The first night of Performing China: Contemporary Chinese Film and Video features Yumen, a documentary that experiments with a variety of forms to explore a once-thriving boom town in China’s northwest. Two short films are also on the program. Building Archaelogy examines the personal and political histories connected to three spaces: an artist’s studio, an abandoned hospital complex that once housed SARS patients, and a prison cell. In On the Way to the Sea, Gu Tao returns to his home in Sichuan in the aftermath of the catastrophic 2008 earthquake.

On the Way to the Sea
Directed by Gu Tao. 20 minutes. 2009. In Chinese with English subtitles.

Building Archaeology (aka A Study of Architecture)
Directed by Xu Ruotao. 15 minutes. 2011. In Chinese with English subtitles.

Yumen
Directed by J.P. Sniadecki, Xu Ruotao, & Huang Xiang. 65 minutes. 2013. In Chinese with English subtitles.

Zhou Xin, the curator of Performing China will lead a post-screening discussion of the films.

Admission is free ($10 suggested donation). The house will open approximately 10 minutes before the screening begins.

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The second night of the Performing China series is devoted to Xu Ruotao’s Rumination which explores the Cultural Revolution by depicting both its chaotic later years and its legacy in today’s China.

Rumination
Directed by Xu Ruotao. 104 Minutes. 2009. In English with Chinese subtitles.

*Professor Angela Zito, co-director of the New York University Center for Religion and Media, will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion.

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The third night of the Performing China film series features choreographer Wen Hui’s first documentary film, Listening to Third Grandmother’s Stories. Based on Wen’s third grandmother (great aunt) Su Mei-Ling’s reminiscences about love, everyday life, and the political reforms that have shaped the People’s Republic of China, the film experiments with embodied memory, sensory transmission, and the passage of time in performance. The short Chinaman’s Suitcase documents a public performance that Shanghai-born, Brooklyn-based artist Miao Jiaxin performed in New York’s Chinatown and Zucotti Park.

Listening to Third Grandmother’s Stories
Directed by Wen Hui. 75 minutes. 2011. Digital video. In Chinese with English subtitles.

Chinaman’s Suitcase
Directed by Miao Jiaxin. 7 minutes. 2011. Digital video.
Total program running time: 81 minutes.

*Miao Jiaxin will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion.

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