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The BigScreen Festival or BigScreen Italia is a film festival that focuses on Chinese and Italian cinema. It was first held in 2004 in Padua, Italy, but in 2006 moved to Kunming, Yunnan, China.
The first edition of Big Screen took place in Padua, Italy, from 18 to 24 March 2004. This festival was organized by the portal Cinaoggi.it and the University Student Association (ASU) together with Progetti Giovani. Other associations including the commune of Padova, the University of Padova, and the Shanghai Theatre Academy collaborated with the festival. The festival screened several works from Italy and China. Students of the Shanghai Theatre also screened their works. It was the first Asian Cinema Festival in Padova.
The artistic directors of the festival were Dominique Musorrafiti and Matteo Damiani. The festival featured works by Wong Kar-wai, Wang Xiaoshuai, Jia Zhangke, Fruit Chan, Hayao Miyazaki, Osamu Tezuka, Kazuhisa Takenouchi, Hugo Ng, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Guests included Wu Baohe, a professor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, Marco Ceresa, and Marcello Ghirardi.
BigScreen Pills, also organised by Cinaoggi and ASU, took place from 11-12 May 2005, a selection of short films, video art, movies and documentaries leading up to the second edition of BigScreen Asia. The end of the evening featured a concert by the Japanese band Mono .
Musorrafiti and Damiani were again the artistic directors, and the event was hosted by Valentina Pedone and Felix Schoeber. Works featured included Lisa Partby (The New Flowers of Beijing, Pao ma liu liu), abelvideo, He Jia, Guan Jang, Zhang Yang, Singing Chen, Chen Chieh-jen, Tsui Kuang-Yu, Hu Jieming.
The second year of the BigScreen festival took place from 24-28 October 2005, featuring a selection of modern Thai cinema, a substantial display of short Korean films, a photographic exhibition, and a concert on Asian themes by Claudio Rocchetti. This was accompanied by the presentation of works by more well-known producers, including Wang Xiaoshuai, Wong Karwai, Fruit Chan, Rintaro, Katsuhiro Otomo, Zhang Yang and Jia Zhangke.
The festival was hosted by Marco Ceresa, Marco Della Gassa, Marcello Ghiraldi, and Stefano Locati.
In November 2005 the organizers of CinaOggi moved to Kunming, China, and took the BigScreen Festival with them. The festival grew and became more of a competition. Italian universities including "La Sapienza" (Rome), the University of Naples, the Oriental languages department of the "Ca’ Foscari" University of Venice, the Young Italian Artists Association (GAI), and the Yunnan Arts Institute collaborated on the project, which took place in Kunming from the 19th to 23 July 2006. The festival had a particular focus on Bruno Bozzetto.
The international jury included Wang Xiaoshuai, Jia Zhangke, artist Ye Yongqing, Marco Ceresa, and Song Jie, Dean of the Yunnan Arts Institute Cinema and Television Department.
The 2007 festival was held in Kunming, Yunnan, from 27 November – 1 December 2007, featuring 94 films from more 30 countries. The festival was co-organized by CinaOggi.it, GoKunming.com, Yunnan Experimental Film Base, under the patronage of Istituto Italiano di Cultura. The official supporting media was the Chinese newspaper Dushi Shibao.
The winning films from BigScreen Film Festival 2007 were announced by a jury composed of Marco Ceresa of the "Ca' Foscari" University in Venice, screenwriter Wang Yao and Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei.org. Four films by French director Jean-Gabriel Périot (Even if she had been a criminal, Dies Irae, Under Twilight and Nijuman No Borei) were collectively honoured as the best entries in the video art and experimental films category. The jurors said they based their selections upon the theme of modernity vs tradition, which was a common thread in all the winning movies. Special guests included the Hong Kong director Yan Yan Mak, who presented her movie The Scarlet Robe starring the singer Denise Ho and the Japanese singer Tujiko Noriko. The festival had a special focus on the work of Don Askarian and Lasse Gjertsen.
The Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), is one of Asia’s oldest international film festivals. Founded in 1976, the festival features different movies, filmmakers from different countries in Hong Kong.
Jia Zhangke is a Chinese film director and screenwriter. He is generally regarded as a leading figure of the "Sixth Generation" movement of Chinese cinema, a group that also includes such figures as Wang Xiaoshuai, Lou Ye, Wang Quan'an and Zhang Yuan.
Beijing Film Academy is a coeducational state-run higher education institution in Beijing, China. The film school is the largest institution specialising in the tertiary education for film and television production in Asia. The academy has earned international recognition for its achievements in film production.
The World is a 2004 Chinese drama written and directed by Jia Zhangke about the work and the life of several young people moving from the countryside to a world park. Starring Jia's muse, Zhao Tao, as well as Cheng Taishen, The World was filmed on and around an actual theme park located in Beijing, Beijing World Park, which recreates world landmarks at reduced scales for Chinese tourists. The World introduces new technologies like binoculars, coin-operated telescopes, digital cameras, mobile phones and digital services in the theme park as touristic tools to virtually travel around the world, emphasizing the globalization and convenience. It is a metaphor for Chinese society to experience the sense of mobility, but the knowledge is still limited domestically and the environment of simulation is seen as a sense of escaping from the real world. The World was Jia's first film to gain official approval from the Chinese government. Additionally, it was the first of his films to take place outside of his home province of Shanxi.
