Chinese Visual Festival launches Call for Entries for 2016 event

Chinese Visual Festival has launched its Call for Entries for the 2016 edition. Established as a major cultural event, CVF has been bringing to the UK the best in contemporary Chinese language film and art since 2011, having worked in the past with a long list of distinguished artists and directors including Jia Zhangke, Pema Tseden, Wu Wuna, Zhou Hao, Cao Fei and others.

The festival has been hosted by Kings College London, one of the world's leading research and teaching universities based in the heart of London, for several years now, with other events being regularly held at the BFI Southbank, the leading repertory cinema in the UK, specializing in seasons of classic, independent and non-English language films and is operated by the British Film Institute, and at the newly opened Bertha DocHouse, the UK's first cinema dedicated solely to documentary films and events.

There is no restriction on the types of moving images that will be accepted, including documentaries, feature films, short films, animations and art videos. As a leading event promoting Chinese-language creativity, we will only accept entries from filmmakers and artists who are citizens and residents of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as members of Chinese communities around the world.

The 2016 festival will be hosted by CVF's academic partner, King’s College London, and take place in May 2016, with screenings at the college and commercial cinemas around London and the rest of the UK.

The deadline for submissions is 31st December 2015.

CVF 2016 Call for Entries 第六屆華語視像藝術節征片

CVF Application Form 第六屆華語視像藝術節報名表

2015 Chinese Visual Festival (CVF) to run May 7th to 22nd, 2015

Chinese Visual Festival (CVF) has announced its 2015 program, which runs from May 7th – 22nd at King’s College London, with events also being held at the British Film Institute (BFI) Southbank, Bertha DocHouse and Chelsea College of Arts. For its fifth edition, the festival is thrilled to welcome to London some of the most exciting directors currently working in independent Chinese language cinema, showcasing documentary, fiction and experimental video art from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and beyond.

2015 Festival Highlights Include:
- Guest artists Zhang Peili, the father of Chinese Video Art, Wu Xiaohai and Rao Yifan
- Guest directors Gu Tao, Singing Chen, Yee Chih-Yen, Chiayun Wu and Shen Xin
- More than 40 cutting-edge films, including world and UK premieres
- Vision Taiwan strand, featuring the best in independent cinema from Taiwan
- Panel discussions and sessions on queer cinema, the Urban Diary project from Hong Kong and more
- UK tour, including Newcastle, Nottingham and Sussex Universities

2014 Chinese Visual Festival Audience Awards Announced

The 2014 Chinese Visual Festival ran from 7th - 25th May at King’s College London, featuring guest directors Jia Zhangke, Pema Tseden and Chen Yin Yen, plus more than 40 independent films from the Chinese speaking world, Wang Xin’s multi-media art exhibition project The Gallery, a local filmmakers session, panel sessions and an east meets west pipa and piano music concert by Wang Ting and Chris Lee.

The 2014 festival was a huge success and represented a considerable expansion on previous years, recording more than double the attendance figures of 2013 for both film and art, and receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback from audiences and critics.

The Chinese Visual Festival Audience Awards went to three films based on the results of voting forms on which the audience indicated its ratings of the festival films.

First Prize

Today My Mother Will Get Married 

Director: Jin Ye

China, 2013

Jin Ye’s debut is a stunning and shocking piece of independent Chinese fiction, following the tragic consequences of a young boy’s attempts to stop his mother’s new marriage in a small, rundown rural town. By turns challenging, provocative and tense, the film has a universal appeal while asking tough questions about modern China and the fate of the new generation, and is exactly the kind of indie genre cinema that the country should arguably be making more of. Festival-goers responded enthusiastically, with several audience members describing it as ‘powerful’ and ‘suspenseful’ and recording personal messages to be translated and sent to the director.

Second Prize

The Silent Holy Stones

Director: Pema Tseden

Tibet/China, 2005

Pema Tseden’s debut feature tells a charming but worrying tale of the upheaval of modernisation in Tibet. Though now nearly ten years old the film has lost none of its power and relevance or stark beauty, and has continued to win praise and awards at festivals since its release, having been compared to the works of Ozu and Bresson by Abbas Kiarostami during his time as Jury chair at the Pusan International Film Festival. Following its highly popular screening at the festival, Pema Tseden took part in a fascinating and lively discussion with the audience, covering a wide range of Tibet related subjects.

Third Prize

Blossom with Tears 

Director: Huaqing Jin

China, 2012

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Blossom with Tears ranked as one of the most popular films of the festival, Huaqing Jin’s documentary already having won a series of awards, including the prestigious 2012 UNICEF Prize. Focusing on two young children, Yuan and Xiang, as they undergo studies and training at Wuqiao Acrobatic School in Hebei Province, it’s a moving look at the pressures and hardships faced by families struggling to get by in modern China that unflinchingly depicts the harsh lives of its main protagonists. More than just an expose of the grim lives of children, Huaqing Jin offers here an often heart-breaking look at wider social problems in China that unfortunately have no easy answer.

