“Developing China”中国显影｜BISFF x LA Filmforum

BISFF将在本月与洛杉矶LA Filmforum带来合作节目。

Developing China: Films from the Beijing International Short Film Festival

Date (Los Angeles Time)

Program1: Sunday July 20, 2025, 5:00 pm (with Q&A)

Program2: Sunday July 20, 2025, 7:30 pm (with Q&A)

Location

At 2220 Arts + Archives (2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057)

购票通道详见LA Filmforum官网 www.lafilmforum.org

Developing China

Sinophone films have always been a key focus of BISFF. This program features eight selected works showcased at the festival since 2020：they are ones rooting in the Chinese mainland, drifting beyond its borders, or dwelling in a space of sincere formal experimentation. They span multiple timescapes, languages, and media, forming a constellation of diverse creative practices. This program attempts to gather these dispersed threads, seeking hidden dialogues and shared cores: encounters, experiences, and identities shaped through the interaction between Chinese (or Chinese-identifying) individuals and specific temporal-geographic contexts.

“Development” (显影) , a technical process of producing and processing images, resonates with the varied forms present in the program—ranging from archival footage, game engines, academic narration, documentary, animation, to handmade materials. Together, these works offer a glimpse into the creative methodologies of Chinese-identifying filmmakers within BISFF’s curatorial vision. At the same time, “Development”, as a process of rendering the visible or invisible into images,carries with it an assumption: that something is already in existence, waiting to be brought into view. It is both an act of discovery and a form of creative intervention: one that raises questions about what is made visible, and how, which points to the politics of the image. In these works, events and systems that have gone unspoken, silenced histories, and forms of perception or imagination that resist categorization emerge into visibility—becoming expressions spoken with an accent.

Program 1 centers on “searching” as a gesture that crosses temporal boundaries. When the Sea Sends Forth a Forest and Inauguration revisit historical events through the testimonies and documents of Chinese diasporic individuals, tracing the shadows of the Khmer Rouge genocide and early 20th-century Chinese revolutionary movements in the United States. In the absence of personal narratives, both real and digitally constructed landscapes emerge to fill the gaps, as each filmmaker crafts anchor points for marginalized memory through diverse forms and materials. Program 1’s other two works bring this act of “searching” into the realm of sensory perception, within urban and domestic spaces. In Daphne Xu’s Notes of a Crocodile, a Chinese woman wanders Phnom Penh in search of a long-lost friend, as memories and desires dissolve into unfamiliar fragments amid the turbulence of urban transformation. Zhang Wenqian’s Remains of a Hot Day offers a child’s-eye view of 1990s family life in China, evoking a presence that feels both here and elsewhere. As adult footsteps echo and distant thunder rolls, a lost era rises again through the textures of memory.

In Program 2, Zhang Shengjia’s Birthday Cakes From China departs from personal family archives to reflect on how American fast food entered a transforming Chinese economy through transnational expansion, creating new localized rituals and consumer landscapes. Cai Caibei’s stop-motion animation Sliver Cave employs distinctive handcrafted materials to create compelling tactile forms, offering a vivid exploration of the moving image through an evocation of bodily perception. Zhao Yanbin’s Train Song reimagines the railway built by Chinese American laborers as a haunted and howling ghost train, transforming lost history into spectral presence. In Praying, Zhao Gang and Liu Li intimately document folk religious practices in rural China, revealing their entanglement with contemporary political beliefs and everyday life.

中国显影

华人作品一直是北京国际短片联展（BISFF）的关注重点，本次活动选择了影展2020年以来曾经展示的其中8部作品，它们或驻扎在中国本土，或漂移在中国之外，或悬停在影像本体实验的纯粹地带，并跨越了不同的时间、语言与创作媒材。本系列节目尝试打捞这些四散的线索，在对照中寻觅隐秘的对话与中心——关于(华)人与特定时间-地域之间互动产生的事件、经验，以及其所显影与追问的身份。

我们不妨将“显影”作为理解本系列华人作品的一个切口，显影首先是一种制造与处理图像的技术实践，本系列中的影片跨越了传统档案、游戏引擎、论文叙述、纪录、动画、手工材料等多种形态，成为理解BISFF视野下华人创作方法的某种概览。与此同时，显影作为一种将有形或无形之物转换为图像的过程，隐含了一种假设——事物本就在那里，只是有待被创造，因此，显影是一种发现，同时也是一种创造性的介入，它指向了使什么可见、以及如何可见，即一种图像的政治。未自明的事件与规则，沉默与被边缘的历史，无法被概括的感知与想象，在这些作品中浮现，成为一种带有口音的言说。

