Machines & Me: A Filmless Festival 2024 Part Two
Machines & Me: A Filmless Festival 2024 Part Two
In the afternoon of Dec. 6, a special documentary screening will take place, featuring:
- A Filmless Festival (dir. Wo Wang, 2015) + Q & A with the director《沒有電影的電影節》特別放映及映後談
FESTIVAL DATES:
Thu, Dec 5, 2024 - 3:30PM
Fri, Dec 6, 2024 - 4PM
Fri, Dec 6, 2024 - 7:30PM
Mon, Dec 9, 2024 - 1:30PM
About the Festival:
“Machines & Me: The Work of Self Assembly in Global Chinese Art and Media” is an initiative that brings together a diverse range of films and media artworks crossing formal and conceptual boundaries, exploring how machines—cameras, computers, cyborgs, cellphones, A.I., policing, surveillance, structural violence, and the very mechanisms that shape our material and institutional survival—articulate our ways of being, thinking, and doing in the global Asian and Sinophone worlds. Machines & Me: A Filmless Festival 2024, Part I of this global Chinese cinema screening series, features works that do not necessarily rely on traditional filming. Instead, they draw upon materials and elements not typically considered filmic: found footage, family photos, cellphone diaries, virtual reality, experimental animation, sound collages, AI-generated art, home movies and digital video remixes. Focusing on the evolving relationship between labor, humanity, media technology and political imaginaries, the screening series invites critical reflection on their deep imprints in our everyday lives.
Much like the fundamental biological processes of self-assembly—where organized structures appear to construct itself from a chaotic assortment of smaller components—these films help us to unpack how our “selves” are collectively assembled and transformed in an age of networked media, big data, and artificial intelligence. Machines & Me turns to the vast margins and in-between moments of global Asian and Chinese media archives, uncovering ephemeral and personal fragments often left untitled and unauthored, yet vivid in their persistence through cinematic, digital, and multimedia afterlives.
This is a multi-day festival in English with three in-person events (with online components on Dec. 9 only), open to the public. Prior registration is required at least 24 hours before the event starts. Please register to receive the virtual program, special viewing guide, and the Zoom link for the artists’ roundtable and Q&A discussion on Dec. 9. Find out more information for part one, three and four to attend more festival dates.
This film documents the preparation and forced cancellation of the 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014. The footage was captured by audience members, festival staff, participating filmmakers, cinephiles, and members of the press who witnessed what has been called “the darkest day” in the history of Chinese independent film.
Wo WANG (王我) was born in Hebei Province, and is currently living in USA. He studied graphic design at the Central Academy of Arts and Design, and received an MA in Arts and Design from Tsinghua University. He began making films in 2004, establishing himself as one the innovative of the independent documentary filmmakers. His experimental documentaries include Outside (2005), Noise (2007), Zhe Teng: According to China (2010), The Dialogue (2014) and A Filmless Festival (2015). Along with his filmmaking, Wang established himself as an artist and graphic designer. His powerful posters for the Beijing Independent Film Festival are admired the world around.
Machines & Me: A Filmless Festival 2024 is:
Co-presented by Cinema & Media Studies and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, SLLC at UMD.
Curated and organized by Belinda Qian He (SLLC, East Asian Cinema & Media Studies)
With the assistance of UMD faculty supporters and discussants/moderators:
Jason Kuo (Art History and Archaeology; Cinema & Media Studies), Quint Gregory (Art History and Archaeology) and Neda Atanasoski (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute).
With the help of student assistants and volunteers:
Madison Henn (SLLC, Chinese; UTAP program), Filippo Grassi (PhD student in Art History), Theo Portner (SLLC, Chinese), Ira Valeza (SLLC, Chinese; Government and Politics), Cecelia Clanton (SLLC, Chinese), Nelson Guachamin (English; SLLC, Chinese), Madeline Leah Yaffe (Cinema & Media Studies, SLLC; Public Relations), Tianen Deng (Information Science) and Serena Mao (International Relations; Psychology).
