"For an explosion scene today, we laid over a kilometre of explosives and called up more than a thousand extras, as well as a Chinese aerial video company. The result was a catastrophe as they couldn't even maintain a steady hover height. This has taught me a lesson -- you may want to give domestic companies a platform, but they won't give you face, and eventually you'll still have to do a u-turn and get the laowais in. If you don't have the right techniques, you can practise, but what's frightening is that these guys will tell you they can do anything, and then mess it up when the big moment comes. Right, I'll just suck it up. Next time, I won't believe anyone again." more ›

Is China Africa's new colonial master? This Sunday, sit back and enjoy this 28 minute-long film by Brent Huffman and Zhou Xiaoli who travelled to Senegal in West Africa to find out. Read interviews with the filmmakers here and here. For previous Shanghaiist Sunday Shows, click here. more ›

It's been four months since Wendi Deng saved her husband Rupert Murdoch from a foam pie. And she's spoken about it for the very first time in an exclusive interview with The Guardian. more ›

Sohu Vice-President Liu Chun (刘春) laments in a post on his Sohu Weibo profile about the anti-Japanese propaganda productions that are shown every September 18, anniversary of the Mukden Incident in 1931, which subsequently led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria:

September 18 -- I'd like to plead with China's film industry workers. Please stop making those obscene, mythological anti-Japanese films where a child destroys a dozen (Japanese) devils, a farmer hundreds, and a guerilla thousands. Are the (Japanese) short-legged or brain-damaged? Each scene requires hordes of cameos to act as (Japanese) corpses. Please, pay a bit of attention to history. Stop turning a 14-year-long brutal war which caused the death of tens of millions into a game. more ›

The 5th Beijing Queer Film Festival, China's first full-fledged LGBT film festival founded 10 years ago, has concluded but not before demands by officials to shut down the event sparked off yet another round of cat-and-mouse which gay community organisers in China are by now so used to. more ›

"MEDIA tycoon Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi Deng will attend the opening ceremony and a forum of the coming 14th Shanghai International Film Festival, officials said today. Murdoch is expected to share his ideas and experiences in film investment with Chinese filmmakers at the forum on financing the growth of the film industry. China is the world's third largest film market in terms of box office revenue after Japan and the United States. Last year China's cinema earnings grew 63.9 percent to a total of 10.1 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion). The film festival will run from June 11 to 19. Its "Star Hunter" program has also been launched. Mainland citizens who have a talent for film acting can register at http://ent.qq.com/zt2011/Star_hunter/index.htm before May 27. Finalists will be selected by online voters and a professional jury and have a chance to attend world-famous film festivals and sign a contract with a well-known artist agency." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Ahead of its release later this year, rumors have been confirmed that the remake of the 1984 classic Red Dawn has had to make some not-too-minor adjustments. Originally featured was an invasion of America by the Chinese Army. But in a desperate attempt to tap into the Chinese market, the enemy has been changed to North Korea. It would seem that Hollywood has come grovelling at the gates of Beijing, and its $1.5 billion box office. more ›

It has been a year and a half since the WTO ruled China's restriction of U.S. books, music and film to be in violation of free-trade laws. Now, at long last, the ruling's implementation this March could possibly see an expansion of the foreign film quota, which is currently set at a flexible 20 per year. The operative word here is 'could.' more ›

more ›

China's first homegrown Jewish movie, "A Jewish Girl from Shanghai", screened last month at the 11th Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival, and is the first mainland China production to have received a nomination at the Jerusalem Film Festival for the Avner Shalev Award. A review of the movie at The Forward points out the odd way in which "it blends a little-known chapter of Holocaust history with the chipper naïveté of a Disney film". Watch the trailer below and you'll see what they mean by that:
more ›

About a week ago, we featured a trailer we had discovered on Vimeo of a locally filmed romantic drama called "Lao Wai." The director, Fabien Gaillard, has now contacted us to say that it is in fact screening in Shanghai... tonight! more ›

Recently, it's all been about the Wikileaks hullabaloo and cable gate keeps on getting bigger and bigger, what with.. more ›

All the things you'd want to do this Monday through Thursday. On the schedule this week: our monthly Shanghaiist Scrabble night, some professional ladies drinking beer, and loads of local rockers gathering for a concert! Read on (or check out our calendar) for more! more ›

