At the beginning of each month, CFI posts a comprehensive list of Chinese film screenings in NYC. To help you better understand China through cinema, we include films that are made by Chinese filmmakers, set in China, or tell Chinese stories. Here is what to see in September.
Theatrical Releases
A Still from “Oolong Courtyard: Kung Fu School”
Oolong Courtyard: Kung Fu School 新乌龙院之笑闹江湖 (Yen-Ping CHU 朱延平, 103 min, 2018)
now playing at AMC Empire 25
Kung Fu apprentices at the Oolong Courtyard school are suspicious when two outsiders try to join the prestigious academy despite their strange behavior.
The Island 一出好戏 (HUANG Bo 黄渤, 134 min, 2018)
now playing at AMC Empire 25
In this offbeat dramedy from Bo Huang, news of a meteorite bound to strike the earth doesn’t have much effect on Ma Jin’s everyday life; he still gets up and goes to work where he daydreams of a romance with his colleague Shanshan, and of winning the lottery. But when this cataclysmic event occurs during a team-building trip, he finds himself shipwrecked on an island with an odd group of coworkers… and the winning lottery ticket in his pocket.
Big Brother 大师兄 (KAM Ka Wai 阚家伟, 100 min, 2018)
opens August 31 at AMC Empire 25
Martial arts legend Donnie Yen stars as a former soldier recruited for his toughest mission yet – teaching a class of teen delinquents. As he kicks his way into their school and home lives, it becomes clear that his unconventional teaching style might be just what they need.
Golden Job 黄金兄弟 (CHIN Ka Lok 钱嘉乐, 90 min, 2018)
opens September 28 at AMC
A group of former mercenaries reunite to plan an epic heist: boosting a truck full of medicine held by a foreign intelligence agency to supply a refugee camp in need. But when they find the truck is actually filled with stolen gold, the band of brothers realize they’ve been double-crossed by one of their own – and putting the situation right will be all out war.
Special Series & Screenings
The Museum of Moving Image Series: Fist and Sword
A Still from “Paradox”
Paradox 杀破狼·贪狼 (Wilson YIP 叶伟信, 101 min, 2017)
09/07 at Museum of the Moving Image – Bartos Screening Room
Dir. Wilson Yip. 2017, 101 mins. With Louis Koo, Wu Yue, Ka Tung Lam, Chui Kit. When his daughter goes missing in Thailand, a tough Hong Kong cop (Koo) teams with local police to find her. Things spiral out quickly from there, ensnaring him in a web of corruption and violence centered around an organ trafficking ring. This explosive new thriller from Wilson Yip (the Ip Man trilogy, SPL: Kill Zone) features action sequences by the legendary choreographer Sammo Hung and an international cast that includes the acrobatic Thai martial arts star Tony Jaa, Chinese actor and martial artist Wu Yue, and American Silat specialist Chris Collins. View trailer.
Dead Pigs 海上浮城 (Cathy YAN 阎羽茜, 130 min, 2018)
09/15 at Brooklyn Army Terminal
A bumbling pig farmer, a feisty salon owner, a sensitive busboy, an ambitious expat architect and a disenchanted rich girl converge and collide as thousands of dead pigs float down the river towards a rapidly modernizing Shanghai. Based on true events. This is a free screening. RSVP
Bitter Money (Wang Bing, 152 min, 2016)
09/16
To understand contemporary China, caught in a Great Leap Forward from feudalism into postmodernity, you can ask for no better guide than Wang Bing, whose films render the lives of the working poor and internal migrant Chinese down to their bare, harsh physical facts. In Bitter Money, Wang follows two teenage cousins journeying together to the city of Huzhou, seeking a better life and discovering only endless labor, abusive interpersonal relationships, and exploitation without recourse. Harrowing and massively humane.
Oxhide (Liu Jiayin, 11o min, 2005)
9/19
A key work in the 21st century boom of Chinese independent documentaries, Liu’s totally assured debut film offers a privileged glimpse into everyday life as lived by one working-class Chinese family crowded into a Beijing apartment. The disarming intimacy is explained by the fact that the family is Liu’s own, while the 23-year-old director plays herself in this deft nonfiction-narrative hybrid, which in twenty-three static shots confined completely to the apartment manages to encompass some vast truths about family life.
