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If you ask any Chinese indie auteur for their own favorite film festival, expect to be directed to the city of Xining, China’s historic gateway to the vast Tibetan Plateau. Here, in a now-teaming city in the foothills of the world’s tallest mountains, the First International Film Festival has carved out a reputation that regularly earns it comparisons to Sundance — it is China’s preeminent indie event, where exciting new cinematic talent is most likely to be discovered.

This year’s festival, running July 23-31, features a selection of 98 films, including 27 features and 71 shorts — many of them made by first or second-time directors. Former financier-turned-producer, writer and director Song Wen, co-founded Fiff in 2006 and has shepherded the event through 17 years of tumultuous growth and change in the Chinese industry. Along the way, he and the festival have nurtured the careers of some of China’s most distinctive new cinematic voices,...

This last week in April has seen, with Avengers: Endgame and the Battle of Winterfell episode of Game of Thrones, the culmination on the largest scale possible in our fractured culture of a long-simmering trend in American action filmmaking away from color in favor of a grim, murky, monochrome darkness. The TV show was immediately criticized for being nigh unwatchable on a normal television, its images being so dark and cluttered with digital artifacts, while the Marvel movie chose to stage its splash page final battle, the climax of a decade of franchise-building, not as a triumph of four-color majesty but as a dull smear of muddy gray. I’m not sure where exactly the trend started, it might have been when Tim Burton’s shadowy Batman movies outpaced Warren Beatty’s lively Dick Tracy, or it might have been when the pseudo-realism of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan...

What an incredible year for cinema. What an incredible year, particularly, for Asian cinema. Obviously, the world’s most populous continent and biggest emerging film market contributes abundantly to the cinematic arts every year, but in 2018, the variety and vibrancy of output from the still underrepresented- and -appreciated region (at least in terms of inclusion at A-list festivals or global visibility) really stood out.

The Hong Sangsoo fan club probably got a little more crowded thanks to the award-winning Hotel by the River, but it’s the crazy prolific Korean auteur’s first outing this year, the compact, richly layered Grass that most reminded me of his unique touch. Another Berlinale premiere, the 4-hour political document/musical Season of the Devil, probably cost Lav Diaz some fans, but, as always, there’s something singularly, almost perversely rewarding about making it through the work of Philippine’s guru of slow cinema.

Zhang Yimou’s Shadow walked away with the most number of awards, including best director.

The late Hu Bo’s directorial debut An Elephant Sitting Still was named best film at the 55th Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, while Zhang Yimou’s Shadow walked away with the most number of awards, including best director.

Two further mainland Chinese films – Dying To Survive and Long Day’s Journey Into Night – each nabbed three wins. Mainland films most noticeably dominated the stage taking most of the awards at the ceremony held on Saturday (Nov 18) at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall in Taipei.

Zhang Yimou’s moody, monochromatic action drama “Shadow” is the strong favorite in the annual Golden Horse Awards race. The awards, operated from Taiwan, celebrate the best films in Chinese-language variants.

“Shadow,” which premiered in prestigious slots in the Venice and Toronto film festivals last month, collected 12 nominations. These included nominations for best film and for best director.

Taiwanese drama “Dear Ex,” about the manipulations revealed by a man’s altered will, collected the second-most nominations, with eight. The film premiered at the Udine festival in April and won several prizes at the Taipei festival in June. It is next set for festival play in Busan, and heads for commercial release next month. “Dying to Survive” collected seven nominations.

The five contenders for the best film prize are “Shadow,” “Dear Ex,” mainland Chinese hit “Dying to Survive,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” and “An Elephant Sitting Still,” which premiered...

The event is focused on the arthouse and independent areas of Chinese cinema.

Perched high on the Tibetan plateau, the city of Xining hosts the First International Film Festival, an event that is firmly focused on the arthouse and independent end of the Chinese cinema spectrum.

The annual event, which this year ran July 21-30, is committed to supporting young talent that may not find a berth in more mainstream Chinese festivals. Almost every Chinese filmmaker who has popped up on the international festival circuit over the past few years – including Cai Chengjie (The Widowed Witch), Xin Yukun (The Coffin...

The event is focused on the arthouse and independent areas of Chinese cinema.

Perched high on the Tibetan plateau, the city of Xining hosts the First International Film Festival, an event that is firmly focused on the arthouse and independent end of the Chinese cinema spectrum.

The annual event, which this year ran July 21-30, is committed to supporting young talent that may not find a berth in more mainstream Chinese festivals. Almost every Chinese filmmaker who has popped up on the international festival circuit over the past few years – including Cai Chengjie (The Widowed Witch), Xin Yukun (The Coffin...

