AFI China Film Festival
Date: Thu, May 15th 2008 - Mon, May 19th 2008Event Tags: The Movies
Location: AFI Silver Theatre & Cultural Center
AFI China Film Festival presented by
May 15 - 19
The 2008 AFI China Film Festival presented by T. Rowe Price highlights the latest works from established Chinese filmmakers like Yang Zhang (GETTING HOME; his recent titles include SUNFLOWER, QUITTING, and SHOWER); Xiaoshuai Wang (director of 2008 Berlin Film Festival award-winner IN LOVE WE TRUST, his past titles include SHANGHAI DREAMS, BEIJING BICYCLE, and FROZEN); and Jia Zhang-ke (director of USELESS, his most recent films include the Venice Golden Lion winner STILL LIFE, THE WORLD, and UNKNOWN PLEASURES). Alongside the work of these well-known filmmakers are several titles from fresh young talents like Yibai Zhang (multiple-award winner CURIOSITY KILLS THE CAT), actress-turned-director Wang Fen (THE CASE), and cinematographer/director Lu Yue (THIRTEEN PRINCESS TREES).
All films NOT RATED.
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AFI member passes will be accepted at all screenings in the AFI China Film Festival presented by T. Rowe Price |
GETTING HOME [Luo ye gui gen]
Garnering awards in Berlin and Barcelona, GETTING HOME is a humorous and touching unexpected new take on the buddy and road movie genres. Zhao (Zhao Benshan, a well-known comedian) and Wang are migrants working in the boom towns of southern China to send money to their families back home. During a bout of particularly heavy drinking Wang suddenly drops dead. Determined to keep a promise to his friend, Zhao sets out to bring Wang's body back to his family by carrying the corpse on his back. Based on a true story.
DIR/SCR Yang Zhang; SCR Yao Wang; PROD Wouter Barendrecht, Yong Er and Peter Loehr. China/Hong Kong, 2007, color, 110 min. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Thursday, May 15, 7:30; Monday, May 19, 7:00
NIGHT TRAIN [Ye che]
Diao Yinan, the award-winning director of UNIFORM, once again uses his hometown Xi'an as the backdrop for a meditation on Chinese provincial life. Diao's spare images and non-psychological approach to storytelling form a portrait of the almost monastic life of his characters. Wu Hongyuan (Liu Dan) is a taciturn female bailiff for a court that prosecutes crimes of passion-mostly by women. Her life is unremarkable; even participating in an execution fails to disrupt her routine. Her weekly train rides to attend Good Luck Matchmaking dances are mostly forgettable until she meets a mysterious man, Li Jun (Qi Dao), who turns out to be the widower of a woman she executed. (note courtesy AFI FEST)
DIR/SCR Diao Yinan; PROD Steve Chow and Vivian Qu. China, 2007, color, 94 min. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Friday, May 16, 3:00; Sunday, May 18, 9:10
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT [Hao qi hai si mao]
This complexly plotted love triangle and revenge drama has elements of FATAL ATTRACTION filtered through a RASHOMON-like prism of retellings from different viewpoints, as well as jumps in chronology. Habitual voyeur Lin Yuan snaps cameraphone shots of strangers on the streets of Chongqing, noticing that businessman Hu Jun has been conducting an affair in the luxury high-rise next door with manicurist Song Jia, unbeknownst to his wife, Carina Lau (the Hong Kong superstar of DAYS OF BEING WILD and INFERNAL AFFAIRS). Lin takes a liking to the building's security guard, Liao Fan, who's also seen the affair unfold but from a markedly different perspective. Director Yibai Zhang, a Chongqing native, makes the hilly, misty, skyscrapered city a character in itself, with the help of ace director of photography Yang Tao (LITTLE RED FLOWERS). The inventive script is by Xin Huo (KUNG FU HUSTLE, QUITTING, SHOWER).
DIR/SCR Yibai Zhang; SCR Xin Huo; PROD Thomas Ho and Jane Shao. China, 2007, color, 93 min. In English and Mandarin with English subtitles.
Friday, May 16, 5:00; Sunday, May 18, 5:00
IN LOVE WE TRUST [Zuo you]
The latest film from renowned director Xiaoshuai Wang (BEIJING BICYCLE) and winner of the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. A divorced couple learns that the only way to save their daughter who suffers from a blood disease is to have another child, whose bone marrow would match for a transplant. Now both remarried, Mei Zhu and Xiao Lu are forced to test their love and their commitment to one another by putting their current relationships in danger.
DIR/SCR Xiaoshuai Wang. China, 2007, color, 115 min. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Friday, May 16, 7:10; Sunday, May 18, 12:30
All shows of IN LOVE WE TRUST have been cancelled due to scheduling difficulties. The Friday, May 16 screening has been replaced with A BATTLE OF WITS.
