In addition to being an artist, curator and writer China’s cultural renaissance man Ou Ning is also an acclaimed documentary filmmaker. After making the experimental San Yuan Li in 2003 with Cao Fei and other members of the U-theque collective in Guangzhou, Ou Ning relocated to China’s capital, where he made Meishi St (2006) about the demolition of one of Beijing’s oldest areas in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics.

Meishi St will play in the Street Level Visions: Chinese Independent Documentary program screening as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) next month (see previous post), and Ou Ning will be in town for post-film Q&As and other public appearances.

To time with this event, we are reproducing this interview conducted by film writer and curator of the Street level Vision program, Dan Edwards, first published on the dGenerate Films website. Originally held in March 2010, the discussion contains a wealth of fascinating material not only on Ou’s background, but also the rise of China’s “digital” documentary generation.

Thanks to Ou Ning for his time and for speaking so openly about some controversial matters, and to Edwards and dGenerate for the piece. The interview was conducted mostly in English.

For the lucky ducks in Melbourne …

This year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) includes a special program of films selected from the past decade of China’s digital documentary boom. Curated by Dan Edwards, ‘Street Level Visions: Chinese indie docos’ cuts through the clichés of nightly news bulletins to show us China from the ground-up, through the eyes of some of the nation’s bravest filmmakers.

The program includes landmark films such as Zhao Liang’s Petition, Ou Ning’s Meishi Street, Hu Jie’s Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul, and the more recent Besieged by Waste by Wang Jiuliang, among others. Filmmakers, Ou Ning and Wang Jiuliang will also be in town for post-film Q&As and other events.

See the MIFF website for more on the films and session times. And spread the word.

CALLING ALL YOUNG TRANSLATORS

British publisher Harvill Secker has announced that Chinese will be the language of focus of their third annual Harvill Secker Young Translators´ Prize. Young translators are invited to enter the competition by submitting their English translation of Han Dong’s story ‘The Wig’. All entries must be submitted by Friday 27^th July 2012. The winner will be announced on October, 5^th, and will take part in Crossing Border’s writers and translators in residence project The Chronicles in November. Details below:

An exhibition called Cola Project doesn’t at first sound entirely new: Coca Cola, consumer culture, the power of advertising—these have all been considered before, not least of all by Chinese artists assessing the impact of global capitalism on traditional aesthetics and values.

This recent show at Gallery 4A in Sydney’s Chinatown, however, took a different perspective, and considered cola the sticky liquid rather than the clout of its global logo. After analysing the effects of consumerism on images, it appears that what you are left with is the object, and the ‘stuff’ of material culture.

Cola Project is currently the signature work of young, Beijing-based artist, He Xiangyu, and one that has been doing the international rounds since first showing in Beijing in 2010. 4A brought it to Sydney as part of their ongoing program to situate Australian art within the context of the Asia Pacific, bringing Asian exhibitions to Australia and recognising the Asian in Australian work. This, He Xiangyu’s third major art project, helps underscore this geographical and cultural proximity, if only for its acknowledgement of the finite—and increasingly crowded—nature of our physical world.