China Art x Film Series

Part of the Creative China Festival and in collaboration with Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, Asia Society presents a series of recent films from China's new generation of filmmakers, including Li Xiaofeng, Liu Jian, Wang Bing, and Yang Mingming.

All films in Chinese with English subtitles.
Free admission; registration recommended

Click on individual programs below for tickets and more information.

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Beauty Lives in Freedom
Dir. by Wang Bing
2018. 300 min. Digital. Color.
Sunday, November 18, 2018, 4:00 pm
With introduction by director

Famed documentary filmmaker Wang Bing presents his latest work, Beauty Lives in Freedom, following a week-long tour of his works in the United States. The film chronicles the Chinese artist, philosopher, and activist Gao Ertai’s lifelong pursuit of freedom. Gao was sent to a labor camp for re-education in the 1950s while a teacher in the western province of Gansu, and later became a political detainee in Sichuan following the June Fourth Tiananmen Incident. He successfully escaped to Hong Kong with his wife Pu Xiaoyu in 1992. The 80-year-old Gao and his wife currently live in Las Vegas.

Courtesy Galerie Chantal Crousel

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Ash
Dir. by Li Xiaofeng
2017. 114 min. Digital. Color.
Saturday, October 20, 2018, 2:00 pm
Followed by Q & A with the director

Li Xiaofeng's Ash tells the story of two unlikely pen pals—acquainted by chance through a used copy of Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection—and their seemingly unrelated lives. Meanwhile, a young police detective pursues the truth behind two unsolved murders. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing China in the late 1990s, the film portrays hopeful youth in a booming city fighting for their dreams of love and success.

Watch the conversation with Li Xiaofeng:

Have a Nice Day
Dir. by Liu Jian
2017. 77 min. Digital. Color.
Saturday, October 20, 2018, 5:00 pm
Followed by Q & A With the director

Liu Jian is known for his painstakingly stylized animations, and he brings his signature dark comedy to his second feature-length animated film, Have a Nice Day. In a small city in southern China, the protagonist Xiao Zhang robs his boss at knife point in a desperate effort to salvage his relationship, by paying for his girlfriend's plastic surgery. A series of intersecting misadventures ensue, all within a single day. Liu's simply drawn yet emotionally complex characters and his detailed, gloomy background rich in social commentary, construct a vision of contemporary China complete with its worldly woes beyond the glamorous facade of coastal cities.

Watch the conversation with Liu Jian:

Girls Always Happy
Dir. by Yang Mingming
2018. 117 min. Digital. Color.
Sunday, October 21, 2018, 4:00 pm
Followed by Q & A with director

Yang Mingming, one of China's up-and-coming young female directors, dissects traditional family values by zooming in on the fragile connection between a single mother and her only daughter in Girls Always Happy. Xiao Wu's dreams of independent living in Beijing is disrupted when her mother decides to move in with her and imposes her way of life in the house. Co-dependency and dysfunctionality reach new heights as the film explores unfamiliar forms of familial love.

Co-presented with China Onscreen Biennial.

Watch the conversation with director Yang Mingming:

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