Goodbye Shanghai from Blueberry Films on Vimeo. more ›

Unless you touched down in Shanghai just a few hours ago, you know that a horrific fire broke out at an apartment block in Jing’An earlier this week. To raise funds for the Shanghai Red Cross Jiaozhou Lu fund, BEAN and Kaiba are holding a fundraising event this Saturday night and your attendance/contributions would be greatly appreciated. more ›

Mixing film and politics once again, China has pulled out of the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival after their request that Taiwan be referred to as "China's Taiwan" or "Chinese Taipei" was rejected. After Taiwanese representatives said they would continue using the title "China and Taiwan" to introduce films, China announced it would boycott all festival related events leading to a confusing opening on Saturday night, with several anxious fans empty handed. more ›

Ok, so Zhang Yimou's remake of Blood Simple wasn't exactly the greatest and to say Disney failed with their Chinese take on High School Musical when reportedly, only one person showed up to their Beijing screening, is kind of an understatement. But despite such an abysmal track record, the dream is still alive for big studio execs. more ›

Zhang Ziyi has re-emerged to promote her new film "A Tale of Magic" directed by Gu Changwei. Gu is known for his directorial debut, "Peacock", which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005 and frequent collaborations with Chinese directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. more ›

Ip Man, the kung fu master who among others taught Bruce Lee some of his tricks and kicks seems to be the honey of the 2010 silver screens. Two years after the film Ip Man (叶问), a sequel is now released, once again under the direction of Wilson Yip (Yip Wai Shun) and with Donnie Yen in the leading role. Apart from this, two other pictures about the great fighter is under production right this moment. more ›

Cinedans - the international film, dance and media festival based in Amsterdam is dropping down in Shanghai for a weekend. This is your chance to get updated on the current dance video scene of Europe, or, if you´re a newbie, to get to know a new genre, the dance film. It´s not dance, not film - but something of its own. more ›

Following the spectacular box office revenues of Hollywood's "Avatar" (1.3 billion RMB) and "Alice in Wonderland" (168.6 million RMB in 12 days), it seems that Chinese movie makers are gearing up to take a slice of the lucrative 3D pie. more ›

Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square (French: Le jour se lève sur la place Tienanmen) is a 1998 National Film Board of Canada short animated documentary directed by Shui-Bo Wang which received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. Consisting of a colourful collage of personal and archival photos and original artwork, this fascinating documentary is one man's autobiographical look back at the turbulent Cultural Revolution and the subsequent years. An exceptional piece of work that is well worth 29 minutes of your time this Sunday: more ›

This 22 minute wartime newsreel from 1942 documents the efforts of China to deal with Japanese aggression:
more ›

Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei sits down for a chat with Yang Yang and celebrated gay film director Cui Zi'en (催子恩), masterminds of the Beijing Queer Film Festival (北京酷儿影展) which took place in June this year. more ›

We recently caught up with Shanghai-based independent filmmaker Luis Tapia of Daedalum Films, who is currently busy preparing for the May 9 premiere screening of his new documentary short about Shanghai band Hard Queen and the life of indie rock musicians in China. Seats are still available for the screening. Advance tickets can be purchased here. more ›

Popular bar matron Cotton Ding, owner of Shanghaiist favorite Cotton's, sits down with Daedalum Films to talk about her story - how she left her home in rural Hunan for the big city, the lessons she learned along the way to becoming a successful bar owner, and what challenges she sees on the horizon. more ›

While some of us spent Chinese New Year's Eve enjoying grilled seafood on a beach in the Philippines, Luis Tapia of Shanghai-based Daedalum Films was lugging his camera to a Shanghai rooftop to record the fireworks. The results, as you can see above, are beautiful (be sure to watch in HD). Thankfully, the video does not include actual sound (you probably got enough of that last night). Instead, the soundtrack is "El Pico" by Ratatat. You can buy that song on iTunes. Enjoy. more ›

Mix Hindi hip hop, Chinese visuals and Bollywood-style dancing and the result is this music video from the soundtrack of the new made-in-China Bollywood film Chandni Chowk to China. For a new trailer of the movie, see below the fold. Shanghai scenes appear between 1:50 and 2:06 more ›

The Travel Film Archive takes us on another journey back in time with this look at how life was like in 1938 in the then province of Manchuria (Manchukuo) under the Japanese. more ›

"In 10 years its population doubles to a seething 7 million people!" more ›