New York Asian Film Festival heads on global trawl for content, festival blind spots, ‘fear of China’.

As the 17th New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff) enters its final weekend, executive director Samuel Jamier and deputy director Stephen Cremin discuss why premieres aren’t always the be-all-and-end-all, the ‘fear of China’, Nyaff’s faithful audience, and international festival blind spots.

Presented by Film Society Of Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema and backed by a range of Asian bodies and New York-based private donors, the event runs from June 29-July 15 at Film Society Of Lincoln Center.

This year’s edition closes...

2017 saw a bit of a resurgence in Asian serial killer films. While South Korea gave us a mixed bag of films of the genre like “V.I.P.”, “Memoir of a Murderer” and “The Chase”, Japan remade the South Korean thriller “Confession of Murder” into “Memoirs of a Murderer” with disastrous results. But it was Chinese director Dong Yue’s solid debut effort “The Looming Storm” that managed to stand heads and shoulders over the rest. The noir film featured in competition at the Tokyo Film Festival and won Dong Yue the Best New Director award at the Asian Film Awards.

The Looming Storm is screening at the 17th New York Asian Film Festival

It’s 1997 and while the Handover of Hong Kong is happening in the south, elsewhere the Chinese government is shutting down non-profiting state-run factories. It is in one such rain-drenched factory-populated small town that Yu Guowei, a self-important Security chief at a factory,...

Don’t tell the U.S. President, but if this edition of the Nyaff is any indication, his nation is probably running a massive trade deficit with Asia when it comes to film noir, China in particular. Here’s a quick look at the riches to be had. The amount and overall pervasiveness of rain in The Looming Storm passes from the sublime to the ridiculous… and back to the sublime again, imbuing the film with the central stylistic and mythic calling cards of the genre. The same could be said of star Duan Yihong’s extreme-sports version of chain-smoking. These two elements, even if presented along with show tunes and pratfalls, would probably qualify The Looming Star as an archetypal noir. And that’s forgetting its unconventional detective, its...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Don’t tell the U.S. President, but if this edition of the Nyaff is any indication, his nation is probably running a massive trade deficit with Asia when it comes to film noir, China in particular. Here’s a quick look at the riches to be had. The amount and overall pervasiveness of rain in The Looming Storm passes from the sublime to the ridiculous… and back to the sublime again, imbuing the film with the central stylistic and mythic calling cards of the genre. The same could be said of star Duan Yihong’s extreme-sports version of chain-smoking. These two elements, even if presented along with show tunes and pratfalls, would probably qualify The Looming Star as an archetypal noir. And that’s forgetting its unconventional detective, its...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

New York, NY – The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema announce the 17th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff), June 29 – July 15, 2018.

From vicious, life-destroying phone scams to balletic battles between equally corrupt cops and yakuza, Nyaff offers films that reflect on contemporary society while offering extreme genre pleasures. There are self-referential takes on cinematic zombies, existential date nights, and teens finding their own corners of the world despite familial and societal expectations.After last year’s Sweet Sixteen, this year’s program is dubbed the Savage Seventeenth edition with four world premieres, three international premieres, 21 North American premieres, three U.S. premieres, and twelve New York premieres, showcasing the most exciting comedies, dramas, thrillers, romances, horrors and arthouse films from East Asia.

Savage Seventeen: The festival has a rich history of presenting films that deal with the social issue of teenage bullying. Many of these...

Chen Kaige’s Legend Of The Demon Cat took the most awards winning four prizes.

Chinese director Feng Xiaogang’s period drama Youth scooped best film at this year’s Asian Film Awards, which were held at the Venetian Macao on Saturday night (March 17).

Chen Kaige’s Legend Of The Demon Cat, a co-production between Hong Kong, China and Japan, took the most prizes overall winning four awards, including best supporting actress (Zhang Yuqi), best costume design (Chen Tongxun), best production design (Tu Nan, Lu Wei) and best visual effects (Ishii Norio).

Japanese filmmaker Ishii Yuya won best director for...

Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund, winner of the 2017 Cannes Palme d'Or for The Square, has joined the competition jury of the Beijing International Film Festival, kicking off in the Chinese capital April 15.

The government-backed event unveiled its full jury lineup at a press event in Beijing Friday. Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai was previously named chair of this year's jury. Wong and Ostlund will be joined by Rob Cohen, director of The Fast and The Furious; Chinese actor Yihong Duan, winner of the Tokyo film festival's best actor prize last year for The Looming Storm; Oscar-winning Polish composer Jan...