (Ruben Desiere)Look Up (Fulvio Risoleo)My Friend the Polish Girl (Ewa Banaszkiewicz)Rabot (Christina Vandekerckhove)Respeto (Alberto Monteras II)The Return (Malene Choi Jensen)Windspiel (Peyman Ghalambor)All You Can Eat Buddha (Ian Lagarde)Azougue Nazareth (Tiago Melo)My Own Private Hell (Guto Parente)Ordinary Time (Susana Nobre)3/4 (Ilian Metev)Cocote (Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias)Drift (Helena Wittmann)The Wild Boys (Bertrand Mandico)Gutland (Govinda Van Maele)The Watchman (Alejandro Andújar...
- 12/15/2017
- MUBI
The following essay was produced as part of the 2017 Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring film critics that took place during the 70th edition of the Locarno Film Festival.
Two Chinese independent films—Wang Bing’s Golden Leopard-winning “Mrs. Fang” and Xu Bing’s “Dragonfly Eyes”— competed for the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival (both played Tiff a few weeks later). Wang and Xu are established names whose works speak to the intersection between cinema and contemporary art. Both of their films belong to the category of experimental/conceptual documentary, and together they provide distinctive windows into contemporary Chinese society. At the same time, the differences between them couldn’t be any greater. They are formal opposites: when handling images of the real, Wang is minimalist, and abstinent, austere, while Xu is maximalist, provocative and melodramatic.
Commissioned by Documenta 14 and originally conceived as a video art piece,...
Two Chinese independent films—Wang Bing’s Golden Leopard-winning “Mrs. Fang” and Xu Bing’s “Dragonfly Eyes”— competed for the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival (both played Tiff a few weeks later). Wang and Xu are established names whose works speak to the intersection between cinema and contemporary art. Both of their films belong to the category of experimental/conceptual documentary, and together they provide distinctive windows into contemporary Chinese society. At the same time, the differences between them couldn’t be any greater. They are formal opposites: when handling images of the real, Wang is minimalist, and abstinent, austere, while Xu is maximalist, provocative and melodramatic.
Commissioned by Documenta 14 and originally conceived as a video art piece,...
- 9/14/2017
- by Zoe Meng Jiang
- Indiewire
Mrs. Fang is a study of a face and a sober essay on death. It’s also about fishing. As profoundly moving as it is troubling, this new masterwork from documentary filmmaker Wang Bing might ask a great deal of anyone sitting down to watch it, both ethically and otherwise, but also, in cinematic terms, it delivers a great deal. The face in question is that of Fang Xiuying, an elderly farmer who died of advanced Alzheimer’s in 2016. Wang’s film is an uncompromising document of the last ten days of her life. Indeed, for obvious reasons, death filmed in this way remains something of a cinematic taboo, but any viewer willing to give in to the rigorous format and somber nature of what’s on screen might just find something cathartic.
Many of the best writers on cinema (Kael, Thomson, etc.) believe that the main key to what...
Many of the best writers on cinema (Kael, Thomson, etc.) believe that the main key to what...
- 8/9/2017
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
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