14th Taiwan International Documentary Festival: Archival Experiences Maja Korbecka August 2024 Festival Reports Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) is one of the few remaining international film festivals in the Chinese-speaking world that celebrates independent documentary films from the PRC, Taiwan and Hon...
The 5th Hainan Island International Film Festival: At the construction site Maja Korbecka May 2024 Festival Reports It is customary in China’s film festival environment for there to be is almost no information on the upcoming edition of a festival until the last two, three weeks before the event is scheduled to start. The ne...
Gazing into the Abyss: An interview with Wei Shujun Maja Korbecka January 2024 Interviews I first talked with Wei Shujun back in 2020 when his debut film, Yema fenzhong (Striding into the Wind), had its US theatrical release. However, we met in person only three years later in Cannes after the premi...
The 7th Pingyao International Film Festival: In the heat of the sun Maja Korbecka January 2024 Festival Reports After the zero-Covid policy lockdown pushed the previous edition of Pingyao International Film Festival to January 2023, Jia Zhangke and the festival team faced the challenge of organising two festivals in one ...
Rising from the ashes: The 47th Hong Kong International Film Festival Maja Korbecka August 2023 Festival Reports After three years of pandemic-related hiatus, Hong Kong International Film Festival returns to its regular late March/early April dates. The festival experienced seismic changes continuously for the last two de...
Family as a Film Collective: An interview with Huang Ji and Ryûji Otsuka Maja Korbecka May 2023 Interviews The third full-length collaboration between the filmmaking duo Huang Ji and Ryûji Otsuka, Stonewalling, had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival and from 10th March this year started screening at...
The 59th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival: Cold War Revisited Maja Korbecka January 2023 Festival Reports Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival survived the pandemic unscathed. None of its editions took an online or hybrid form. However, another issue thoroughly changed the festival. Since 2019, China Film Administrati...
“Resistance is the driving force of the film”: An Interview with Davy Chou Maja Korbecka July 2022 Interviews Cambodian-French writer-director Davy Chou’s third full-length film, Return to Seoul, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, focuses on a French Korean adoptee during her recurri...
Pom Bunsermvicha interview: “Being part of a family“ Maja Korbecka January 2022 Interviews As a result of institutional support, independent filmmaking in Southeast Asia is flourishing. Thailand has grown into a creative hub – production companies such as Electric Eel Films help realise the ideals of...
“I Myself am a Woman”: A Conversation with Han Shuai Maja Korbecka July 2021 Interviews Writer-director Han Shuai’s Summer Blur, the winner of the Grand Prix for Best Film in the Kplus competition at the 2021 Berlinale, is a mesmerising take on film noir. Its codes and conventions are used to expl...
The 57th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival: Enclave Amidst the Chaos? Maja Korbecka January 2021 Festival Reports Taiwan is one of the few countries that managed to suppress the spread of COVID-19 very early on, drawing from the traumatic experience of the early 2000s SARS epidemic that severely plagued the island. After a...