A New Old Play

Mr. Zhang Believes

Zhang Xianchi is a man thrown into the Cultural Revolution and its afterimage, plunged into the ideological deadlocks of the era and suffering its consequences beyond it. Born into a family that supports the nationalist Kuomintang, Zhang eventually became a leftist and joined the Communist Party. But his family’s background eventually catches up with him, and in a series of bureaucratic measures, he is labelled as a Rightist, leading to a slew of irrational yet life-affecting consequences. His story is told through an exhilarating hybrid of forms, blending documentary-styled interviews and spectral theatrical displays within an ever-mutating studio-space. Hypnagogic in its imagery and ironic in attitude, Mr. Zhang Believes is a tour-de-force treatise of a man caught within dogmatic political maneuverings, which it critiques indirectly with creative and stoic fervour.

My Mother's Rhapsody

The mother is in her eightieth, the son is in his sixtieth, they talking about their past.

Madame

Qiu Jiongjiong's stark black-and-white series of interviews with transsexual cabaret singer Madame Bi Langda. Madame Bi's recollections of past experiences explicitly touch on how she performs her way through life, whether interacting with friends, lovers or her audience. More than a document of the increasingly complicated gender identity politics in China, it's also a poignant testimony of a life dedicated to articulating the aesthetics of living.

Ode to Joy

An essential background for Qiu Jiongjiong’s recent A New Old Play, this dazzlingly playful short documentary remixes a Sichuan opera company’s dress rehearsal for its tribute to Qiu Fuxin, the director’s grandfather – who was a legendary opera performer of 'clown' comedic roles, and the real-life subject of A New Old Play. This exuberant celebration of a not-yet-lost past re-activates the memories of ageing, but irrepressibly vital, stage artists.

Inmates

In a confined section of a psychiatric ward in Northeast China, patients of schizophrenia, mania, depression, compulsive sexual behaviour and alcohol addition receive the mandatory treatment. As soon as their heads are cleared, they try to break free but always fail. Under the control of drugs and unquestionable discipline, they begin to reflect on their souls, will, desire and thoughts.

The Moon Palace

First film by director Qiu Jiongjiong -- about a restauranteur, his patrons, and the culture of art, poetry, and performance that surrounds them.

A Portrait of Mr. Huang

Part of Qiu Jiongjiong’s 'chatterbox' oral history trilogy, this short documentary focuses on current storyteller and ex-cop Huang Songnian. Qiu playfully splices montage cuts between Huang’s wildly entertaining, sometimes very dark stories of intrepid forensic police work (including a super queasy tale of maggots and a body, and another of rural cannibalism), and disruptive yet oddly suitable Sichuan opera excerpts, pigeon portraits, and Qiu’s charming chalk drawings.

Sichuan Culinary Chronicles: In Four Chapters

The film continues to blend myths, legends, literature and folktales to further expand his narrative of history and weird tales. The story, set in Sichuan cuisine, is divided into four parts: a funeral banquet more than 4,000 years ago in which a grandmother cuts off her own tail to give to her children and grandchildren; a Spring Festival more than 3,000 years ago in which an ancestor king returns in the guise of a bird and is crucified at the banquet; a Mid-Autumn feast in the 1990s in which the gods gather to pay tribute to a millennia-old poet; and a birthday banquet in which a wandering child meets the gods of the underworld .