New Decade of Film from China

Beginning Saturday, May 11 (2013) and continuing through Friday, June 14, CUNY TV’s City Cinematheque celebrates quality films from China with five releases from 2003 to 2007.

Series host is Jerry Carlson, Professor of Cinema Studies at The City College/CUNY.

CUNY TV is broadcast over the air in the tri-state region on Ch. 25.3 and cablecast in the five boroughs of New York City on Ch. 75 (Time Warner and Cablevision), Ch. 77 (RCN Cable) and Ch. 30 (Verizon FiOS). These films will not be shown online.


Schedule




FILM: “Uniform”

Saturday & Sunday, May 11-12, both at 9 p.m.
Friday, May 17 at midnight

(2003/China, 92 min., color, drama, in Mandarin with English subtitles) Director: Diao Yinan. Cast: Liang Hongli, Zheng Xueqiong.

A young man who works in a tailor shop is compelled one day to put on a policeman’s uniform that he was unable to deliver and he finds that his life changes. Using the uniform to extort money from drivers, he finds both a way out of his financial troubles and a way to woo a girl at a video store whom he likes.

Discussion guest: Weihong Bao, Columbia University. Distributor: Global Film Initiative.




FILM: “Dam Street” (“Hong Yan”)

Saturday & Sunday, May 18-19, both at 9 p.m.
Friday, May 24 at midnight

(2005/China, 93 min. color, drama, in Mandarin and Sichuan with English subtitles) Director: Li Yu. Cast: Liu Yi, Liu Rui, Huang Xingrao, Li Kechun, Wang Yizhu.

In a small town in China in the early 1980s, a 16-year-old girl gets pregnant and is forced to give up the baby for adoption. Ten years later, estranged from family and community, the girl works as a singer in a local song-and-dance troupe and her only friend is a fiercely protective boy. When a marriage proposal comes her way, her life changes—on all fronts.

Discussion guest: Xudong Zhang / New York University. Distributor: Global Film Initiative.




FILM: “Stolen Life” (“Shen Si Jie”)

Saturday & Sunday, March 25-26, both at 9 p.m.
Friday, May 31 at midnight

(2005/China, 90 min., color, drama, in Mandarin with English subtitles) Director: Li Shaohong. Cast: Zhou Xun, Wu Jun, Cai Ming, Su Xiaoming.

Drama about a young girl, charting her from an awkward adolescence in which she is sent to live with her aunt and grandmother in Beijing, and has to cope with feelings of abandonment, through teenage years in which she surprises everyone by being accepted into college. An encounter with a delivery boy triggers a series of unexpected events.

Discussion guest: Martha Nochimson, Cineaste. Distributor: Global Film Initiative.




FILM: “Luxury Car” (“Jiang Cheng Xia Ri”)

Saturday & Sunday, June 1-2, both at 9 p.m.
Friday, June 7 at midnight

(2007/Brazil-France, 86 min., color, drama, in Portuguese with English subtitles) Director: Sandra Kogut. Cast: Thiago da Silva Mariz, Maria Juliana Souza de Oliveira, Wallison Felipe Leal Barroso.

Thiago is a sensitive and imaginative boy living on a small, hardscrabble farm in a remote region of Brazil. A poetic adaptation of the Brazilian short story, “Campo Geral,” focusing on minute details of rural life to tell a bittersweet story of one boy’s coming-of-age amidst events both great and small.

Discussion guest: Sandra Kogut, director. Distributor: Lee Krugman Associates, for The Global Initiative.




FILM: “Getting Home” (“Luo Ye Gui Gen”)

Saturday & Sunday, June 8-9, both at 9 p.m.
Friday, June 14 at midnight

(2007/China, 101 min., color, comedy-drama, in Mandarin with English subtitles) Director: Zhang Yang. Cast: Zhao Benshan, Hong Qiwen, Gong Dandan, Guo Degang.

Zhao, a middle-aged construction worker, sets out with the body of a dead co-worker to fulfill the man’s last wish of being buried in China’s Three Gorges region. Zhao travels hundreds of miles across extraordinary countryside, encountering a number of colorful characters and experiencing all sorts of adventures in this Chinese road movie.

Discussion guest: Peter Hitchcock / Baruch College CUNY. Distributor: Global Film Initiative.