New Chinese Cinema: Closing Day

Cui Zi'en recently directed for a few thousand yuan a couple of unabashedly experimental DV films that give a surprising twist to the notion of "queer underground cinema." ENTER THE CLOWNS unfolds as a serendipitous succession of episodes, from a disturbing confrontation between a young man and his gender-bending parent, to the Fassbinder-inspired "Nana Changes into a Woman," to a series of sketches involving gay desire. Realism is not for Cui Zi'en, who intertwines long takes, mundane action, and non-professional acting à la Warhol with a more baroque, whimsical, surreal but also darker inspiration.

Producer: Zhang Tong Wei, Wu Weifang, Liu Shujing, Cui Zi'en. Screenplay: Cui Zi'en. Cinematographer: Yuan Deqiang. Editor: Hu Haixin. Cast: Chen Bing, Na Ren Qi Mu Ge, Yu Bo, Yu Xiao Yu. Presented in Mandarin dialogue with English subtitles. Beta-SP, 82 min.

CHICKEN POETS is the first feature of prolific and innovative theater director Meng Jinghui. To translate the muted anxiety of a thirty-something generation facing unprecedented social change, Meng uses a medley of avant-garde tropes—collages of powerful images, constant shifts from realism to the bizarre or surreal, extreme situations, dark humor, a touching obsession with the Russian poet Mayakovsky. Yi Fei, a washed-out poet, arrives in a small town near Beijing where one of his former classmates is now raising black chickens, and falls in love with a young color-blind girl (Qin Hailu, who graced Fruit Chan's DURIAN DURIAN).

Producer: Zhao Hai, Ge Dali, Meng Jinghui. Screenplay: Liao Yimei. Cinematographer: Cao Yu. Editor: Kong Jinlei. Cast: Chen Jianbin, Qin Hailu. Presented in Mandarin dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 94 min.

For further information, visit the website of the Film & Television Archive

www.cinema.ucla.edu