Documentary filmmaker and artist Wang Bing will be Guest of Honour at IDFA 2023. His works will be celebrated during a retrospective programme, and his personally curated Top 10 will comprise a “contemplative journey into contemporary Chinese cinema.” IDFA Lifetime Achievement award-winner Peter Greenaway will also be honoured with a retrospective program.
The festival also announced two curated focus programs, ‘Fabrications’ and ‘16 Worlds on 16’, alongside ‘Corresponding Cinemas’ which comprises a series of screenings and conversations on “the invisible connections between filmmakers.”
The 36th edition of IDFA takes place November 8 to 19 2023.
Guest of Honor Wang Bing: Top 10 and Retrospective
IDFA writes how documentary filmmaker and artist Wang Bing “is an uncompromising voice of present-day Chinese filmmaking. His work fearlessly chronicles socio-economic transformations and challenging labour conditions in China. These themes are extended to his Top 10 program, in which Wang Bing invites us on a contemplative journey into contemporary Chinese cinema, with ten titles dating 1999 and later. The films and their politics are subtle in their film language, representing a wave of filmmaking rarely shown internationally.”
The selection includes the IDFA Bertha Fund-supported Last Train Home by Lixin Fan which documents the millions of migrant factory workers that travel home for Spring Festival each year. The film received IBF support in 2008.
Wang Bing Top 10
- Before the Flood (2005) directed by Yifan Li, Yu Yan
- Bing’ai (2007) directed by Yan Feng
- Born in Beijing (2011) directed by Li Ma
- Last Train Home (2009) directed by Lixin Fan
- The Next Life (2011) directed by Jian Fan
- Old Men (1999) directed by Lina Yang
- Petition (2009) directed by Liang Zhao
- To Live is Better Than to Die (2003) directed by Weijun Chen
- Wheat Harvest (2008) directed by Tong Xu
- When the Bough Breaks (2011) directed by Dan Ji
In the retrospective program, IDFA presents six films that highlight Wang Bing’s “innovative prowess” from 2002 to today. Alongside his masterpiece Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks which heralded a new era for Chinese documentary film, the program includes Man in Black and Youth (Spring), two films that premiered earlier this year in Cannes. The selection demonstrates how Wang Bing’ s frame “underlines the human in dehumanizing systems,” the festival notes. Other films screening will be Alone, ’Til Madness Do Us Part and Mrs. Fang. An extended conversation with IDFA’s Guest of Honor Wang Bing will be the centerpiece Talk of this edition.
Peter Greenaway: Lifetime Achievement Award and Retrospective
Celebrating the “acclaimed and rebellious filmmaker and artist,” IDFA will present a selection of five Peter Greenaway films to be screened at the festival. The selection from Greenaway’s expansive filmography “focuses principally on how his approach transcends genres and refuses to adhere to the standard rules of fiction or documentary film.” The selection includes the cannibalism satire The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, and Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, a fictionalized biopic revolving around the controversies of the art history masterpiece, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch,” the festival notes. In a unique event, Peter Greenaway will invite the audience of IDFA into his creative process, with a surprise screening and an extensive conversation with IDFA’ s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia.
Focus program: Fabrications
”Exploring the unique relationship of trust between documentary film and audiences, Fabrications presents ten films that test the limits of the format’s promise of truth,” the festival writes. “Rather than providing an answer, the program explores the documentary form as realism, as opposed to reality, and encourages audiences to think more deeply about how all realities are fabricated on screen.” The curated selection “questions to what extent our realities inform our fictions, and vice versa”, and includes the late Safi Faye’s docufiction about the village she was born, Letter from my Village and Massoud Bakhshi’ s kaleidoscopic city portrait Tehran Has No More Pomegranates!. The first four titles in the program have been announced; the remainder will be made public in October.
Focus program: 16 Worlds on 16
Looking back on 100 years since Kodak introduced 16mm, this focus program explores how the film format influenced the history of documentary film. “The less expensive and lighter alternative to 35mm cameras enabled experiment and independent filmmaking to flourish—
also making it more accessible for lesser represented communities,” the festival writes, citing Sara Gómez’s On the Other Island that addressed Cuba’s intersectional inequalities. The selection also includes cinema verité classics, such as Agnès Varda’s Daguerréotypes, and examples of metaphorical critique of authority to bypass censorship, such as Abbas Kiarostami’s exploration into revolutionary mindsets in First Case, Second Case. The sixteen titles that make up the program have been announced.
Corresponding Cinemas: A series of films and conversations on the invisible connectionsbetween filmmakers
Starting with Sky Hopinka, this program invites us to explore the work of, and connections between, Basma al-Sharif, Jumana Manna, Ibrahim Shaddad, and Abderrahmane Sissako. The program will show nine titles by the filmmakers, accompanied by introductions and conversations. “Placing connectivity and creative influence in the spotlight, Corresponding Cinemas will examine the ways through which the work of each filmmaker has inspired the work of the other, offering a glimpse into cinema’s endless relay of creative connections,” the festival writes.
2023 marks the 36th edition of IDFA, which takes place from November 8–19. Program announcements will follow throughout October. The final competition titles will be announced on Wednesday, October 18, during the IDFA 2023 press conference which will be available to stream online at idfa.nl.
The 17th edition of IDFA DocLab returns with an exhibition of interactive and immersive documentary works and digital art installations. This year’s IDFA DocLab theme and full list of selected projects will be announced in October.