LOST IN BEIJING [Ping guo]
Ambitious, gold-chain-festooned massage parlor boss Lin Dong (Hong Kong star Tony Leung Kar-fai) forces himself on drunken employee Liu Pingguo. As mischance would have it, her window-washer husband An Kun is right outside the window, and sees the assault as a chance to cash in. His ambitions for "compensation money" escalate when they discover Lui is pregnant, possibly with Lin Dong's child. Throw into this mix Lin Dong's repressed wife Wang Mei (Elaine Jin), whose roving eye fastens on An Kun, and the possibilities for outrageous mutual exploitation increase exponentially. (note courtesy Vancouver International Film Festival)
DIR/SCR Yu Li; SCR/PROD Li Fang. China, 2007, color, 112 min. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Friday, May 16, 9:35; Saturday, May 17, 12:30
USELESS [Wuyong]
Famed sixth generation filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke's newest documentary is about the world of fashion in China, the largest exporter of garments in the world. Consisting of 3 interrelated vignettes: the industry's laborers working in the vast, neon-lit factories; the story of Ma Ke, the designer of a couture line of clothes called Wu Yong ("useless" is the translation); and the tailors in a small village who are forced out of work and must now labor in coal mines or drive taxis.
DIR Jia Zhang-ke. China/Hong Kong, 2007, color, 80 min. In Shanxi, Cantonese, Mandarin and French with English subtitles.
Saturday, May 17, 1:00; Monday, May 19, 9:10
WESTERN TRUNK LINE [Xigandao]
In a bleak industrial town, just after the Cultural Revolution in 1978, a bored teenager passes his time aimlessly by spying on female factory workers and striving to fix the old radio that will give him a link to the outside world. His aimless yearnings finally find a focus when Yu Xueyan, a mysterious and beautiful young musician from Beijing, comes to live and work in the town. After some awkward courtship, they fall in love while his little brother wrestles with the changes in his older sibling and their new relationship.
DIR/SCR Li Jixian; SCR Li Wei; PROD Yang Buting and Hisaaki Tai. China/Japan, 2007, color, 101 min. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Saturday, May 17, 2:45; Sunday, May 18, 1:00
THIRTEEN PRINCESS TREES [Shi san ke pao tong]
Yue Lu is best known as the accomplished cinematographer on some of China's biggest blockbusters, including John Woo's upcoming RED CLIFF, but as a director, he exhibits a more indie sensibility. THIRTEEN PRINCESS TREES, his engrossing melodrama of complex interrelationships and adolescent angst in a Chengdu high school, is something like a Chinese REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Punky and spirited Liu Xin finds herself strangely attracted to chunky, strong-willed new kid Zhao Mengqiao, even though she's dating class heartthrob Duan Bowen. Passions rise all around, with actions that will affect all of their futures.
DIR/SCR Yue Lu; SCR Ying Liu, based on the novel by Dacao He; PROD Jing Liu. China, 2006, color, 100 min. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Saturday, May 17, 4:50; Sunday, May 18, 7:05
THE CASE [Xiang zi]
Actress-turned-director Wang Fen's debut film is a wonderfully observant black comedy about marital disharmony, from a script by Cheng Zhang, who wrote the smash hit comedy CRAZY STONE. Take-charge businesswoman Wu Yujuan runs an inn in Yunnan's scenic Lijiang town, while her shy, hangdog husband Wu Gang is only happy when tending his garden. His discovery of a suitcase floating down the river, and its mysterious cargo sparks a series of secrets that he keeps from his wife, each one ratcheting up her distrust and suspicion a little more. But the arrival of voluptuous Wang Sifei and her invalid husband Wang Hongwei at the inn really heats things up.
DIR Wang Fen; SCR Cheng Zhang; PROD Xin Yin. China, 2007, color, 87 min. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Saturday, May 17, 7:00; Sunday, May 18, 3:05
A BATTLE OF WITS [Muk gong]
Set in 370 B.C., this lavishly-produced historical drama is the complex story of a lone warrior (superstar Andy Lau of INFERNAL AFFAIRS fame) who fights for the small state of Liang against the 10,000-strong undefeated army of the Zhao Nation. Against all odds, this keen strategist with an aversion to bloodshed thwarts attack after attack, winning the respect of his compatriots, but in the process incurs the jealousy of some powerful enemies.
DIR/SCR/PROD Chi Leung 'Jacob' Cheung; SCR Ken'ichi Sakemi; PROD Jianxin Huang, Satoru Iseki, Lee Joo-Ick and Zhongjun Wang. China/Japan/South Korea/Hong Kong, 2007, color, 133 min. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Friday, May 16, 7:10 - Just Added!
Saturday, May 17, 9:00