Generously supported by:
Arts for All, the College of Arts & Humanities, the Center for East Asian Studies, the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the Language House Program, the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture and the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Special thanks to our community partners and collaborators:
Mr. Wo Wang, graphic designer for all event posters; Dr. Van Tran Nguyen (Performing Arts, Georgetown University); Mr. Yuanhong Huang and the Chinese Independent Film Association; and the Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In the afternoon of Dec. 6, a special documentary screening will take place, featuring:
- A Filmless Festival (dir. Wo Wang, 2015) + Q & A with the director《沒有電影的電影節》特別放映及映後談
FESTIVAL DATES:
Thu, Dec 5, 2024 - 3:30PM
Fri, Dec 6, 2024 - 4PM
Fri, Dec 6, 2024 - 7:30PM
Mon, Dec 9, 2024 - 1:30PM
About the Festival:
“Machines & Me: The Work of Self Assembly in Global Chinese Art and Media” is an initiative that brings together a diverse range of films and media artworks crossing formal and conceptual boundaries, exploring how machines—cameras, computers, cyborgs, cellphones, A.I., policing, surveillance, structural violence, and the very mechanisms that shape our material and institutional survival—articulate our ways of being, thinking, and doing in the global Asian and Sinophone worlds. Machines & Me: A Filmless Festival 2024, Part I of this global Chinese cinema screening series, features works that do not necessarily rely on traditional filming. Instead, they draw upon materials and elements not typically considered filmic: found footage, family photos, cellphone diaries, virtual reality, experimental animation, sound collages, AI-generated art, home movies and digital video remixes. Focusing on the evolving relationship between labor, humanity, media technology and political imaginaries, the screening series invites critical reflection on their deep imprints in our everyday lives.
Much like the fundamental biological processes of self-assembly—where organized structures appear to construct itself from a chaotic assortment of smaller components—these films help us to unpack how our “selves” are collectively assembled and transformed in an age of networked media, big data, and artificial intelligence. Machines & Me turns to the vast margins and in-between moments of global Asian and Chinese media archives, uncovering ephemeral and personal fragments often left untitled and unauthored, yet vivid in their persistence through cinematic, digital, and multimedia afterlives.
This is a multi-day festival in English with three in-person events (with online components on Dec. 9 only), open to the public. Prior registration is required at least 24 hours before the event starts. Please register to receive the virtual program, special viewing guide, and the Zoom link for the artists’ roundtable and Q&A discussion on Dec. 9. Find out more information for part one, three and four to attend more festival dates.
This film documents the preparation and forced cancellation of the 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014. The footage was captured by audience members, festival staff, participating filmmakers, cinephiles, and members of the press who witnessed what has been called “the darkest day” in the history of Chinese independent film.
Wo WANG (王我) was born in Hebei Province, and is currently living in USA. He studied graphic design at the Central Academy of Arts and Design, and received an MA in Arts and Design from Tsinghua University. He began making films in 2004, establishing himself as one the innovative of the independent documentary filmmakers. His experimental documentaries include Outside (2005), Noise (2007), Zhe Teng: According to China (2010), The Dialogue (2014) and A Filmless Festival (2015). Along with his filmmaking, Wang established himself as an artist and graphic designer. His powerful posters for the Beijing Independent Film Festival are admired the world around.
Machines & Me: A Filmless Festival 2024 is:
Co-presented by Cinema & Media Studies and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, SLLC at UMD.
Curated and organized by Belinda Qian He (SLLC, East Asian Cinema & Media Studies)
With the assistance of UMD faculty supporters and discussants/moderators:
Jason Kuo (Art History and Archaeology; Cinema & Media Studies), Quint Gregory (Art History and Archaeology) and Neda Atanasoski (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute).
With the help of student assistants and volunteers:
Madison Henn (SLLC, Chinese; UTAP program), Filippo Grassi (PhD student in Art History), Theo Portner (SLLC, Chinese), Ira Valeza (SLLC, Chinese; Government and Politics), Cecelia Clanton (SLLC, Chinese), Nelson Guachamin (English; SLLC, Chinese), Madeline Leah Yaffe (Cinema & Media Studies, SLLC; Public Relations), Tianen Deng (Information Science) and Serena Mao (International Relations; Psychology).
Generously supported by:
Arts for All, the College of Arts & Humanities, the Center for East Asian Studies, the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the Language House Program, the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture and the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Special thanks to our community partners and collaborators:
Mr. Wo Wang, graphic designer for all event posters; Dr. Van Tran Nguyen (Performing Arts, Georgetown University); Mr. Yuanhong Huang and the Chinese Independent Film Association; and the Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
