Wang Bo

Platform

Jia Zhangke

Zhao Tao, Wang Hongwei

China's rapid changes from the late-1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

China Concerto

Wang Bo

An observational essay shot in the southwestern city of Chongqing, CHINA CONCERTO probes the uses of public spectacle in contemporary China. Born and raised in Chongqing, filmmaker Bo Wang visited his hometown at the height of now-disgraced politician Bo Xilai's campaign to revive Mao-era "red culture", promoting among other things the public singing and dancing of Communist songs. Alongside these participatory street performances, CHINA CONCERTO looks at images from the media, including Michelangelo Antonioni's Chung Kuo-China, and news media and advertising that address the capitalist present in forms reminiscent of the communist past. The situation is explored in a narration modeled on Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, which is delivered by a woman with an ambiguous accent. Perched between an insider and outsider perspective, CHINA CONCERTO considers the persistence of totalitarian ideologies and images.

Many Undulating Things

Wang Bo, Pan Lu

The film begins and ends in a shopping centre in Hong Kong. We carefully observe the smooth movement of the escalators, the constant flow of people that never stops, the musical fountain that presides over the centre of the internal courtyard, as if this gigantic complex could concentrate the circulation of the entire city, or even, the entire country. From there, it will be more a tale about concrete, enormous port warehouses, glazed galleries built for the 2010 universal exhibition, overpopulated tower blocks, the fragments of still recent colonialism...

Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings

Wang Bo

The devastating tropical climate created strong fear and anxiety in the British troops who stationed at Hong Kong after the opium wars. The 19th Century myth of Miasma, the bad air, related epidemic diseases with air, environment and race, which later helped to consolidate the vertical segregation on Hong Kong island. Acclimatization efforts were made in pace with expansion of the British Botanic Empire, a global network of scentific researches of plants, which circulated not only botanic specimens but also images created for the purpose of study. In the particular case of Canton in South China, local commercial artists were commissioned to make plant paintings. This work examines the peculiar dynamics between imperialism, scientific research, race and the right to look in 19th Century Canton.

Traces of an Invisible City: Three Notes on Hong Kong

Wang Bo, Pan Lu

The film presents urban space in Hong Kong as a vivid showcase of the hidden logics of globalization, capitalism and historical changes of today’s world cities. The film contains three chapters that is parallel to but interwoven with each other: global, local and border space. The film examines a series of urban landscapes in Hong Kong to illustrate the tension among their visual existence, function and ownership, and how the city’s public space has been constructed, used, owned and interpreted.