The Lacking Diversity in Mainland Films

In Senses of Cinema's website, I found an interesting report from Adrian Danks:A City of Forgetting: The 32^nd Hong Kong International Film Festival. This report provides me an access to review the films of Asian region at last year. In his report(A City of Forgetting: The 32nd Hong Kong International Film Festival ), Danks talked about his opinions about this festival and some screening which I didn't have a chance to see.

According to Danks, the films in this festival include films in different genres. I began to recall the films I have seen or heard about last year in China. Except The Sun Also Rises from Wen Jiang, there is no other film mentioned in this article that I have heard about in mainland film festivals. Basically, for most of mainland films, to me, documentaries and experimental films have more artistic value than narrative films. Firstly, documentary especially scientific documentary is my favorite genre. However, they are rare and almost inaccessible in theater but only on television sometimes. Some of early mainland documentaries I have seen are low quality because of lacking of finical support. Although I aware that documentaries have the same problem in most of countries because they are not produced for the commercial purpose. When it comes to experimental film, I have no idea what mainland experimental films look like since some narrative films usually as disorienting as experimental film. After the encounters of experimental films in Milwaukee, I disagree with the point that some films are thought to be experimental films only because their contexts are controversy.

Danks mentioned that the sameness lies in most of mainland Chinese films that he saw in this festival. Although I have not seen all those films, unfortunately I agree with Danks about the sameness in mainland Chinese films. Briefly, the lacking of encouragement and the support of the government cause the poorness in cinema diversity. Basically, only the films produced by very famous filmmakers and said to be high-budget can be seen in most of the cities, which actually are in pretty poor quality. The famous directors have more advantages in circulation of films. The Sun Also Rises from Wen Jiang is more or less experimental compared to other mainstream films. And it is fortunate that he is famous enough to make his film to be screened in the theaters. As a matter of fact, there are many promising films produced by unfamiliar filmmakers every year in China. But because of unknown reason, their works can barely be screened in public. To sum up, the lacking of diversity in mainland cinemas are the results of above reasons and would be impacted by similar reasons in the future.

However, I still expect to see more non-mainstream films from Asian region. It is not because of the boring mainstream films, but the hope that to extend the life of cinema in China.

About Ang Lee and His Films

Recently I read an article about director Ang Lee. The author of this article is David Minnihan. Ang Lee is a Chinese director born in Taiwan, who is educated for filmmaking in America. In David Minnihan article, he briefly introduces Lee’s films from his school work to the award-winning masterpiece to the reader. He divides Lee’s filmmaking into three periods according to the influence of Lee’s relationship with his father on his films. Minnihan concludes that through Lee’s films, despite their diversity, we can always fine a line which is the family and mostly the relationship between him and his father for his early movies. Minnihan also states that Lee’s films capture the essence of Chinese culture and family dynamics. What is more, his exploration about the Western and Eastern traditions is admirable. As a Westerner who maybe not very familiar with Oriental culture, Minnihan’s analysis about Lee and his films are fairly precise. For me, what I really appreciate is that the powerful presentation of characters’ sensibility in Lee’s film.

In many of Lee’s films, he chooses the family as the main theme to display the plots, which is a wise way to present the complex of characters’ sensibility. When characters have to deal with the relationship with their parents, children and brothers as well as the conflicts related to these relatives, even a little decision would have significant impacts on others. In order to continue their own lives in an ideal way, they tried to find the solutions for problems and satisfy relatives’ expectations. However, the characters usually failed at last which is also true in real society. In these situations, the presentation of characters is difficult to achieve. But Lee successfully shaped the characters that are the center of the family conflicts and made this complexity attractive to audiences. His early films such as (The Wedding Banquet, 1993) and mature films (Sense and Sensibility, 1995) may be this type of presentation. However, his later films like Brokeback Mountain (2005), which the family is not the main theme, yet produces two characters who have to face the conflicts from society. When one of the protagonists was told the death of his lover, he was suddenly trapped into the sadness that he couldn’t tall. It is the most impressive scene in this film and probably the best for Lee’s films in my opinion. This scene is powerful enough to allow audience to recall the unfortunate history of two protagonists and the sadness after the end of this film.

Through the reading Minnihan’s essay about Ang Lee and his films, I realize that the common emotions of human being are worth for exploration at whenever by using a medium like the cinema. And it does not have to imply a very complicated story.

Moving into the Art Work

Art Encounter Series Two

Key words: Snow Mirror, Deep Walls, interactivity


Perhaps few visitors have ever thought that they would become parts of the art work until artists began to apply interactivity as their tool in artistic creation. Recently, the feature exhibition Act/React in Milwaukee Art Museum brought me many new thoughts about this new form of art work. I become a curious visitor to this exhibition and plan to make a third visit.


Scott Snibbe’s Deep Walls and Daniel Rozin’s Snow Mirror are the two attractive installations for me. Deep Walls is formed by sixteen grids projected on to a screen. Each grid presents a silhouette of one visitor’s movement dynamically. For the visitors, their images are caught by the camera when they simply move through this wall. I spent up to half an hour in front of this installation. It is the ever-changing images that capture my eyes. When the first time I participated in Deep Walls, I found it was interesting and enjoyed myself very much. I couldn’t help to move through the wall again and again, trying to experiment my new images on the wall. The second time, I tended to pay attention to other visitors reactions. People are curious and children keep moving through the wall like what I did before. But you can never imagine how brisk everyone becomes in front of the wall. Some people perform swing dance. Some people keep turning around at walking. Some people (including me) keep jumping like a kangaroo. A couple kisses each other when they were walking…..It could be any kind of modern dance. Watching other visitors’ movement and images, I noticed that we were producing a movie. The visitors become a required part in art work’s completion. Actually, it is my favorite work in this exhibition for it brings so much fun for every visitor.


