Developing China: Films from the Beijing International Short Film Festival, Program 2

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Developing China: Films from the Beijing International Short Film Festival, Program 2

Sunday July 20, 2025, 7:30 pm
At 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057

Tickets: $15 general, $10 students/seniors, free for Filmforum members

Conversation after the program with filmmakers Zhang Shengjia, Cai Caibei, Zhao Yanbin, Zhao Gang with curators Iris Sang and Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, in person and remotely. 

Curators:  Iris Sang 桑霓, Lou Baiyang 娄白杨 / Beijing International Short Film Festival, Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu / LA Filmforum

BISFF (Beijing International Short Film Festival) provides a showcase for various genres of short films around the world every year and promotes independent filmmaking of artistic merits. While uncovering the artistic value of moving images, BISFF situates short films within broader cultural and social contexts. It strives to be a trailblazer and risk-taker—observing, reflecting, and advancing at the forefront of cinema, while exploring the future directions of contemporary audiovisual expression. https://www.bisff.co/

"北京国际短片联展"每年展示来自国际各地类型丰富的短片作品，在发掘影像艺术价值的同时，将短片置入文化和社会生态中考量，试图做站在影像前沿观察和思考的推动者和冒险家，探索当代影像表达的未来走向。

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.

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.

Notes by 娄白杨 Lou Baiyang,桑霓 Iris Sang

中国显影

华人作品一直是北京国际短片联展的关注重点，本次放映选择了影展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。

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。

Total runtime: 74 mins.