Marginal Geographies: Independent Masterworks from China
Thursday, September 22 | 8 pm
Recalling the work of Asian art-film masters like Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Cemetery of Splendor) and Jia Zhangke (Mountains May Depart), Bi Gan’s impressive directorial debut presents a dreamlike, experimental narrative suffused with geographic and cultural interest, poetic insight, and audacious formal beauty. It tells the story of Chen, a disillusioned doctor at a small medical clinic in the Southwestern Chinese community of Kaili, who travels to nearby Zhenyuan to find his beloved nephew, Weiwei, and do a favor for an elderly colleague. Along the way, Chen reaches the village of Dangmai, a mysterious temporal oasis, where he gains insight into the past, present, and future. Kaili Blues culminates in a virtuosic, forty-minute long-take that showcases the radical aesthetic potential of contemporary digital filmmaking.
Director Bi Gan 2015 China 113 minutes NR DCP
