LOS ANGELES, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- The line for tickets stretched around the corner at the opening night of the fourth China Onscreen Biennial (COB) Friday at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where Director Bi Gan's west coast premier of his Cannes festival favorite, "Long Day's Journey Into Night," was screening.
"There's not a lot of places to see Chinese movies in LA, so we jumped at the chance," former UCLA student, Sarah Anderson, told Xinhua.
"That's exactly why we started this," explained COB's artistic director, Cheng-Sim Lim, "Chinese films don't get shown in the U.S. very often and when they are shown, they lack context. Our curatorial team, drawn from different American cultural institutions, brings diversity and a deeper cultural context to the works we screen."
Inaugurated in 2012, the China Onscreen Biennial is co-presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the UCLA Film & Television Archive, The Film at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre), the Asia Society Southern California and the Asia World Film Festival.
It will be screening a dozen handpicked Chinese films of note and hosting appearances by high-profile Chinese filmmakers, including Yang Mingming, the heralded female director of the popular film, "Girls Always Happy."
"It's great to be here," smiled Yang Mingming. "I just wanted to make a movie about something I knew about - Mother and Daughter - but I am glad other people like it too."
Jia Zhangke, a celebrated Chinese director, was selected as the Artist-in-Residence of the event. According to organizer, he will appear at the West Coast Premiere of his latest film Ash is Purest White and will take part in a series of in-depth public conversations in Los Angeles this week about his career during a special retrospective screening program.
Besides of Ash is Purest White (2018), Jia's awarded films, including Xiao Wu (1997), Platform (2000), The World (2004), Still Life (2006), and A Touch of Sin (2013) will be shown at the Biennial.
"We're thrilled to present the most expansive and culturally significant selection of films in the history of our event," said COB's Cheng-Sim Lim.
The bicoastal event will run from Oct. 19 through Nov. 11 in LA, screening at multiple venues across the city, then travel to Washington D.C. from Nov. 2 to 11, and wrap up in New York on Dec. 2.
