WHITE LIGHT CINEMA PRESENTS

HUANG Weikai's DISORDER

Introduced by Kevin B. Lee

Friday, May 20 - 8:00pm
At The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.)

Disorder (Xianshi Shi Guoqu de Weilai)
Directed by HUANG Weikai. 2009, 58 mins., China, Video.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

White Light Cinema is pleased to present a screening of HUANG Weikai's acclaimed documentary DISORDER, a fascinating and compelling look at modern China. Kevin Lee, from the film's distribution company, dGenerate Films, will provide an introduction.

"One of the most mesmerizing films I've seen in ages." (Hua Hsu, The Atlantic)

"Huang Weikai's one-of-a-kind news documentary captures, with remarkable freedom, the anarchy, violence, and seething anxiety animating China's major cities today. As urbanization in China advances at a breakneck pace, Chinese cities teeter on the brink of mayhem. One man dances in the middle of traffic while another tries to jump from a bridge before dozens of onlookers. Pigs run wild on a highway while dignitaries swim in a polluted river. [...] In DISORDER, Huang Weikai takes footage collected from a dozen amateur videographers and weaves them into a unique city symphony of social dysfunction." (dGenerate Films)

"Huang Weikai's 58-minute Disorder, featured at Hot Docs 2010, is a black-and-white shot-on-video portrait of urban Guangzhou, but it’s also a sustained fury of delirium. Tossed into a maelstrom of deracinated images from Huang's native province, we're left adrift and agog at brief scenes of traffic jams, floods, accidents, police violence, fools winding through lanes of heavy traffic, and so many, many farm animals gone astray. Programmer Sean Farnel has gone beyond considering Disorder a 'city symphony,' merely saying it's set in 'Chris Marker-ville," and Huang's film is indeed an act of sustained bricolage, essaying contemporary China through a reported 1,000 hours of footage from amateur shooters, creating an eruptive, hallucinatory landscape, resisting narrative, that is both tactile and otherworldly. It may be the first great film of the 22nd century." (Ray Pride, Moving Image Source, "Moments of 2010")

Kevin B. Lee
Kevin Lee is Vice President of Programming and Education for dGenerate Films. His responsibilities include identifying the best works of independent Chinese cinema for the dGenerate catalog; managing the dGenerate blog, the leading source for news, articles and information on Chinese independent film; and consulting with educators on using dGenerate films in their teaching and scholarship. He is also Editor of Fandor, a new Video on Demand website featuring the best of independent and international films. Kevin has written on film for Time Out New York, Cinema-scope, Cineaste and Senses of Cinema. Kevin is an award-winning filmmaker whose credits include the documentaries "Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity" and "Take a Look: Chinatown NYC Post-9/11." He has produced three short films that have been broadcast on PBS' "Reel New York" series and has screened his work at several festivals. He is currently working on a documentary to be filmed in China with director Jia Zhangke as Executive Producer.

dGenerate Films [from their website]:
"dGenerate Films distributes contemporary independent film from mainland China to audiences worldwide. We are dedicated to procuring and promoting visionary content, fueled by transformative social change and digital innovation. dGenerate Films combines pioneering relationships in China with next-generation partners to distribute previously inaccessible content. Films are made available for educational and home DVD, online and cable VOD, public exhibitions, festival screenings, television broadcast, and all other non-theatrical channels. dGenerateFilms.com is a valued resource for up-to-date information and news on the independent Chinese film movement. We also facilitate co-production relationships between filmmakers in China with their counterparts internationally. Established in 2008 by a team of filmmakers, writers and media innovators, dGenerate Films is the leading distributor of independent Chinese film in North America. We are dedicated to supporting these unprecedented movies and their makers, proudly taking our name from world cinema's newest digitally-driven visionaries: the d-Generation."

Special Thanks to Karin Chien, Kevin Lee, and the rest of the staff at dGenerate Films.

Admission: $7.00-10.00 sliding scale