ACF 1195: FLOATING at Asia Society NY this Friday, October 21st

Floating

Directed by HUANG Weikai

China, 2005, 93 minutes, DVCAM, English Subtitles

When: Friday, October 21, 2011 at 6:45 PM

Where: Asian Society

725 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10021

Asia Society NY's Visions of a New China documentary film series continues this coming Friday evening with HUANG Weikai's Floating.

Synopsis: A 30-year-old rural-born singer brings his guitar to Guangzhou to eke out a living by performing in public spaces. Like many migrant workers who don’t possess residence permits to stay in this southern metropolis, he is constantly dodging the authorities. The camera closely follows the singer’s daily life as he performs in pedestrian underpasses and lives out his tumultuous romantic life, which involves suicide, abortion and a bad break-up. As the film progresses, we find the filmmaker, who also made the much-praised Disorder (2009), getting intimately involved with his subject’s precarious existence. Floating offers a humanist portrayal of those who drift on the fringes of society.

Black Pottery Prize and Audience Award, Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, China (2005)
New Filmmaker Award, Reel China Documentary Biennial, New York, Shanghai (2006)
Hong Kong International Film Festival (2006)
The International Umbria Film Festival, Italy (2007)

Director HUANG Weikai was born in 1972 in Guangdong Province, China. He studied Chinese painting for 15 years and graduated from the Chinese Art Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He used to work as a cinema promoter, art editor, graphic designer, movie script writer and cameraman. Since 2002, he has been directing independent films. His 2009 found-footage documentary, Disorder, has been acclaimed as "One of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages" by Hua Hsu in The Atlantic for its unflinching look at the absurdity and anarchy of urban life in contemporary China

Tickets for Floating here.

The Visions of a New China film series is supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. Additional support is provided by the Center on U.S.-China Relations and New York State Council on the Arts.