Over the last forty years, Chinese contemporary arts have seen immeasurable changes. From a nation still reeling from the Cultural Revolution the decade previously to a country today that is the world’s second largest art market (and in many years its biggest), perhaps no other country has seen such seismic growth in its arts. This progression is marked by West Kowloon visual culture museum M+ with their latest set of film screenings.Entitled M+ Screenings: Forty Years, the series will feature eight films from directors and artists that either report on, comment on, or are part of their moments in the history. Or, as Yung Ma, Associate Curator of Moving Image at M+, put it, “the diverse selection opens up further possible reading into this particular history, from perspectives that are at times shifting, contradictory, and aligning all at once.”These shifting, contradictory and aligning perspectives begin with master of world cinema Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1973 documentary of Maoist China, “Chung Kuo - Cina”. Antonioni, director of such noticeable masterpieces as “L’avventura”, “L’eclisse” and “Blow-Up” was initially hired by the Chinese government to make the film, and although certain situations were vetoed, he was still able to make a film that so angered those in power that it was not shown in China until 2004. A 220 minute film mostly about the lives of China’s working classes, the film is a lengthy but essential film recently voted one of the greatest documentaries of all time by Sight and Sound Magazine.Following this is another documentary. Detailing seven performances from the notorious 1989 China/Avant Garde or China Contemporary Art Exhibition, Wen Pulin’s “Seven Sins” shows firsthand the lightning rod that brought Chinese contemporary arts to life. Featuring footage of artists including Li Shan, Wu Shanzhuan and Pulin himself, it is a fascinating document of a moment in art history from which (as its famous poster put it) there was no turning back.Following in this vein are three more documentaries showing artists whose work was made possible by the China/Avant Garde show. “Artists of Yuanmingyuan” (1995), “Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies & Delusion” (1999) and “Art For Sale” (1999), when seen together, show China and its art world taking steps towards globalisation and becoming a major art world player. These shorts are joined in a quadruple bill with Tao Hui’s 2014 artist video “The Dusk of Tehran”, representing current practice in artist film in the country whilst also referring back to the nation’s history with its references to Hong Kong’s pop music scene from bygone years.The programme is rounded out by two fiction films showing very different sides of contemporary art in the countryand who both link obliquely back to the series opener. Yang Fudong’s “An Estranged Paradise” (1997-2002) was compared by Forbes to Antonioni’s work for its portrayal of excess and the hollowness behind it in modern day China and 1920s Shanghai, whilst Wang Xiaoshuai’s “Frozen” (1997, filmed 1994) was refused permission to screen in China just as “Chung Kuo - Cina” had been a quarter of a century previously for its cavalier attitude to death. The apparently true story of a performance artist who after two performances centered around death decided to undertake a third piece where he would commit suicide through hypothermia. Despite some flaws, the film gives a vision of the Chinese avant-garde like no other.M+ Screenings: Forty Years runs from 11 March through 13 March at Broadway Cinematheque. Listings are as follows:“Chung Kuo - Cina” - 11 March, 2016 at 7:40pm“Seven Sins: 7 Performances During 1989 China Avant-Garde Art Exhibition” - 12 March, 2016 at 3pm“Frozen” - 12 March, 2016 at 4:05pm“An Estranged Paradise” - 13 March, 2016 at 3pm“Artists of Yuanmingyuan”/”Post Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies & Delusion”/”Art for Sale” and “The Dusk of Tehran” - 13 March, 2016 at 5:10pm
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