Program 1 围绕“寻找”这一穿越时间壁垒的动势。《直到海里长出森林》和《成立之时》通过华裔亲历者的讲述对跨地理的历史事件进行回溯与追问——关于红色高棉大屠杀与20世纪初在美华人政治革命。现存的风景与虚拟生成图像成为缺失历史档案的补充，创作者使用不同的材料为边缘记忆编织锚点。另两部作品则将“寻找”带入对城市和家庭空间的感官知觉之中。徐乙漾的《鳄鱼手记》中，一位中国女性在变迁的金边追寻失散的友人，动荡的城市之景不断将记忆与欲望冲刷为陌异的片段。张文倩的《热天午后》则以“在此”又“不在此”的氛围讲述了孩童视角中的90 年代中国家庭生活，在成人世界的脚步声与远处闷雷中，时代被以回忆的方式重新体验。

Program2中，张胜佳的《生日蛋糕恭祝你福寿与天齐》从私人家庭档案出发，回顾探讨了美国快餐如何在跨国扩张中进入经济转型的中国，并创造出新的在地仪式与消费图景。蔡采贝在定格动画《银幕》中用特殊的手工材料创造了充满吸引力的实体，通过对身体知觉的感召完成了一次对运动图像的生动探讨。赵延彬的《铁路之歌》将华裔美国劳工修筑的铁路进行形象变异，将失去的历史重现为呼号的幽魂。赵刚与刘莉的《祈愿》以亲密而直接的方式记录了中国乡镇的神灵民俗，呈现了其与中国当代政治信仰及在地生活之间的关联。

Program1

When the Sea Sends Forth a Forest

直到海里长出森林

by Liu Guangli 刘广隶

2020｜21:10｜France｜Chinese Dialect

BISFF2021｜华语竞赛单元 Chinese Language Competition

Through a 3D virtual universe simulated by a game engine intertwined with historical pictures, a lost moment of history can be experienced. The story revolves around the memory of a Chinese survivor of Khmer Rouge. This tragedy, which took the lives of 2 million people, continues to reshape our present in virtue of today’s narration.

通过一个由游戏引擎模拟的3D虚拟空间与历史影像交织，体验一段缺失的历史。故事围绕着一位红色高棉的华裔幸存者的回忆展开，这场夺去200万人生命的悲剧，借由今天的叙述，继续重塑着我们的现在。

Notes of a Crocodile

鳄鱼手记

by Daphne Xu 徐乙漾

2024｜17:48｜Cambodia, China｜Chinese Mandarin, English

BISFF2024｜“Aurora曙光”华语展映单元 Aurora Chinese Shorts Vista

News of a half-constructed building full of crocodiles brings a Chinese woman to Phnom Penh. She walks along the Mekong River in search of a lost friend.

听闻一座未完成的建筑中满是鳄鱼，一位中国女性来到金边。她沿着湄公河漫步，寻找一位失散的朋友。

Inauguration

成立之时

by Peng Zuqiang 彭祖强

2020｜13:32｜USA, Cuba｜English

BISFF2020｜“时间迷宫”特别策划单元 The Labyrinth of Time

Inauguration looks at the fragmented history of the Young China Association (少年学社). Interweaving temporal connections with faint chances of synchronous events between two disparate events at the margins of Chinese revolutionary history: a failed assassination and an impossible trip. The film narrates a forecast of the past, wherein it renders visible the processes of erasure, remembrance, and archival anchors of the early overseas Chinese revolutionary politics and its aftermaths. Movements, geographies, and events do not follow a linear arch but rather are scattered across memories and places, only to be treated as residues, witnesses or simply discards of the history. What happens when the premise of the story is, in fact, the assurance of its erasure?

成立于旧金山的少年学社，是美国最早的华人革命组织，他们举办了诸多支持推翻清王朝的革命活动。其中就包括一次对1910年访美的清皇室载询的刺杀。而在另一段古巴华人史的记载里，1910年的古巴华人社区，准备派遣两名青年前往得克萨斯州，参与少年学社1911年的成立大会。 是先有成立大会还是先有革命活动？在两段时间互有出入的记载打开的是刺客邝佐治的一段私人史：他刺杀失败后的隐姓埋名, 刑满出狱后对政治的失望, 还有少年学社对这段刺杀史的只字不提。作品在古巴、旧金山与得克萨斯州三个时空之间穿梭，想要在虚实之间思考，能去寻找的究竟是一段历史，还是它的消亡？

Remains of the Hot Day

热天午后

by Zhang Wenqian 张文倩

2024｜24:12｜China｜Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Dialect

BISFF2024｜“Aurora曙光”华语展映单元 Aurora Chinese Shorts Vista

Qi, a six-year-old girl, resides with her mother's original family all year round since her father works in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in China and rarely visits home. On a hot day at noon, at the end of the 20th century, she watched as the grown-ups' figures flickered and vanished before her eyes like shadows.

