Media
11.06.24

ChinaFile Presents: ‘Nikah,’ a Film Screening and Discussion

Mukaddas Mijit, Bastien Ehouzan & more

The film ‘Nikah,’ set in China’s Uyghur region in 2017, spans the months between two weddings. It follows Dilber, a young woman approaching a crossroads amid the Chinese government’s surveilling and detaining of members of her community. As even...

The China Africa Project
11.21.17

A New Generation Looks at the China-Africa Relationship

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more

Independent filmmakers Jidi Guo and Philip Man join Eric and Cobus to discuss their new documentary about how a new generation is responding to China’s growing influence in Kenya. This is the first documentary produced by the Shanghai-based pair...

Culture
06.29.16

Using Free Sex to Expose Sexual Abuse in China

Jonathan Landreth

Nanfu Wang hoped that a woman called Ye Haiyan (“Hooligan Sparrow”), who had offered free sex on the Internet to draw attention to the plight of poor women selling their bodies to support their children, would lead her to the prostitutes she...

Culture
08.20.15

Banned in China, Independent Chinese Films Come to New York

Jonathan Landreth

Three years ago this week I watched the 9th Beijing Independent Film Festival crumble under the weight of...

Environmental Filmmakers Have Rare Impact in China

One clip shows a girl swatting flies from a younger child among piles of trash. Another has children blowing up used medical gloves like balloons. The footage is on the computer screen of Wang Jiuliang as he edits his second film about waste...

‘A Touch of Sin,’ Four Tales from China by Jia Zhangke

A blistering fictionalized tale straight out of China, “A Touch of Sin” is at once monumental and human scale. A story of lives rocked by violence, it has the urgency of a screaming headline but one inscribed with emotional...

The Death of Independent Cinema in China

After wrangling with the authorities all day August 25, on what was supposed to be the opening of the festival on the rural outskirts of Beijing, this year’s Beijing Independent Film Festival has been cancelled.

 

Culture
01.17.13

An Alternative Top Ten

Shelly Kraicer

Most accounts of the last year in Chinese cinema are dominated by films that were made for the ever-expanding domestic box office, and the local film industry’s struggle for screen time in competition with Hollywood imports.

On the one...