Vrijdag 2 februari
Through Dreams and the Mirror
Chinese Experimental Animated Film Night
NL Through Dreams and the Mirror: Chinese Experimental Animation Film Night is een collectie animaties samengesteld door Berlin NewGen Chinese Film Festival, geïnitieerd door een groep jonge Chinese filmmakers en filmliefhebbers die in Europa wonen. Het programma is geselecteerd uit het China Contemporary Animation Art Archive van de Nanjing University of the Arts, gespecialiseerd in de collectie en onderzoek van experimentele animatie en videokunst in China.
Dit programma laat zien hoe een jonge generatie animatiekunstenaars in China een verscheidenheid aan experimentele animatietechnieken gebruikt om gevoelens van plezier of trauma te visualiseren die voortkomen uit persoonlijke of culturele herinneringen. Acht korte films verkennen de grenzen van animatie door gewaagde, rauwe en gefragmenteerde beeldtalen weer te geven als een droom, alsof we de werkelijkheid ervaren vanaf de andere kant van de spiegel: een die vervormd, chaotisch en griezelig is.
EN Through Dreams and the Mirror: Chinese Experimental Animation Film Night is a collection of animations curated by Berlin NewGen Chinese Film Festival, initiated by a group of young Chinese filmmakers and film enthusiasts living in Europe. The programme is selected from the China Contemporary Animation Art Archive located at the Nanjing University of the Arts, specializing in the collection and research of experimental animation and video art in China.
This programme showcases how a young generation of animation artists in China employ a variety of experimental animation techniques to visualize sentiments of pleasure or trauma that are drawn from personal or cultural memories. Eight short films explore the limits of animation by displaying bold, raw, and fragmented visual languages like a dream, as if we are experiencing reality from the other side of the mirror - one that is distorted, chaotic, uncanny.
Vrijdag 02 februari, 20:30
ANIMATION
Through Dreams and the Mirror: Chinese Experimental Animated Film Night
Summer Summer [夏夏]
Tang Ruihong | 2020 | China | 4’ | EN subs
EN Summer Summer collects emotions that belong to each person's unique taste and ferments them into small universes that will eventually disappear with the touch of greenness at the last moment of summer. The entire film is directly animated on time-stamped film, and the improvised painting traces are infinitely magnified through projection and scanning.
Splash [水花]
Shen Jie | 2019 | China | 10’ | EN subs
EN With a precise montage of a few sound elements, animated images and framing, Shen Jie tells of borderlines and possibilities of events in a pool. Who splashes whom and when? Linear narrative is suspended. Urgency and restlessness are inherent features of the film. The images are inspired by the work of British painter David Hockney’s work Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures).
Art Brut [原生艺术]
Zhang Anji | 2022 | China | 8’ | EN subs
Zhang uses animation techniques to dynamically engage paintings of people with mental disabilities in Nanjing Outsider Art Studio in order to share neurodiverse perspectives.
Tiger Stabs Tiger [虎的局部]
Shen Jie | 2022 | China | 22’ | EN subs
EN Irreversible traces, repeated collisions, intense touches, and adhesions…bring both life and death.
The Big Tree in Front of the House [门前有棵大树]
Liu Yinan | 2022 | China | 6’ | EN subs
EN It should have been an ordinary day but it was anything but usual. Yinan Liu finds absurdities in mundane events, and asks: "Where did people come from and where did they go?"
A Nap in Fluoroscopy Buses [间歇]
Lei Lei | 2022 | China | 7’ | EN subs
EN People in the city, riding buses, walking through the streets, crawling with insects, passing by silhouettes, sweating after rush hour. A Nap in Fluoroscopy Buses is an intimate portrait of a civilization drawn with careful observation.
Scorching Sun [烈日]
Hong Ning | 2022 | China | 6’ | EN subs
EN This is a 5 minutes and 54 seconds long fixed shot image created by Hong Ning using machine learning technology. The film shows relationships of gay people in contemporary Chinese society where social norms and values are rapidly changing. Just like in life, we all have an unutterable secret, an irrevocable regret, an unattainable dream, and a love that is engraved in our bones.
Mirror Stage
Han Liu | 2022 | China | 9’ | EN subs
EN The film draws upon a philosophical concept: French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s Mirror Stage. By breaking the boundaries of reality, dreams and fantasy, the film interprets the Mirror Stage in three phases: chaos, the ideal, the real.