Director's Comments

Shelly Kraicer asked the directors whose films we are showing to comment on the situation of independent cinema in China, and also for their thoughts on the Beijing Independent Film Festival’s importance both for Chinese independent cinema and for their own careers as filmmakers. Here is a selection of their comments (translations by Shelly).

I believe that the “unsuccessful” film festivals that occurred in Songzhuang 2011 to now are in fact authentic film festivals. This kind of film festival is rare in the entire world — a festival that is not afraid of resistance, a festival that struggles for freedom.

- Wang Wo

In 2012, BIFF experienced the first power cutoff in its history. The target of the cutoff was the opening film Egg and Stone, which I directed. I left my daughter, whom I had given birth to less than a month before, alone for this first time, so that I could attend. I felt like a mother watching her own child stabbed to death in public. Later, I wondered: “Why live in this kind of a country?” Afterwards I got it: the government can use any means at its disposal to obliterate a film festival, but can it wipe out Egg and Stone?

- Huang Ji

BIFF is the most stimulating film festival in the world. As far as I’m concerned, there is nowhere else our physical safety would be threatened and property rights violated merely because we’re watching films together. During the last few years of BIFF, you could feel the absurdity of China, and feel the government’s incessant fear. Chinese audiences are great: they know how to use their minds. On the other hand, I won’t make a special effort to pander to Western audiences. I don’t even understand why they are willing to watch superficial, or you could say symbolic, accounts of Chinese misery.

- Yang Mingming

What’s special about the experience of attending BIFF? Showing a film there requires you to proceed with even greater caution than you would while having a secret love affair. I think that what the officials, have done at BIFF is an event with special Chinese characteristics. I try to understand it as a form of performance art.

- Wang Xiaozhen

BIFF is extremely important. It is an exit. It is a place where different social strata and the collective unconscious interact.

- Zhang Yipin

Sometimes I shoot films just so I can hear my inner voice. But in China doing this may not be “permitted”. Therefore, many artists will censor themselves. It’s a question of making a choice. I absolutely need Chinese audiences to see my films, because I shoot stories that this land itself gives rise to. 

- Yang Pingdao

Resolve in political matters, no matter if it’s on the left, the centre, or the right, commands people’s respect. But business interests cloaked in the guise of ideology are engaged in suppressing BIFF. This act is an insult to the concept of “ideology”. It makes one suspicious of most of China’s so-called questions of political idealism, which are in fact merely boring, pragmatic economic disputes. The force that suppresses unofficial images is undergoing a transformation: from political to commercial. Will this process even cheapen the spirit of independence itself?

- Zhong Su

I am empowered by my films to uncover the vibrant nature of the world.

- Bai Bin

Fear and anger are a common experience while attending BIFF. Government obstruction of BIFF intensifies my desire to shoot films. Moreover, in my new film I inquire directly into cinema’s core problem of democracy. I’ve always believed that my own work and the BIFF form an organic whole.

- Xu Ruotao

BIFF is the birthplace of my documentaries. Almost all of my works have had their first screenings there. I believe that seeing is the beginning of change. I hope that my documentaries provide people with food for thought. Start from changing a prejudice, and you could even end up changing an entire world.

- Xu Tong

The beauty of independent cinema lies in its independence. The opposite of this independence is a media controlled by a propaganda mechanism under centralized command. Independence, exploration, and discovery grant you freedom.

- Hu Jie

Attending BIFF was the first time I discovered that there were so many people who did just what I was doing, the first time I found colleagues who felt the same kind of excitement.

- Cong Feng