When Sina Weibo made filmmaker Jia Zhangke aware of just how many ordinary Chinese were being provoked by power-abusing members of society to commit acts of bloodshed, he decided to adapt his martial arts film to reflect the issues of the...
While Western media loves to trumpet its successes in China, with the strong showing of Hollywood blockbusters, it’s clear that China audiences aren’t just sitting and waiting for the next Hollywood blockbuster.
Yang Fudong is known for using the illogic of European art film (think of Antonioni, Resnais or the later Fellini) to talk about how China’s traditions clash with its modern realities. The retrospective runs through December 8. ...
Although the cancellation of the opening screening on day one resulted in a weak turnout over the remaining days of the festival, it definitely relieved the tension from the authorities, which helped all the screenings, discussions and...
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.
Directors, jury and invited guests who had come from as far as Sweden were told the 10th Beijing Independent Film Festival were threatened with power cuts and the arrest of Wang Hongwei if they persisted in holding the festival.
On one level Lao She’s novel is a work of science fiction—a visit to a country of cat-like people on Mars—that lampoons 1930s China. On a deeper level, the prophetic work predicts the terror and violence of the early Communist era’s chaos...
When Ip Man slyly asks “What’s your style?” it’s clear that director Wong Kar-wai is asking the same question because here, as in his other films, style isn’t reducible to ravishing surfaces; it’s an expression of meaning.
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A model on a sand table, made 64 years ago, replicating the city's landscape in 1949, will provide a bird's eye view after it is fully restored later in September. The model, in the Beijing Urban Construction Archives Museum,...
CNEX, a nonprofit, has unique connections in the Chinese Communist Party which help insulate budding documentarians from undue interference so they can film and release films on a broader array of issues.
It may seem like a departure for the director of lush mood pieces like “In the Mood For Love” and “Chungking Express.” But “The Grandmaster” isn’t Mr. Wong’s first martial arts film nor does it dispense with his obsession with romantic...
Pei-Shen Qian, a quiet 73-year-old immigrant from China, is suspected of having fooled the art world by creating dozens of works that were modeled after America’s Modernist masters and later sold as their handiwork for more than $80 million...
In the Northwest corner of Beijing’s old city is a subway and bus workshop. It was built in the early seventies on the site of the Lake of Great Peace, which was filled in as part of a plan to extend the city’s subway system. In the bigger...
When it comes to cracking the Chinese market, Hollywood could take a page out of the NBA’s playbook. “The love for basketball here is just incredible,” says Kobe Bryant.
The famous and politcally sensitive “Tank Man” photograph of June 1989 appears during a Michael Jackson tribute...
Luo Lin has in effect claimed ownership over a whole group of people, a sacred landscape and spiritual practice.
China’s once-robust trade in serious literature has withered under an increasingly materialistic, results-oriented society.
While users of a phonetic alphabet can sound out a word, writers of Chinese must memorize a series of character strokes unique to that word, and the strokes have to be executed in a precise order.
Renowned American director seeks collaboration with respected Chinese director on “international film”—their first possible contact since his withdrawal as consultant to Bejing Olympics in protest.
If you are a long-timer in China, this is a show that needs no introduction. One of the most famous foreigners in China, Mark Rowswell (a.k.a. Dashan), shot to fame in the early 1990s after a fortuitous break on Chinese television. In this live...
Near the beginning of Simon Leys’ marvelous collection of essays is an odd polemic between the author and the late Christopher Hitchens, fought out in these very pages. Leys takes Hitchens to task for attacking Mother Teresa in a book...
M.P.A.A. chairman and C.E.O. Christopher Dodd announced late on Tuesday that the China Film Group will pay Hollywood studios in full for money owed to them from box office revenue for over a year.
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Banned for more than five years, The Last Days of Beijing was cleared and the author allowed to visit on a book tour. It was said to be banned because the map of China shaded Taiwan a different color than the mainland.
The last ten years have seen a genuine transformation in China’s arts world, as a large sector that used to be dependent almost exclusively on government funding has been downsized into the maelstrom of the market, leaving survivors to navigate...
China’s State Council, or cabinet, will discuss ways to resolve a tax standoff that has delayed box-office payments to Hollywood for months and jangled the nerves of overseas producers keen to access the world’s second-biggest film territory....
“Nationalism is a very old concept, and it has become weaker during globalisation,” Ai told ARTINFO. “But from the Snowden incident, we can see that even if nationalism is weak, its power structures still exist.”