6岁女孩小琪常年与她的母亲、外祖父母以及舅舅的小家庭共同生活，父亲在深圳工作，鲜少回家。在千禧年到来之际的一个闷热午后，小琪瞥见了家中氤氲的骚动与不安，大人们来来去去、沉默、残存或消逝……

Program2

Birthday Cakes From China

生日蛋糕恭祝你福寿与天齐

by Zhang Shengjia 张胜佳

2023｜26:14｜China｜English, Mandarin Chinese, Yue Chinese (Cantonese)

BISFF2023｜“Echo回响”档案电影单元 Echo Peering into Archive Filmmaking

Birthday cake was introduced to China in the late Qing Dynasty around the early 20th century. As a symbol of Western culture and commodity economy, its popularity is closely related to the political climate of the modern and contemporary era. Inspired by food anthropology, this essayistic archive film investigates the spread and localization of birthday cakes and their associated rituals in China and oversea Chinese communities. It also examines the critical influence of birthday party services provided by KFC and McDonald's, which entered China after the economic reforms of the 1980s. The investigation covers newspaper, news, films, family archives and Chinese-style cake decoration tutorial.

生日蛋糕在清末传入中国,作为西方文化与商品经济的象征符号,它的流行与近现代的政治气候紧密相关。受饮食人类学的启发,影片从创作者的童年生日场景出发,以档案式论文式的方式针对中式生日蛋糕、肯德基麦当劳生日聚会服务、冷战落幕等因素进行探究。尝试厘清生日蛋糕及其配套仪式在近代中国以及华人社会的传播与本土化。调查范围涵盖近现代报纸档案、新闻、电影、家庭档案、华人蛋糕食谱等。

Sliver Cave

银幕

by Cai Caibei 蔡采贝

2022｜14:24｜China｜Chinese Mandarin

BISFF2022｜华语竞赛单元 Chinese Language Competition

Stepping into a cave, the sight fluctuates by the firelight. Left to right, top to bottom. The same goes for the screen in front of you. It is a borderless tunnel, presenting domestication and desire.

踏入一个洞穴，视线借着火光起伏。左至右，上至下。你眼前的屏幕也是如此。它是一个无边界的通道，上演着驯化与渴望。

Train Song

铁路之歌

by Zhao Yanbin 赵延彬

2022｜3:29｜USA｜No Dialogue

BISFF2022｜"Siphon虹吸”实验电影单元 Siphon Experimental Film Container

Surrounding a hidden monument honoring Chinese immigrant workers next to Lang Station in Canyon Country, California, Train Song adopts reflective material to distort the image of the railroad, as an approach to conjure the unseen spirits from the seemingly tranquil landscape, calling for remembrance of Chinese American labors through a meditative audio-visual experience. An indignant refusal to amnesia.

美国加州 Lang Station 旧址附近，多年之后，甚至纪念碑都已经被忘却，华人铁路工的鬼魂依然在扰动着看似宁静的铁路景观。

Praying

祈愿

by Zhao Gang, Liu Li 赵刚，刘莉

2024｜29:50｜China｜Chinese Dialect

BISFF2024｜“Aurora曙光”华语展映单元 Aurora Chinese Shorts Vista

Three years epidemic later, many villages and towns in Sichuan Province began to resume traditional cultural activities-Temple fairs. For thousands of years, villagers usually thanked various gods by inviting opera troupe to sing and through asking the divinatory symbols to dream, making and returning wishes with inductive ways to interact with the gods. In the clouds of incense and fire, pray for their own worldly interests to be realized, but also obtain spiritual comfort.

三年疫情之后，四川省许多村镇纷纷开始恢复传统文化活动——乡村庙会。千百年来，村民们通常以请戏班唱戏的方式来酬谢各种神灵并通过问卦托梦、许愿还愿等感应方式与神灵互动。在香火缭绕中，祈祷自己的世俗利益得以实现，同时也获得心灵的慰藉。

Curators: Iris Sang, LOU Baiyang, Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu (LA Filmforum)

策划：桑霓，娄白杨，刘行欣（LA Filmforum)

Founded in 1975, Los Angeles Filmforum promotes a greater understanding of media art, and the role of the artists and curators who create and present it, by providing a forum for independently produced, noncommercial work which has little opportunity of reaching the general public. Filmforum is currently the longest-running venue in Southern California dedicated exclusively to the ongoing, non-commercial exhibition of independent, experimental, and progressive cinema.

洛杉矶电影论坛（Los Angeles Filmforum）成立于1975年，致力于促进公众对媒体艺术的深入理解，关注创作，以及其背后的艺术家与策展人，为独立制作、非商业性质、难以进入主流观众视野的作品提供了一个展示平台。洛杉矶电影论坛是南加州目前运营时间最悠久的专注于展映独立、实验和前沿电影作品的非商业机构。