A still from Xu Bing’s “Dragonfly Eyes”
Dragonfly Eyes 蜻蜓之眼 (XU Bing 徐冰, 81 min, 2017)
09/21-09/27 at The Museum of Modern Art
Few images come closer to reality than those recorded by surveillance cameras. In China, a country with strict film censorship, an estimated 200 million such cameras have been installed to capture life unfiltered; mundane daily activities are mixed with dramatic events beyond the realm of imagination. Visual artist Xu Bing’s first feature film stitches together surveillance footage collected from the Internet to create a fictional tale about a young woman traversing life in modern China. The result is a provocative tale as mundane, surreal, and outlandish as reality itself. Known for works that consistently disrupt our understanding of what we see—from Book from the Sky, an installation of books and scrolls with printed “fake” Chinese characters, to Phoenix, giant phoenix sculptures made of salvaged materials—Xu persistently explores the relationship between vision and meaning.
BAM Series: Wayne Wang’s Chinatowns
09/24-09/27
With his 1982 indie classic Chan Is Missing, Hong Kong-born Wayne Wang became one of the first filmmakers to introduce a Chinese-American perspective to mainstream cinema. Overflowing with wit and humanity, his wonderfully warm, inventive films explore the tension between assimilation and tradition while celebrating the richness of Chinese-American identity.
A Still from Wayne Wang’s “The Joy Luck Club”
The Joy Luck Club 喜福会(Wayne WANG 王颖, 139 min, 1993)
09/27 at Peter Jay Sharp Building-BAM Rose Cinemas
Wang achieved mainstream success with this ravishing adaptation of Amy Tan’s beloved novel about the intertwining hopes and trials of four immigrant Chinese women and their American-born daughters. The first (and, until this year, only) studio film to feature a majority Asian-American cast is a moving reflection on history, memory, and the ways in which one generation’s joys and sorrows are transmitted to the next. The Joy Luck Club is the first all-Asian cast film in Hollywood, and the second one comes 25 years later…
Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart 点心 (Wayne WANG 王颖, 88 min, 1985)
09/24 at Peter Jay Sharp Building-BAM Rose Cinemas
Food—mouthwatering Cantonese delicaciaes to be precise—is at the center of this bittersweet ode to Chinese-American family, culture, and cuisine about the relationship between a 60-something widowed mother and the adult daughter she anxiously wishes to see married. Balancing understated humor with a tender melancholy, Wang creates both an engaging, slice-of-life character study and a poignant portrait of the gulf between generations.
Eat a Bowl of Tea 吃一碗茶 (Wayne WANG王颖, 102 min, 1989)
09/24 at Peter Jay Sharp Building-BAM Rose Cinemas
Set against the atmospheric backdrop of New York’s Chinatown in 1949, this wryly perceptive comedy explores the divide between first- and second-generation immigrants with a charming irreverence. When American-born Ben returns home from war, he faces overwhelming pressure from his traditionalist Chinese father to quickly produce an heir—a situation that soon leads to complications in the bedroom for him and his new wife.
Chan is Missing 寻人 (Wayne WANG 王颖, 80 min, 1982)
09/25 at Peter Jay Sharp Building-BAM Rose Cinemas
Two taxi drivers scour San Francisco’s Chinatown for the titular mystery man, who has disappeared along with their $4,000. What emerges from this simple, noir-inflected setup is a freewheeling, funny, frequently tense, and wholly surprising study of Chinese-American identity in all its forms. Made for under $20,000, Wang’s breakout sleeper hit stands as one of the key independent films of the 1980s.
A Still from Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “Millennium Mambo”
Millennium Mambo 千禧曼波 (HOU Hsiao-hsien 侯孝贤, 119 min, 2001)
09/25 at Peter Jay Sharp Building-BAM Rose Cinemas
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s neon-splashed reverie is a dreamlike drift through the night world of early 2000s Taipei. From the year 2011, the wayward Vicky—a bar hostess caught between a jealously possessive boyfriend and a gangster—looks back on her life 10 years earlier, rendered by Hou in a narcotic haze of trancy techno, sumptuous slo-mo, and ravishing iridescent imagery.
