An artist celebrated for the extraordinary power and poetry of his 35mm films, Yang Fudong also creates photographic works and video installations. Yang makes stylistic reference in his works to many different periods of Chinese film history including nostalgic tributes to classics of the 1930s and 1940s. Varied in its visual languages, Yang’s work returns along different paths to essential questions about creativity and identity in modern life. In addition to a number of films screening as part of the APT5 cinema program, Yang Fudong’s major installation Jiaer’s livestock 2002–05, which tells two versions of a tale of murder and avarice, features in the exhibition.
City light (Chengshi Zhiguang) (2000)
Backyard — Hey! Sun is Rising (Hou Fang — Hei, Tian Liang Le) (2001)
An Estranged Paradise (Mohsheng Tiantang) (1997–2002) / Ages 15+
Screening weekly 3.30pm Thursdays (with Backyard – Hey! Sun is Rising) / Cinema B
MINI DV, COLOUR, 6:40 MINS, CHINA / DIRECTOR: YANG FUDONG I PRINT SOURCE: QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY COLLECTION I SCREENING FORMAT: DIGITAL BETACAM
Through simple framing techniques, two different actors are used to represent an office worker who experiences a rift between his public and private personas. This short video by Yang Fudong uses deadpan humour to capture a cyclical state of waking and sleeping, alienation and longing in urban life. The alter ego betrays the desire to be elsewhere that accompanies daily routine. The work’s title evokes a sense of possibility and playfulness amidst the anonymous negotiation of modern city life.
Screening weekly 3.30pm Thursdays (withCity light) / Cinema B
35MM, B. & W., 13 MINS, CHINA / DIRECTOR: YANG FUDONG I CINEMATOGRAPHY: XIE BIN, HU HUN, WANG ZHAODUN I EDITOR: TANG LI KE, LIN FENG I MUSIC: ZHOU QING I CAST: GU LEI, GAO MING, LU CHUN SHENG, WU JIAN XI I PRINT SOURCE: SHANGHART GALLERY I SCREENING FORMAT: DIGITAL BETACAM
Backyard — Hey! Sun is Rising is like a dream or child’s play. Four men dressed in tattered suits and armed with toy swords practice military exercises in a park and through the city. They smoke and yawn as passers by regard them with suspicion; they arrive back at their house and begin to fight. As in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985), drum beats provide the rhythm of the narrative. The film captures Yang Fudong’s ongoing interest in exploring everyday rituals and fantasy states using cinematic tools.
12 noon Sunday 3 December, introduced by Yang Fudong / Cinema A
7.00pm Thursday 7 December / Cinema A
35MM, B. & W., 76 MINS, CHINA, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/ PRODUCER/ SCRIPT: YANG FUDONG I CINEMATOGRAPHY: WANG YI, LIU TAO I EDITOR: ZHANG ZHENRAN I MUSIC: JIN WANG, BAND, SHUI JI-DIE I CAST: ZHENG CHUN ZI, ZHENG HONG, QI WEI, SHEN XIAOYAN I PRINT SOURCE: SHANGHART GALLERY / RIGHTS: YANG FUDONG / SCREENING FORMAT: DIGITAL BETACAM
Zhuzi, a young intellectual, lives a comfortable life in Hangzhou with his fiancée Lingshan. At the start of the picturesque city’s summer rain season, Zhuzi complains of a general malaise and, worried, tries to determine its origin. His many visits to the doctor, however, reveal nothing, and he deduces that he is suffering instead from a paralysing boredom, which alienates him from the simple truths of daily life. An Estranged Paradise is a poetic, nonlinear and introspective film about the uneventfulness of happiness and the irony that love and simplicity can be the source of restlessness and dissatisfaction. Yang Fudong took seven years to make An Estranged Paradise, completing it with funding from ‘Documenta XI’.
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Australia
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