Snow Mirror is more mysterious compared to Deep Walls. In a dark room, standing in front of a magical mirror which is displayed by digital particles, visitor’s outline would be shaped by these particles. The images just like visitors are standing in a snow storm. But when they move, the images brake up. Similarly, most visitors enjoy the appearance and disappearance by moving around. But perhaps it is in such a dark and small place, few people would make dramatic movement. I particularly appreciate the black and white images in such rough style.


Snow Mirror and Deep Walls are both installations which can invite more than single individual to participate in the completion of the artistic creation. They display the effect of interactivity in black and write on the screen. Snow Mirror integrates the consequence of movement of every visitor into one dynamic image, while the Deep Walls displays interactivities of all visitors in separated images. The images of visitors’ movement are revealed in different mediums.


My experience in Act/React exhibition reveals the diversity of art encounters. When I was watching Robert Schaller’ My Life as a Bee, I was introduced to experience the bee’s little world and life with the changing colors and angles. My imagination was activated and kept recalling the experience for this film. I don’t have to move and jump in order to watch and think. However, all of the Act/React works require my whole body as well as my mind to complete the art works. I didn’t realize the significance of my participation as well as others until I went back. Without the activity of visitors, most of the installations are only a wall, a screen, a desk or a stack of wooden tubes equipped with computers. What is more, the activity requires the movement of visitors more than the thinking to the art work.


I have interested in that what inspires the creation of interactive art since I visited the exhibition. Although the art works in the Act/React exhibition are brand new to me as artistic creation. According to George Fifield’s Act/React, it is the capacity of digital technology to reveal our real actions in special ways serves as the inspiration or the technical supports for the art work. And the interactivity can be dated to 1950. Among many interactive art works mentioned at Fifield’s essay, I have a desire to experience the Christina Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau’s interactive work A-Volve as well as Karl Sims’s Galapagos which are based on biology, which remind me a software of Complexity science that mimic the evolution from Protozoa to Metazoa. Now the artists become more and more sophisticated in interactive art creation. Many technical products which enable you to interact with art at home such as iTouch are even available to consumers.

The tool of interactivity moves us into the world of artists’ creation in the name of contemporary art.

I was in the Snow Mirror and was taking picture.



A picture of Deep Walls.



You can click here to take a look at Act/React exhibition in Milwaukee Art Museum.

Who Creates the Creative Act?

------something about Paul Chan’s Baghdad in No Particular Order, Part I&II



In a period which the interaction between artists and spectators are highly concerned, the spectators’ understanding of a work of art from artist’s original intention is thought to be more and more important. As a matter of fact, Marcel Duchamp believes that the creative acts are performed by the artists and spectators together. Without the deciphering of spectators, the realization of creative act is impossible.

Watching Baghdad in No Particular Order, Part I&II by Paul Chan is one of the examples that spectators and artist create the creative act together. Part I is a documentary film about what are people’s lives like in Baghdad which is a city destroyed by war. The scenes are not organized in a very logical and narrative order which seems like that the filmmaker arranges some clips randomly. Part II is a website that filmmaker makes these clips, images, related information available for viewers who would like to explore more about the film.

In the first place, Chan breaks the rule that a filmmaker generally subordinate the order of scenes to temporal relation in a movie. A documentary also follows this rule so that viewers will not be disoriented. But this film doesn’t. Except the introductory scenes of Baghdad at the beginning, other scenes were apparently connected in no temporal order. However, scenes in a group telling an aspect of lives are still edited in a temporal or spatial relation so that we are able to follow this film. The purpose of setting a logical connection between scenes is to maintain viewers’ attention under the control of filmmaker. When Chan plans to break these scenes into groups in no order, he intends to eliminate this connection which is decided by a filmmaker. Therefore, he leaves more space for spectators to think about his work in their own way and focus on their own interests. After I watched the film, I attempted to recall one or several scenes in this film, the clips which came out first were those impressed me the most. I believe that these clips for every viewer vary based on age, class, gender and regional and cultural identity. For me, the young girl selling books from ground is the most impressed scene. Probably because her voice seems especially clear and vulnerable in this environment, I can easily single out this scene in my memories. When I watched Part I in Part II, I began to follow my own order. In other words, Chan makes it more possible in this way that I am involved in his film thinking about the stories in the scenes and even the stories behind the screen.

The next step that Chan performs is to allow viewers to organize off-screen materials which could assist them in understanding the situation in Baghdad. The disorganization of scenes pushed me to think. Consequently, I made more effort to decipher Chan’s film. I was desired to learn about the history and other perspectives of the war. Part II serves as a very perfect resource for me, since the internet as a tool of searching information and communication is significantly powerful. It is smart and creative that Paul Chan makes the online resource as a part of understanding his films as well as the situation in Baghdad which he intends to inform the viewers. However, I don’t think I have found myself an answer. Maybe all the reasons for wars are absurd that only a few people think they actually understand. At least, sufficient information including images, clips, articles and links to other related websites are provided in Part II, which I think it can introduce a Baghdad in war very clearly and systematically. In a nutshell, I have never completed a part like that when I experience a film before watching this film. Chan’s leading as an artist not only evokes my thinking about Baghdad in war and people in war, but also provides me a journey to the completion of our creative act, a journey that I can play my own role as a spectator in realization the value of a work of art.

According to Duchamp, the participation of spectators in creative act becomes more and more obvious because of the importance of the feedback to the work of art. In a society that people are entertained by simply sitting in the couch and watching television program for whole day, people can be very lazy in thinking when they appreciate a work of art. Therefore, artists create their work by inviting the spectators to complete the creative act are promising.


Click here to watch this film. And the website.