After five long years, “Have a Nice Day” director Liu Jian returns to New York with his newest project, “Art College 1994.” This hotly-anticipated feature checks off all the boxes. It cements Liu Jian's stamp as a rising animation auteur in China; it marks the completed its world tour at Berlinale, Annecy, New York Asian Film Festival, and more; and, what's more, the film features a star-studded voice cast that spans intellectuals, musicians, and other movie directors, including Jia Zhangke and Bi Gan.
Here, we catch a glimpse of a group of students at the Chinese Southern Academy of the Arts. Like many students, they seem to be suspended in a daze of malaise, and of them, Zhang Xiaojun (Dong Zijian) is especially lost. His best friend, Rabbit (Shaoxing), encourages Xiaojun to expand his practice to conceptual art. His crush, the soft-spoken piano student Hao Lili (Zhou Dongyu), is swayed by...
Here, we catch a glimpse of a group of students at the Chinese Southern Academy of the Arts. Like many students, they seem to be suspended in a daze of malaise, and of them, Zhang Xiaojun (Dong Zijian) is especially lost. His best friend, Rabbit (Shaoxing), encourages Xiaojun to expand his practice to conceptual art. His crush, the soft-spoken piano student Hao Lili (Zhou Dongyu), is swayed by...
- 4/24/2024
- by Grace Han
- AsianMoviePulse
College can be a time of great change in one's life: going it alone for the first time in training for the real world. The inclusion of the year in the title of Liu Jian's third feature “Art College 1994” is necessary in that it sets the scene for a changing time in China in terms of pop culture and, of course, art.
Art College 1994 is screening this Friday, April 26 in Metrograph, for an exclusive Week-Long NY Theatrical Run
Two roommates, Xiaojun (Dong Zijian) and Zhifei (Chizi) are art students who spend their days procrastinating, discussing the philosophy of art and the changing scene from classic to Western-influenced modern. Similarly, vocal student Hong (Papi) and piano student Lili (Zhou Dongyu) discuss their futures and possible marriages.
The two pairs mingle, with potential romantic liaisons hinted at, though their hypothetical, philosophical conversations play out in reality, as they come to...
Art College 1994 is screening this Friday, April 26 in Metrograph, for an exclusive Week-Long NY Theatrical Run
Two roommates, Xiaojun (Dong Zijian) and Zhifei (Chizi) are art students who spend their days procrastinating, discussing the philosophy of art and the changing scene from classic to Western-influenced modern. Similarly, vocal student Hong (Papi) and piano student Lili (Zhou Dongyu) discuss their futures and possible marriages.
The two pairs mingle, with potential romantic liaisons hinted at, though their hypothetical, philosophical conversations play out in reality, as they come to...
- 4/23/2024
- by Andrew Thayne
- AsianMoviePulse
"Who gets to decide what art is?" Dekanalog has revealed a new trailer for Art College 1994, an animated drama from Chinese filmmaker Jian Liu, also known for Have a Nice Day. This initially premiered at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival more than a year ago, and it played on the festival circuit all of 2023. Beginning on April 26th, Art College 1994, Liu Jian's latest strikingly animated & affecting feature, opens for a week-long NYC exclusive theatrical run at Metrograph In Theater. Lao Wang works in a security department of a college in a big school town. Xiao Wang is a freshman. He has a conflict with his roommate and is taken to security by his counselor. In a room on this foggy winter day, Lao Wang and Xiao Li are tasting the life of their own, and something unexpected is about to happen... The town is waiting quietly for the next day as it always is.
- 4/21/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
There’s a beautiful scene in Jia Zhangke’s 2004 film The World in which the protagonist, Tao, crosses paths with an industrial worker nicknamed Little Sister on the rooftop of an unfinished building. They chat aimlessly beneath towering spires of exposed rebar until a massive plane soars overhead, drowning out their voices. “Tao, who flies on those planes?” he asks, to which she responds, “Who knows…I don’t know anybody who’s ever been on a plane.”
It’s this precise contrast of stasis and flux, of the sublime and the quotidian, of simple personal dreams swallowed up by massive national ambitions, that characterizes Liu Jian’s newest feature, Art College 1994. Jia also lends his voice to one of its characters: Gu Yongqing, a “roving artist abroad” who speaks of “the mysterious power of art” during a visiting lecture at the titular art college. This is Liu’s third animated feature film,...
It’s this precise contrast of stasis and flux, of the sublime and the quotidian, of simple personal dreams swallowed up by massive national ambitions, that characterizes Liu Jian’s newest feature, Art College 1994. Jia also lends his voice to one of its characters: Gu Yongqing, a “roving artist abroad” who speaks of “the mysterious power of art” during a visiting lecture at the titular art college. This is Liu’s third animated feature film,...
- 4/21/2024
- by Ryan Coleman
- Slant Magazine
College can be a time of great change in one's life: going it alone for the first time in training for the real world. The inclusion of the year in the title of Liu Jian's third feature “Art College 1994” is necessary in that it sets the scene for a changing time in China in terms of pop culture and, of course, art.
Back Home is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
Two roommates, Xiaojun (Dong Zijian) and Zhifei (Chizi) are art students who spend their days procrastinating, discussing the philosophy of art and the changing scene from classic to Western-influenced modern. Similarly, vocal student Hong (Papi) and piano student Lili (Zhou Dongyu) discuss their futures and possible marriages.
