Proudly presented by Grasshopper Films
128 minutes
December
Bi Gan: Seeing is Believing
Visionary Chinese director Bi Gan’s newest masterpiece Resurrection comes to The Main Cinema starting January 2. This holiday season, experience Bi’s previous films including his bold feature debut Kaili Blues (2015), preceded by A Short Story (2022) told from the perspective of a cat, and his immersive noir Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018).
ABOUT A Short Story
Dir. Bi Gan • China • 2022 • In Mandarin with English subtitles • 15 min
With his signature long-takes and tightly controlled mise-en-scène, Bi Gan weaves a darkly surrealist fairy tale that follows the odyssey of an anthropomorphic feline across the empty cities and fog-bound exurban spaces of contemporary China. In his encounters with a strange cast of characters—a scarecrow, a robot, an amnesiac, a little girl—Black Cat is on a quest to answer a single question: What is the most precious thing in the world? The short also features Yongzhong Chen, who previously appeared in Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Bi’s first feature Kaili Blues.
ABOUT Kaili Blues
Dir. Bi Gan • China • 2015 • In Mandarin and Kaili dialect with English subtitles • 113 min
An audacious, richly imagined feature debut that has collected prizes around the world, Kaili Blues heralds the arrival of a major new filmmaker. Chen, a preoccupied doctor working in a small clinic in the rain-drenched city of Kaili, decides to fulfill his late mother’s wish and sets off on a journey to look for his brother’s abandoned child. His partner in the clinic, a lonely old lady, asks him to also find her former lover, giving him a photograph, a shirt, and a music cassette. On the way, Chen passes through a mysterious town where distinctions between past, present, and future appear to slip away.
Directed by Bi Gan