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China Concerto

Wang Bo

Release year: 2012

Run time: 50 mins

Film type: Experimental Film

Synopsis

An observational essay about images, representations and performances in China's contemporary spectacles, shot mostly in Chongqing during the peak of Bo Xilai's red campaign in 2010 and 2011, which later ended as China's biggest political scandal after 1989. Concealed beneath the veneer of capitalism, aspects of communist totalitarianism persist today, both in economy and ideology.

 

Director biography

Bo Wang is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher based in Amsterdam. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at the MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, Garage Museum, CPH:DOX, IFFR, Visions du Réel, LUX, Open City Documentary Festival, Courtisane, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Sonic Acts, Eye Filmmuseum, Sesc_Videobrasil, Sharjah Film Platform, among others. He is a recipient of major international awards, including New:Vision at CPH:DOX, Golden Dove at DOKLeipzig, O.F.F. Prize at Sesc_Videobrasil, Best Doc Short at Sharjah Film Platform, etc. He received a fellowship from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in 2013, and was an artist-in-residency at the ACC-Rijksakademie from 2017 to 2018, as well as at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in 2016. He teaches at LUCAS, Leiden University.

Director's statement

The past two decades for China since 1989, has been a time of economic boom and social de-politicization. Drive for profit and progress seems to have been dominating social life. However, it is also crucial to be aware that the extensive capitalization is hybridized to retained aspects of communist totalitarianism. Not only on the economic level, in ideologies, influences from the Mao era never really faded away. They conceal themselves under a capitalist mask. The film takes a form of fictional letters about a man's encounters with all the images during his trip in China, narrated by a female voice with an untraceable accent. The focus of the film is images – images in a broader sense, as surfaces of the society. I believe the seemingly most mundane surfaces can possibly provide us a glimmer of re-looking at the basis of the duo-structure of China in the post-Tiananmen era.