The media regulator will now only require film summaries to be submitted for censorship approval before production, rather than full scripts, for select film categories.
The recent revelation that museum in Hebei may be housing as many as 40,000 forgeries has caused the museum to close and many on the Chinese internet are commenting on the scandal.
By zooming in close to specific moments at particular times in his characters’ histories Hessler reveals more about the broader context in which they live than conventional news reporting on subjects such as the Three Gorges Dam....
The Chinese authorities have put an abrupt end to a training programme for aspiring independent filmmakers. And there’s still no official explanation why the 9th Edition of the Li Xianting Film School in Beijing was closed down....
Rana Mitter chooses a collection of stories, novels and pieces by writers who either grew up in China or were China implants intended to give the curious a more textured understanding of China’s history and culture.
Buoyed by a surge in ticket sales for homegrown domestic films, China’s box office continued its rapid expansion in the first half of 2013, according to figures released by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and...
A forthcoming book presents a strong case that pre–World War II Hollywood was in bed with Nazi Germany, in catering to its censorship demands. Is it happening again today, regarding show-business relations with the authoritarian regime in...
“Water Runs East for Ten Years, Water Runs West for Ten Years” is a song by the Guangzhou-based folk band Wu Tiao Ren from their first album, A Tale of Haifeng (2009). The songs on this album celebrate the sentiments and everyday lives...
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are delighted to host Matthew Niederhauser. A photographer focusing on urban development in China, Matthew has been published...
The Chinese exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennale, which opened June 1 and runs through Nov. 24, has been organized by Wang Chunchen, head of curatorial research at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Beijing. Its theme...
Over the last two weeks, the movie American Dreams in China (中国合伙人) has been the number one box office hit in China, selling over 400 million tickets to date. The movie is a gritty and at times tongue-in-cheek comedy that tells the true...
In this Op-Doc video, Ann Shin profiles a smuggler named Dragon, who charges North Korean defectors for guiding them through China and Southeast Asia into eventual asylum and safety in South Korea.
Titled “Silver Paper: Report on International Spread of Chinese Movies 2012,” the survey found that only 75 domestic productions were sold overseas last year, generating rights fees and ticket sales of $172.8 million (1.06 billion yuan)....
Monsters University will make its bow in China as the opening film of the Shanghai International Film Festival. The premiere adds to Pixar’s major publicity blitz in pushing Monsters University in China. ...
One of the most striking features about daily life in China is how much of what one encounters has been appropriated from elsewhere. It’s not just the fake iPhones or luxury watches—pirated consumer goods are common in many developing countries....
In summer 2012, when foreign productions were moved out of China’s multiplexes, a widely observed phenomenon unofficially called “domestic movie protection month” was implemented. It seems this measure is going to be repeated this year....
The staff at Quartz magazine have mapped the locations of various prominent food scandals that have hit China in the last few years, projected on top of Ai Weiwei’s “Baby Formula 2013” art installation.
Those who like Ai’s brand of (increasingly) political performance art will probably like it, while those who tend to see his facility with the foreign media as his primary talent are unlikely to change their views upon listening to this...
After three weeks in cinemas, So Young is now the tenth highest theatrical release of all time in China, having taken RMB655.5 million (US$107 million) by May 16, 2013.
On May 21st at the Asia Society in New York City, Peter Hessler, author of the recently published Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and...
Notable is the recent aggressive outreach to Chinese audiences by Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr. Not only did he visit China for the first time in his life to talk up the film, but Downey also set up a personal account on Sina Weibo....
Under half a century of dictatorship, dissidents used the arts to express outrage that would otherwise bring them long prison sentences. Now, they're speaking out in solidarity with villagers whose anti-mine protests are captivating the...
As part of a new partnership between DreamWorks Animation and Sands China, the studio will debut its DreamWorks Experience at the Resort in Macao beginning July 1. 2013.
Lao She remains revered as one of China’s great modern writers. His life and work have been the subject of volumes of critique, analysis and study. However, the four years the young aspiring writer spent in London between 1924 and 1929 have largely been overlooked. Dr. Anne Witchard, a specialist in the modernist milieu of London between the wars, reveals Lao She’s encounter with British high modernism and literature from Dickens to Conrad to Joyce.
After being unexpectedly pulled from theaters moments after its Chinese release earlier this April, Quentin Tarantino’s controversial “Django Unchained” could return to theaters as early as May 7.