Wang Xiaoshuai is a Chinese film director, screenwriter and occasional actor. He is commonly grouped under the loose association of filmmakers known as the "Sixth Generation" of the Cinema of China. Like others in this generation, and in contrast with earlier Chinese filmmakers who produced mostly historical drama, Wang proposed a “new urban Chinese cinema [that] has been mainly concerned with bearing witness of a fast- paced transforming China and producing a localized critique of globalization.”
Still Life is a 2006 Chinese film directed by Jia Zhangke. Shot in the old village of Fengjie, a small town on the Yangtze River which is slowly being destroyed by the building of the Three Gorges Dam, Still Life tells the story of two people in search of their spouses. Still Life is a co-production between the Shanghai Film Studio and Xstream Pictures.
Xiao Wu, also known as Pickpocket, is a 1997 Chinese drama and the first directed by Jia Zhangke. Starring Wang Hongwei in the titular role along with Hao Hongjian and Zuo Baitao, it was filmed in Fenyang, Jia's hometown, in 16 mm.
Zhao Tao is a Chinese actress. She works in China and occasionally Europe, and has appeared in 10 films and several shorts since starting her career in 1999. She is best known for her collaborations with her husband, director Jia Zhangke, including Platform (2000) and Still Life (2006). With Shun Li and the Poet (2011), she became the first Asian actress to win a prize at David di Donatello. She received two Golden Horse Award nominations for Mountains May Depart (2015) and Ash Is Purest White (2018). In 2020, The New York Times ranked her #8 on its list of the 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century.
Frozen is a 1997 Chinese film directed by Wang Xiaoshuai. The film was originally shot in 1994, but was banned by Chinese authorities and had to be smuggled out of the country. Moreover, Wang was operating under a blacklisting from the Chinese Film Bureau that was imposed after his previous film, The Days, was screened internationally without government approval. As such, Wang was forced to use the pseudonym "Wu Ming" while making this film.
Dong is a 2006 documentary film by Chinese director, Jia Zhangke. The film follows the artist and actor Liu Xiaodong as he invites Jia to film him while he paints a group of labourers near the Three Gorges Dam and later a group of women in Bangkok. The film was produced and distributed by Jia's own production company, Xstream Pictures, based out of Hong Kong and Beijing.
The Park is the 2007 directorial debut of Chinese writer-director Yin Lichuan. Produced by Filmblog Media and Beijing Wide Angle Lens, the comedy-drama film is part of producer Lola Zhang's Yunnan New Film Project, ten proposed films by female Chinese directors. The Park is the second of the ten to be released, after Wang Fen's The Case (2007). Each of the films was required to take place in the southern province of Yunnan.
Ning Ying is a female Chinese film director often considered a member of China's "Sixth Generation" filmmaker coterie, a group that also includes Jia Zhangke, Zhang Yuan and Wang Xiaoshuai. However, this is more a result of a shared subject matter than anything else, as chronologically, Ning is closer to the earlier Fifth Generation. Her sister, the screenwriter Ning Dai, is a frequent collaborator and the wife of fellow director Zhang Yuan. In 1997, she was a member of the jury at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.
Xiao Shan Going Home is a Chinese featurette directed by Jia Zhangke. The film, running around one hour in length, was made by Jia while he was attending the Beijing Film Academy and stars his friend, classmate, and now frequent collaborator, Wang Hongwei in the titular role.
Cry Me a River is a 2008 short film directed by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke. The film is a romance recounting the reunion of four college friends and lovers after ten years. The leads are played by Jia regulars Zhao Tao and Wang Hongwei, and Hao Lei and Guo Xiaodong, who starred together in Lou Ye's 2006 film Summer Palace. Jia has stated that he was inspired by the classic Chinese film Spring in a Small Town, also about the reuniting of former lovers in a rural river town in eastern China.
Two Great Sheep is a 2004 satirical Chinese film directed by Liu Hao and cast primarily with unknown actors.
Cao Baoping is a Chinese film director. He has emerged in recent years as a figure in China's "midrange" cinema industry. Some industry watchers, like Variety, have situated directors like Cao between the older fifth generation directors, such as Chen Kaige or Zhang Yimou, who have achieved major international and box-office success, and the more "underground" sixth generation directors, like Jia Zhangke and Wang Xiaoshuai.
Perfect Life is a 2008 Chinese-Hong Kong film by Emily Tang and produced by director Jia Zhangke and his company, Xstream Pictures. The film mixes elements of dramatic fiction and documentary film.
The 2010 Shanghai International Film Festival is the 13th such festival devoted to international cinema to be held in Shanghai, China. It was held from June 12–20, 2010.
Détour De Seta is a 2004 documentary film directed by Salvo Cuccia about Vittorio De Seta.
The Pingyao International Film Festival (PYIFF), officially as "Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival", is a film festival held in Pingyao, Shanxi, China. It was launched in October 2017 by Jia Zhangke, a Chinese film director, screenwriter and leading figure of the "Sixth Generation" movement of Chinese cinema and prestigious festival director Marco Müller. The festival's goal is to bring attention to works done by young, lesser known directors in the Chinese film industry, as well as to encourage communication and cooperation between Chinese and international filmmakers.
