KimStim is releasing Beijing-based filmmakers Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka’s critically acclaimed STONEWALLING on March 10th at Film at Lincoln Center in New York, followed by other cities, including Los Angeles. This is the filmmakers’ third feature collaboration and is the third film of their cinematic trilogy about China’s left-behind children. Film at Lincoln Center will also have single screenings for the two other films from the trilogy, EGG AND STONE, and THE FOOLISH BIRD, during the opening weekend.Below are the details of the films and a flyer with screening info for the New York screenings. Here is STONEWALLING’s web page with the screening information.
STONEWALLING
2022 | 147 min | Hunanese with English Subs
Lynn is told she needs English classes, flight attendant school, and a go getter-attitude. She perseveres along this path of upward mobility until she finds out she’s pregnant. Indecisive and running out of time, she tells her boyfriend she’s had an abortion and instead returns to her feuding parents and their failing clinic to try and figure out (if she can) what’s next. Built from interviews with college women happy to invest in themselves, observations of a post-Tik Tok China, and their own lived experiences, STONEWALLING is perceptive with meticulous attention to detail. Returning with a now adult Yao Honggui (FOOLISH BIRD, EGG AND STONE) opposite the directors’ own parents, husband-and-wife team Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka take a look at the new norms of gig-economy, grey markets, MLMs, and hustling in modern-day metropolitan China through the experiences of one ordinary young woman.
Press
“Not since Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin (2013) has a film so powerfully limned the transactional nature of quotidian life in Xi’s neo-capitalist China.”–Artforum by James Quandt
“An engrossing and thoughtful portrait of contemporary China.” –Screen International by Wendy Ide
“STONEWALLING offers a precise view of a particular kind of Gen Z ennui.”–IndieWire by Steph Green
“STONEWALLING is testament to the idea that to build a compelling narrative one does not have to rely on excessive dramatic gesture.”–ICS by Marc van de Klashorst
“STONEWALLING is an attentive, engaged character study, an uncommonly candid women’s picture, and a film of dense and considered sociopolitical implications.”Slant Magazine by Sam C. Mac
EGG AND STONE
2012 | 101 min | Chinese with English Subs
EGG AND STONE is a powerful autobiographical portrait of a 14-year-old girl’s attempts to come to terms with her emerging sexual maturity. Since her parents moved to the city to work, she has been forced to live with her uncle and aunt for seven years. Alone with her own inchoate fears and desires, she grapples with a terrifying world of sexual awakening and danger. Huang Ji’s visual sophistication, narrative fluency, and technical polish belie her youth. Cinematographer Ryuji Otsuka (also the film’s producer and editor) contributes beautifully crafted cinematic images, fearfully intimate, softly pulsing with light, and saturated with complex emotional power.
Press
A deliberately constructed work of feminist symbology… Utilizes gorgeous photography and acutely thoughtful composition, adding formalist dimension to this feminine perspective.”–Exclaim!
“A remarkably poised, redolent autobiographical work in which the filmmaker re-creates the vivid textures of her girlhood in Hunan Province and the body shame endemic to the culture in which she was raised.”–Artforum
“Stunning… Relevant… In a place where womanhood is often considered less than.”–Toronto Film Scene
THE FOOLISH BIRD
2017 | 118 min | Chinese with English Subs
Shot in Southern China, a sixteen-year-old Lynn, left to be raised by her grandparents, finds herself longing for love and of place in the world. While selling stolen cell phones in hopes of finding her way, she loses contact with her best friend; Lynn thinks she’ll find solace with a police inspector’s son, only to have her unstable world turned horribly upside down.