This screening programme explores a collection of Sinophone films whose genres sit in between an ethnographic film, documentary, essay film, and fiction. Through this screening journey, we will engage with various languages, narratives, perspectives, styles and textures of films that come across and reflect on the ever-changing realities of contemporary Chinese society – rich with nuances, obscurities, complexities, and uncertainties. The series will cover four themes, including COVID-19, Gender, Art and Society, and Rural-Urban, and will run from Feb to May 2026.

Session 1: Covid-19.

Film Screening: The Memo 备忘录
Director: Badlands Film Group
Release year: 2023
Run time: 30 mins
Region: Mainland China
Screening Talk and Discussion: with Badlands Film Group (online)
Synopsis: This is a video diary of the surreal lockdown made by the filmmaker couple who were trapped in a small, rented apartment in Shanghai. In the face of endless madness, the camera gradually breaks free from the window and observes a vast social isolation unprecedented in the country’s history. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TwB49yNgrE

Film screening: Before the Flood 淹没
Director: LI Yifan, YAN Yu
Release year: 2005
Run time: 150 min
Screening Talk and Q&A: with LI Yifan (online)
Synopsis: To build the world’s largest hydroelectric power station on China’s Yangtze River – the Three Gorges (sanxia三峡) Hydropower Station, the world’s largest reservoir will also be created in the Three Gorges region. The reservoir began storing water in 2003, and by 2009, it was completed. Many towns, villages, cultural relics, and natural landscapes along the river would be submerged. Among them was Fengjie County, made famous by the poems of Li Bai, one of China’s greatest ancient poets. This film documents the entire process in 2002 of relocating and demolishing the old county town of Fengjie in the first stage of water storage for the Three Gorges Reservoir. It records the helplessness of an elderly Korean War volunteer and innkeeper facing the loss of his livelihood; the loss of faith of a Christian church in pursuit of relocation compensation; and the unavoidable conflicts, entanglements, and painful inner struggles experienced by resettlement officials and urban poor during the relocation and demolition of the old city.

Before the Flood is the debut work of the two directors. It won the Wolfgang Staudte Award at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum for Young Cinema and was selected for the 2005 Cinéma du Réel Festival in France.