Season 3: Survival Politics
The Eastern Shore of Dianchi 滇池东岸
Hongren is a village on the eastern shore of Dianchi, a lake outside of Kunming, in China’s southwestern Yunnan province. The region used to be surrounded by plots of rice paddies, vegetables and lotus. In the early 2000s, the arable lands on the eastern shore of Dianchi Lake were transformed into urban areas, and Hongren became an “urban village,” an enclave within a megalopolis.
China's 3 Dreams
Filmmaker Nick Torrens will be present for a panel discussion after the screening
Precipitations 明日大致多雲
Precipitations is a video work filmed in Kowloon during the rainy spring of 2013. It is less a forecast than a portrait of the city, drawn via the journeys of several people involved to varying degrees with art and social activism.
The Hungry Tide
Maria Tomon is from the central Pacific nation of Kiribati, but now lives in Sydney, where she works for an NGO raising awareness of Pacific climate change issues to schools and community groups. But her spiritual home remains the small atoll of Beru, where her father, a proud village elder, lives.
Marah di Bumi Lambu 'Rage in Lambu Land’
An old woman displays two bullet holes in an old pair of pants and says ‘that’s where I got shot’ to the cameraman. ‘I am keeping these pants for my grandchildren so that they can see the fight I put up to defend my rights.’ In December 2011, locals of Lambu, in the Indonesian province of West Nusa Tenggara, protested the local administration’s decision to issue a permit to mine gold in the area.
Red Persimmons 満山紅柿:上山柿と人とのゆきかい
Ogawa Shinzuke’s form of partisan filmmaking has influenced subsequent generations of documentary filmmakers in Japan, East Asia and beyond. Begun in the late 1980s, Red Persimmons is the culmination of Ogawa’s final project, deftly completed by his protégé, Chinese ‘fifth generation’ filmmaker Peng Xiaolian—a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy.
Stray Dogs 郊遊
Acclaimed director Tsai Ming-liang will present three of his films, as a guest of the conference Taiwan: the View from the South, hosted by CIW and the Institute of Taiwan History, Academica Sinica.A family eeks out a living on the fringes of bustling Taipei, moving between the wooded limits of the city proper, to the many nooks and cracks in that offer shelter in the urban fabric.
Let It Be: The Last Rice Farmers 無米樂
Focusing on the everyday life and daily toil of four elderly rice farmers in the heart of southern Taiwan's rice-producing countryside, Let It Be (“Bo Bi Lok” in Taiwanese) explores our relationship with the land. Essuing narration, the film shares the farmers’ own reflections and hardships, full of rustic humour and pathos.
Meishi Street 煤市街
Located in central Beijing to the South West of the Tian’anmen Square, Meishi Street was a bustling residential area in a working class neighbourhood. In 2005, like many neighbourhoods in central Beijing, the street was torn down to make room for new real estate and tourism developments in conjunction with the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.
