TALKING UNKNOWN, ENDING UNKNOWN: LI HONGQI AND HIS CINEMA WORLD (2022)

A soon-to-be first-time voter, the filmmaker’s thought-provoking journey into the Rust Belt and South captures four Asian American voters’ ardent first time grassroots political participation ignited by the 2016 rise of “Chinese Americans for Trump.” FIRST VOTE is a character driven cinema verité style film chronicling the democratic participation of four Asian American voters from 2016 through the 2018 midterm elections.

A policeman investigates an introverted signal-station manager suspected of raping a hotel clerk.

The work reflects on the relationship between technology and us by constructing an advanced technological product from the future. This future product will replace people's worship and spiritual sustentation of the power of gods and Buddhas in religion with technology, turning the invisible into visible. This paper probes into the possibility and influence of the deification of technology in the future, and puts forward the solution of "love, nostalgia and nature" to relieve the pain caused by the excessive intervention of technology.

Since 2007, the director of this film has initiated and participated in charity activities for the relief of the refugees in Tiananmen Square. The main line of the film is the director and Japanese friendly people who visited the refugees in Nanxiao Street, Beijing, where they lived in 2014, and tracked the scene of their livelihood on Tiananmen Square. The film was edited in combination with the old video materials shot by the director for eight years.

The player of Jia Zhangke's early film "Xiao Wu" and the famous independent film activist Wang Hongwei talked about Chinese independent films at the IFF Independent Film Forum.

The film tells about an artist named Banpo, who suddenly returned to Songzhuang one day in 2019, silently packed hundreds of his paintings, packed his luggage, attended the worship service, watched an exhibition, and then said goodbye to his old friends. Finally, he completely left the story of Songzhuang in a quiet early morning. This story seems to be during the process of documenting artist Banpo moving out，the director reveal a huge change in the environment the artist lived in. As if the artist Banpo has foreseen the turmoil of 2020(as Coronavirus epidemic spreading across the world, a massive demolition began at Songzhuang Art District. Many artists, like Banpo, have left Songzhuang. The small town once was famous for Chinese contemporary art 20 years ago, is now gone.)

Bao, a blind woman, sings every day on the streets of Peking to make a living. She is caught up in an endless lawsuit in the hope of having some money reimbursed while doing her best to rear Ming Ming, her mentally ill daughter. After a car accident, and to her mother's great despair, Ming Ming decides to drop out of school and become a street artist. History seems to repeat itself.

When the night falls, Luke climbs up to the deserted lighthouse, where he tries to"light up" the memory buried underneath the glass curtain wall of the city's skyscrapers with the old and worn equipment there.

In the dream I had one early morning in 2014, I was sitting in the backseat of a car. The driver suddenly turned to look at me and said: Why aren’t you filming? It was my second elder sister who had already passed away. After her death, I began to keep a diary and take pictures. When I got a video camera, I began to film the daily life of my family. I filmed out of the fear of death and loss. The idea was to capture everything on film before it disappeared. 2015 was the 20th anniversary of my sister’s death. That dream seemed to tell me to face her death. Death did not stop the passing of time, and the family members I was filming continued to avoid their grief which hadn’t subsided with time. Birth and death continue to alternate in our lives, and we are always getting ready for the day when we must say goodbye.

A 17 year old boy from a village in the Sechuan province leaves for the big city looking for his father, who left 6 years before and has not been heard of since. The fact that his mother still receives money his father does nothing to tame his anger. He his not looking for a warm reunion, it is unconcealed revenge that drives him. Totally lost, he roams the big city with his basket of ducks on his back...

In Yuncheng County, Shandong, there is a girl born in the 90s named Han Wenjing who was paraplegic in a car accident in her childhood. As Han Wenjing gets older and older, she is worried about her future life. Marriage has become the biggest concern of parents. Han Wenjing got acquainted with a soldier online, but finally broke up under his father's opposition. The younger sister-in-law also had a dispute between the two over her marriage. When Han Wenjing was depressed, her father proposed to carry her to Liangshan. First, fulfilling Han Wenjing's wish was also compensation for Han Wenjing. Later, Han Wenjing met a dumb while studying e-commerce sales. The dumb liked her very much. Both parents were satisfied when they met. However, Han Wenjing felt that she still couldn't accept the disabled and wanted to try to combine healthy people, even if it failed. Under the pressure of her parents and sister-in-law on Han Wenjing, Han Wenjing still insists on her choice

One long tracking shot through a park in Chengdu.

The little-known Hunan Suining County is an ordinary but full of magical places. As the theoretical point of the rocket wreckage launched by the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, it has greeted the rocket wreckage from the sky dozens of times in the past 20 years since 1990. This mysterious and dangerous “out-of-town visitor” broke the poor and peaceful life of the 160,000 locals in the jurisdiction. 2008 is China's "Olympic Year" and "Aerospace Year." The people of Suining, like the people of the whole country, are looking forward to the Olympics to pay attention to the Olympics and are proud of the growing strength of the comprehensive national strength including aerospace strength. They also have to bear the fate of falling from the sky.

In this talk, Li Hongqi reviewed his transition from fine art to cinema, and his aesthetic and philosophical exploration from his early 'So Much Rice' to recent 'The The'. Dir. Li Hongqi also shared his strong anxiety of his existence(born with melancholia), his thought on cinema art (actually, I don't think there's any movie worth making), his epistemology, his religious view, his consideration on contemporary cinema, and what he learned about living in seclusion.

This "movie" is both hysterical and silent. Although starring "real people", it is in fact an "animated film" in the true sense of the word. A "stage" pulled out by the simultaneous forces of infinite expansion and infinite collapse. Eight "puppets" pulled by the "stage". Two "puppets" with broken strings that appear and disappear. They pull each other's hair, trying to get rid of the "stage". They can't do anything. The constant repetition of frustration only strengthens their urge to get rid of the "stage". Also, although you don't need to wear any glasses, you can watch this movie as a real 3D or VR movie. Take off the "glasses" you were born with and maybe "you" can "discover" something from this "world". "A little something

Jiang Xue, a well-known investigative journalist, began an in-depth investigation into the political injustice that happened in his hometown nearly half a century ago. "Xue‘s investigation" was one of Jiang Xue's main self-media at the time, but it was suspended in a short period of time because of the depth and sharpness of the work and the courage to reveal the truth of the incident. During the filming by Jiang Xue, the video version of "Snow Visit" produced by Tiger Temple was only made in the first phase of the film and one person (Xiang Chengjian) died prematurely, making it a precious historical film.

I just watch the news of war in a distant country on my mobile. My fingers go back day by day to the day the war broke out and pose to see comments posted on the Facebook News Feed that I follow. Outside, I have friends who participated in anti-war rallies.

Xu Wangsheng, an elderly migrant worker who returned to his hometown, had a relationship with his son Xu Chao because of his years away from home and his wife's illness. The crazy girl and Xu Chao had no guesses, and later they were stimulated outside. On the night of the winter solstice, Xu Chao was seen by his father when he raped a mad woman. Since then, the mad woman has Xu Chao in her heart. Xu Wangsheng asked someone to find a daughter-in-law for his son. When the blind date, Xu Chao deliberately opposed the father, causing the blind date to fail. The father and son were completely overthrown. Xu Chao secretly went to Guangzhou. On the thirtieth night of the year, Xu Chao died unexpectedly on the way back from Guangzhou. Xu Wangsheng decided to find a ghost wife for his son ...