In Dialogue with China: Family, Memory, Resistance, and Change

October 6–27, 2022

Presented in conjunction with the Townsend Center’s In Dialogue with China: Art, Culture, Politics, these films show how three contemporary Chinese filmmakers—Chan Tze Woon, Li Dongmei, and Luo Li—use inventive and subtle techniques to approach themes of family, memory, change, and resistance.

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  • Mama

  • Rivers and My Father

  • Blue Island

  • Li Wen at East Lake

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Past Films

  • Blue Island

    Chan Tze Woon
    China, 2022
    Thursday, October 6 7 PM
    Introduced by Roy Chan

    An elegiac corollary to the fiery documentaries that captured Hong Kong’s recent protest movement and ensuing crackdown, Blue Island grapples honestly with the fact that, despite valiant efforts, Hong Kong as we once knew it is no more.

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  • Rivers and My Father

    Luo Li
    Canada, China, 2010
    Thursday, October 20 7 PM
    Luo Li and Fang Xu in Conversation

    Chinese Canadian filmmaker Li depicts family history with understated reenactments that shift in and out of sync with the stories being told, suggesting the challenges of intergenerational communication and distance with tenderness and humor.

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  • Li Wen at East Lake

    Luo Li
    Canada, China, 2015
    Friday, October 21 7 PM
    Luo Li and Michael Nylan in Conversation

    Li’s fascinating documentary/fiction hybrid tours the disappearing shoreline and dwindling waters of the rapidly changing landscape around East Lake in China’s Hubei province in this smart, subtle, and often comic look at contemporary China and its complex relationship to the past.

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  • Mama

    Li Dongmei
    China, 2020
    Thursday, October 27 7 PM

    Winner of the Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award at the Göteborg Film Festival, Mama depicts seven days of life, and death, in a remote rural village in Chongqing province, as remembered by twelve-year-old Xiaoxian.

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