FIRST film festival remains the home of challenging Chinese cinema
The recently concluded 11th edition presented films whose stories and themes that mean they would not appear at other festivals in China
The FIRST International Film Festival prides itself on being a platform for new and groundbreaking Chinese filmmakers – its awards come in the form of acrylic bricks. This year’s festival, the event’s 11th edition, began on July 21 in Xining, capital of the northwestern province of Qinghai, on a defiant note.
Delivering a seemingly impromptu opening speech to a packed cinema at a downtown multiplex, the festival’s chief executive, Li Ziwei, recalled how detractors had been telling her the festival was “dead meat”. But her team were fighters, she said, adding: “The atmosphere this year is different, but you’ve got to do what you have to do.”
The objective of the festival, she said, was “merely to survive”, and she ended her emotional address with a plea: “Leaders, please let us continue.”
Li’s speech appeared to substantiate reports that have circulated in recent months suggesting that FIRST – which was founded in 2006 in Beijing as the Student DV Festival, before reinventing itself in Xining in 2011 – would be curtailed or even shut down by the authorities in the run-up to the Communist Party’s 19th National Congress in the autumn.
Li and her team were understood to have engaged in delicate negotiations with the authorities all the way up to the start of the festival.