The two pairs mingle, with potential romantic liaisons hinted at, though their hypothetical, philosophical conversations play out in reality, as they come to terms with their relationship to art and each other.
Back Home is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
Two roommates, Xiaojun (Dong Zijian) and Zhifei (Chizi) are art students who spend their days procrastinating, discussing the philosophy of art and the changing scene from classic to Western-influenced modern. Similarly, vocal student Hong (Papi) and piano student Lili (Zhou Dongyu) discuss their futures and possible marriages.
The two pairs mingle, with potential romantic liaisons hinted at, though their hypothetical, philosophical conversations play out in reality, as they come to terms with their relationship to art and each other.
- 8/3/2023
- by Andrew Thayne
- AsianMoviePulse
The quote that opens Chinese director Liu Jian’s shaggy but amiable new animated feature is instructive. “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life” is a passage from James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” and indeed, Liu was himself at art college as a young man in the early ’90s, when and where “Art College 1994” is, unsurprisingly, set. The quasi-memoir feel to the movie does have its charm — it’s always a kick to see animation techniques applied not to extravagant flights of fancy but to slices of real, ordinary life — but it’s also its chief flaw. In re-creating life out of life, Liu is quite successful; whether he makes it into drama is another question. Like its characters, “Art College 1994” gives the impression of having just too much time on its hands.
Liu...
Liu...
- 2/25/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Art College 1994, a deadpan slice of comic-sad social realism from Chinese animator Liu Jian (Have a Nice Day), offers reassuring evidence that although cultural specificities can shape artistic traditions — and fashion and tastes fluctuate — art students are basically all the same and always have been: slovenly, idealistic, and prone to pretentious waffle, especially when lubricated with alcohol. But also, at least based on the evidence of the characters here, reasonably endearing with their guileless dreams of making meaningful work in a world where it sometimes feels like everything has been done. Mind you, others just want to meet romantic partners, make money somehow and maybe go abroad someday.
There’s a sense that this gently meandering, sketchbook-like work is aware of its own cinematic precedents. It certainly seems to suffer from an anxiety of influence as it tries to carve out a space for itself somewhere in the region of Eric Rohmer wistful romances,...
There’s a sense that this gently meandering, sketchbook-like work is aware of its own cinematic precedents. It certainly seems to suffer from an anxiety of influence as it tries to carve out a space for itself somewhere in the region of Eric Rohmer wistful romances,...
- 2/24/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sales agency Memento Intl. has unveiled the first clip and poster from Liu Jian’s Berlin competition title “Art College 1994,” which world premieres on Feb. 24.
The film is a portrait of youth set on the campus of the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of reforms opening China to the Western world, a group of college students live in full swing as they take their first steps into adulthood, where love and friendships are intertwined with artistic pursuits, ideals and ambitions. Caught between tradition and modernity, they now have to choose who they want to become.
It is the director’s third animation feature after 2010’s “Piercing I” and “Have a Nice Day,” which premiered in competition at the Berlinale in 2017, and quickly built a cult following. “Have a Nice Day” was also honored with the best animated feature award at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan.
The film is a portrait of youth set on the campus of the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of reforms opening China to the Western world, a group of college students live in full swing as they take their first steps into adulthood, where love and friendships are intertwined with artistic pursuits, ideals and ambitions. Caught between tradition and modernity, they now have to choose who they want to become.
It is the director’s third animation feature after 2010’s “Piercing I” and “Have a Nice Day,” which premiered in competition at the Berlinale in 2017, and quickly built a cult following. “Have a Nice Day” was also honored with the best animated feature award at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan.
- 2/20/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Mountains May Depart
Written by Jia Zhangke
Directed by Jia Zhangke
China/Japan/France, 2015
Following the brilliant A Touch of Sin, auteur and Chinese master Jia Zhangke returns with a similarly structured, yet more narratively linked, portrait of China in the new millennium. Mountains May Depart is two-thirds of a gripping relationship drama that captures not only a China in constant flux, but also the universality of human experience. Unfortunately, in the last act the threads of the narrative begin to fray and fall apart, to the point where the strong final sequence is left weaker by the undercooked scenes that precede it.
Taking place over three distinct time periods, the film begins in the year 1999 at the dawn of the new millennium. Young friends Tao (Tao Zhao), Zhang (Yi Zhang) and Liangzi (Jing Dong Liang), like the rest of China, are happy and hopeful with what the new century may bring.
Written by Jia Zhangke
Directed by Jia Zhangke
China/Japan/France, 2015
Following the brilliant A Touch of Sin, auteur and Chinese master Jia Zhangke returns with a similarly structured, yet more narratively linked, portrait of China in the new millennium. Mountains May Depart is two-thirds of a gripping relationship drama that captures not only a China in constant flux, but also the universality of human experience. Unfortunately, in the last act the threads of the narrative begin to fray and fall apart, to the point where the strong final sequence is left weaker by the undercooked scenes that precede it.
Taking place over three distinct time periods, the film begins in the year 1999 at the dawn of the new millennium. Young friends Tao (Tao Zhao), Zhang (Yi Zhang) and Liangzi (Jing Dong Liang), like the rest of China, are happy and hopeful with what the new century may bring.
- 10/13/2015
- by Liam Dunn
- SoundOnSight
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