A portrait of urban anomie focusing on two bohemian artists who drift through the miasma of old Beijing in the 1980s.

A documentary directed by Ma Yingli, the screenwriter of The Shadow Play. This documentary followed every step of how this film was made, from pre-production, shooting to post-production. After completion, the crew started to cope with the censorship system of China, which is the most uncertain part of Chinese independent film-making.

When the People’s Republic of China was created in 1949, the cinema was instantly transformed into a tool of the state: an official art form. In the following years, China heaved through massive change, the most prominent of which was the Cultural Revolution. The period after that saw the emergence of the so-called Fifth Generation filmmakers, the first in China to break with tradition and explore themes of identity in a now auteur driven industry. Cinema historian and documentary filmmaker Hubert Niogret examines the evolution of film in China from the mid-20th century to present; from a cinema driven almost purely by ideological propaganda to one of flashy MTV-style modernity. In the process, he reveals a picture of the nation that could only be revealed through its art.