The ProjectorThe Chinese festival drawing hordes of ‘cultured youth’ to art-house cinema screenings
- Pingyao International Film Festival draws young cinema fans from big cities hours away
- Cheap tickets and accommodation, and stalls selling food and artisanal goods, part of the draw
The Chinese slogan for this year’s Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival (PYIFF) translates as “Films returning to the market”. And a market was what visitors found when they set foot in Pingyao Festival Palace, where the PYIFF was being held: to the left of the entrance were food stalls, booths selling artisanal goods and even a carousel, all laid out in the forecourt of what was once a state-owned diesel-engine factory.
In the main hall, young volunteers proffered postcards and festival memorabilia from behind counters set under gaudy neon signs. At its far end, the tills ceaselessly rang (or beeped, as most transactions seemed to be conducted via smartphones) in cafes, gift shops and a well-stocked bookstore.
And return they did, in droves. Throughout the festival, which ran from October 11 to 20, the venue swarmed with people but, more importantly, the screenings were regularly packed. Tickets were sold out for the gala presentations of high-profile films (such as Alice Rohrwacher’s festival hit Happy as Lazzaro, and Liu Jie’s Baby, starring A-lister Yang Mi), as well as for titles in the “Made in Shanxi” section, dedicated to movies produced in Pingyao’s home province.
Just as popular were films in the comparatively obscure retrospective of the Soviet Union New Wave in the 1960s and 70s: it was a pleasant surprise to find an early-morning screening of the late Russian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko’s rarely seen 1963 debut, Heat, nearly full.
“That kind of response is what we were hoping for,” Müller says. “People surrounded guests such as the Happy as Lazzaro actor [Adriano Tardiolo] and would not let him go.