The Audience Awards follow the 2014 Jury Awards, which were announced on May 6th:

First Prize
Little Proletarian (director Shen Jie, China, 2013)

Second Prize
The Cold Winter (director Zheng Kuo, China, 2011) Third Prize
Downstream (director Zune Kwok, Hong Kong, 2012)

Special Mentions 
Frog (director Chiang Ming-Wei, Taiwan, 2013) and GRAND CANAL (director Johnny Ma, China/USA, 2013)

Visit the Chinese Visual Festival website for more information on all the films screened during the festival: http://chinesevisualfestival.org/

Support for Jia Zhangke comes courtesy of the BFI and Arrow, in partnership with Filming East

Support for Pema Tseden comes courtesy of King’s College London Arts & Humanities Research Committee

Support for Chen Yin Yen comes courtesy of the Taiwan Ministry of Culture

About Chinese Visual Festival
Since the overwhelming success of its first edition in 2011, Chinese Visual Festival has been established as a major event on the London cultural calendar, bringing independent contemporary Chinese cinema and art to UK audiences. Hosted by China Culture Connect and King’s College London, the festival continues to grow and innovate, finding new and exciting ways of bringing Chinese creativity to the world. Plans are now in place for more events during 2014, the 2015 annual festival and beyond.

2014 CHINESE VISUAL FESTIVAL in London, May 7th - 18th, 2014

The Search

- Guest directors Jia Zhangke and Pema Tseden

- More than 40 cutting-edge films, including world and UK premieres

- China Independent Film Festival 10th Anniversary event and guests

- Wang Xin’s daily experimental art installation project The Gallery

- Local filmmakers showcase, panel discussions and public lectures with key industry
figures and academics, including Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns

- The Chinese Visual Festival Jury Awards, presided by a team of industry and
academic experts, will be announced in early May

The 2014 Chinese Visual Festival (CVF) will run from May 7th – 18th at King’s College London, with events also being held at Riverside Studios in collaboration with DocHouse.

For 2014, the festival is thrilled to welcome two of the most important filmmakers in modern independent Chinese language cinema, Jia Zhangke and Pema Tseden. In addition to a preview of his latest work, the award winning A Touch of Sin at the BFI, Jia will also host a very special screening session at King’s of his rarely seen short films. Acclaimed Tibetan director Pema Tseden opens the festival with Old Dog, as well as screening his other works and taking part in panel discussion sessions on Tibetan Culture and filmmaking. CVF is also delighted to be collaborating with Newcastle University in holding a celebration of ten years of the China Independent Film Festival (CIFF), one of the most vital and enduring Chinese language film events. To help mark this remarkable anniversary, CVF will be hosting a special animation session, as well as welcoming CIFF’s Cao Kai and Zhang Xianmin for what promises to be a fascinating panel discussion.

Today My Mother Will Get Married

Now in its fourth year, CVF has significantly expanded to include the very best in Chinese language independent fiction as well as documentary, art and experimental cinema. The 40+ films screened this year cover a fantastic range of contemporary themes, genres and issues, from mainland Chinese gangsters in Burned Wings and E Huang Mountain to humanist Taiwanese documentaries such as A Rolling Stone and creative experimental cinema in Deformity Sci-Fi and Kun 13: Criticising Ai Weiwei and Wu Haohao.

As usual, CVF guests will be joined by a rich variety of leading academics and key figures in the film industry and related social studies, who will take part in Q&A sessions as well as a program of talks and symposiums, making the festival a lively forum for discussion and debate. This year, audiences will also have the chance to attend sessions with noted writer, commentator, film festival programmer and screenwriter Tony Rayns, who will be presenting The Secret History of Independent Chinese Films.

Burned Wings

By highlighting creativity in both art and film, CVF this year offers something a little different to the usual art exhibition with artist Wang Xin presenting in person her installation The Gallery, which transforms the Anatomy Museum of King’s College Strand Campus into a space for ephemeral art. Up to two of 15 projects will be shown each day, and within the “walls” of the gallery the possibilities are endless - an artist can create a gallery within a gallery, a stage for performance, a café, a creative workshop, a cinema, or even a space for meditation. Through the use of social media and video conferencing, the interactive installation will become a hub of creative exchanges between cities around the world and an ephemeral festival for artists and audiences, local and global.

Festival Director James Mudge commented: “It’s great to be back at King’s again, and this year’s Chinese Visual Festival promises to be the biggest and most varied yet. It’s exciting to see the way people are continuing to respond to and engage with our efforts to bring Chinese language independent cinema to the UK, and we’re thrilled that our audience is continuing to grow. We’re delighted to be able to work with top guests like Jia Zhangke, Pema Tseden and Wang Xin, and I’m also very pleased by the fact that we’ve managed to attract such a strong line-up of films this year, particularly through our expansion into indie fiction”.
 
Details, including links to the full schedule and for buying tickets, are now available on the Chinese Visual Festival website: www.chinesevisualfestival.org.

Exhibition details are available on the Cultural Institute at King’s web pages:
www.kcl.ac.uk/culture.