At beginning of each month, CFI posts a comprehensive list of Chinese film screenings in NYC and LA. To help you better understand China through cinema, we include films that are made by Chinese filmmakers, set in China, or tell Chinese stories.
THEATRICAL RELEASES
Still from Peppa Celebrates Chinese New Year
New Releases:
Miss Behavior (Ho-Cheung Pang, 88min, 2018)
Opens on 02/01 at AMC
A hilarious story revolving around a group of once-very close friends who reconnect over a lost bottle of breast milk.
Pegasus 飞驰人生 (Han Han, 125 min, 2019)
Opens on 02/05 at AMC
An old-time racing champion tries to come back to the race track.
Peppa Celebrates Chinese New Year 小猪佩奇过大年 (Dapeng Zhang, 81 min, 2019)
Opens on 02/06 at AMC
Tang Yuan, Jiao Zi and their family enjoy Chinese New Year together, learning about traditions, and sharing Peppa Pig stories.
Integrity 廉政风云 (Alan Mak, 113 min, 2019)
Opens on 02/08 at AMC
ICAC has been investigating a bribery case regarding illegal trade for many years. However, the trial in the case is delayed for one week due to the abscond of the defendant Chen Chaoqun and the absence of the only witness Xu Zhiyao. In order to have the retrial of the case, ICAC launches a full-scale operation.
Still from The Wandering Earth
The Wandering Earth 流浪地球 (GUO Fan, 125 min, 2019)
Opens on 02/08 at AMC
Based on a short story by Liu Cixin. In the future, Earth’s survival is threatened, so large thruster engines are built to propel the planet through the solar system toward another sun-like star.
Fall In Love At First Kiss 一吻定情 (Frankie Chen, 123 min, 2019)
Opens 02/14 at AMC
Zhishu Jiang is a smart boy, while Xiangqin Yuan is a ditzy girl who is bad at studying. On the first day of a new semester, Xiangqin comes across Zhishu, the handsome boy loved by thousands of girls. Starting from an unexpected kiss, Xiangqin has her unrequited love.
FILM SERIES & SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Alamo Draft House Presents: Police Story & Police Story II
Still from Police Story 2. Jackie Chan & Maggie Cheung
Police Story (1985) & Police 2 (1988)
2/1-2/7. New restoration from Janus Films.
The jaw-dropping set pieces fly fast and furious in Jackie Chan’s breathtakingly inventive martial-arts comedy, a smash hit that made him a worldwide icon of daredevil action spectacle. The director/star/one-man stunt machine plays Ka-Kui, a Hong Kong police inspector who goes rogue to bring down a drug kingpin and protect the case’s star witness (Chinese cinema legend Brigitte Lin) from retribution. Packed wall-to-wall with charmingly goofball slapstick and astoundingly acrobatic fight choreography—including an epic shopping-mall melee of flying fists and shattered glass—Police Story set a new standard for rock-’em-sock-’em mayhem that would influence a generation of filmmakers from Hong Kong to Hollywood.
Minding the Gap (Bing Liu, 93 min, 2018)
Through 02/07
Bing Liu films his friends Zack and Keire over a decade, capturing their skateboarding antics against the backdrop of their faded, blue-collar Illinois hometown. For all three, the community formed via skateboarding has offered refuge from volatile home lives. As they face the increasing responsibilities and complexity of adulthood, these young men also must confront and counter the destructive legacy left by their fraught relationships with their fathers.
Film Society of Lincoln Center Presents: Film Comment Selects 2019
Up the Mountain 火山 (Zhang Yang, 126 min, 2018)
02/10
In Yang Zhang’s visually dazzling documentary, what could have been an amusing look at a painter’s rural school and the older villagers he mentors deepens into a moving and detailed look at family and community life cycles. Unfurling dense landscape compositions and splashing the screen with the saturated colors of the students’ work, Zhang picks up the strands of the coolheaded master’s own growing family and his star pupil’s burgeoning relationship, which takes the younger man into the new world of a bustling city. It’s a poignant, funny, and increasingly surprising picture of shifting generations and deep rural roots and traditions. North American Premiere.
Quad Cinema Presents: One Shots Series
Still from Still Life
Still Life 三峡好人 (Jia Zhangke, 108 min, 2006)
02/13
On the occasion of Jia Zhangke’s latest masterwork Ash is Purest White, we present a special screening of an imported 35mm print of Still Life, one of the finest films of the 2000s, followed by a discussion with Jia. Recalling Antonioni in its spellbinding tableaux of city landscapes in decay and shot entirely on digital video, the film follows a man (Han Sanming) and a woman (Zhao Tao) searching for their spouses as the construction of the Three Gorges Dam along the Yangtze River takes it toll on their village. With Jia Zhangke in person.
Preview: Jia Zhangke’s Ash Is Purest White
Jia Zhangke’s latest film, Ash is Purest White, will open in U.S. theaters in March. The film tells the story of Qiao, who falls in love with Bin, a local mobster. During a fight between rival gangs, she fires a gun to protect him. Qiao gets five years in prison for this act of loyalty. Upon her release, she goes on a journey looking for Bin to pick up where they left off. A Cohen Media Group release.
On February 9, San Francisco MoMA host the San Francisco premiere of the movie, as a part of the series Part of Modern Cinema: Jia Zhangke. Introduction by Jia Zhangke, plus post-screening Q&A. Get more detail here.
On February 12, Asia Society (Los Angeles) presents a special screening of Ash is Purest White, followed by a Q&A with Jia Zhangke. Get more details here.
On February 14, Film Society of Lincoln Center (New York) presents a sneak preview and reception. Get more details here.
MoMA Presents: Doc Fortnight 2019
MoMA’s annual celebration of innovation in nonfiction film presents a lineup of features and shorts from around the globe, including several world premieres.
Still from Chinese Portrait
Chinese Portrait (WANG Xiaoshuai, 80 min, 2018)
02/27
Regarded as one of the most influential Sixth Generation Chinese filmmakers, Wang Xiaoshuai has made a name for himself with films like Beijing Bicycle and Drifters. From fishermen to students, villages to construction sites, this visual poem depicts a modern China represented by the variety of people that call the diverse country home.
