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Preview: Yunfest Documentary Festival 2011

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3486Yunfest#http://www.yunfest.org/# will commence this coming Monday, March 21. Yunfest has been held in Kunming since 2003 and this year will run seven days in three screening venues around town.

Yunfest's organizers have provided us a look at what to expect next week:

Yunfest, Yunnan's own biennial independent documentary film festival, is happy to announce it will be holding its fifth edition from the 21st to the 27th of March, 2011.

A major event in Kunming's arts and culture calendar, Yunfest has expanded its screening venues to include Beichen Fortune Center Cinema and Huanyin International Cinema in addition to its traditional three screening rooms on the ground floor of the Yunnan Provincial Library.

The majority of screenings will be accompanied by simultaneous Chinese and English subtitles.

Moviegoers will be particularly happy to learn that admission to the over 100 screenings, discussions with filmmakers, workshops, and presentations is FREE, thanks to the generous support of film actress Zhao Tao, Kunming City Construction (KCC) Real Estate Development, Heaven Pictures, Beichen Fortune Center Cinema and Nanfangyuan Computer Products.

On offer this year, 15 freshly-minted documentaries from some of China's most promising emerging auteur filmmakers will be competing in Yunfest's "Competition" segment. Fifteen new talents will be featured in the Youth Forum.

Fourteen films made by previous Yunfest alumni, including a new film produced by indie filmmaker Jia Zhangke, will be featured in the "Showcase" category.

Yunfest's continued commitment to the use of film and images in development and NGO work is again highlighted in the segment "Participatory Visual Education," and this year it will host presentations and screenings on biodiversity and traditional culture, earthquake relief and reconstruction work, and women's and children's issues. A strong minority presence is expected as usual, and we will take a look beyond China's borders with two presentations from Laos and Vietnam.

A special invite has been extended to the Institute of Image and Sound Studies in Documentary of Tainan University of the Arts, who will be presenting five films on various social issues across the Straits in the "Films from Taiwan, China" segment.

Yunfest's foreign film segment will focus on Swiss and Belgian documentaries, with filmmaker and cinematographer for the Dardenne brothers Benoît Derveaux (Dir. "Gigi, Monica...&Bianca," 1996), director Edna Politi ("Shadows," "Le Quatuor des possibles"), and director Béatrice Bakhti (Roman's d'ados) making an appearance at the festival.

Yunfest will be introducing the Yunnan Cinema Dojo, a mentorship and exchange program between film festival organizers, seasoned directors and new talent from China, Japan and Thailand, with three films by participants Naito Masayuki, Shinichi Ise, Hayakawa Yumiko and Kawabe Ryota.

Finally, this year's retrospective "Flashback" section will pay tribute to the anthropological filmmaker Mao Chenyu, who, at a very young age, has already produced a unique body of work steeped in postmodern theory that focuses on peasant life in the rice-growing areas of China.

Screenings are scheduled all day, from 9 o'clock in the morning till evening, and are followed by a 15-minute discussion period with filmmakers.

Please consult our website, www.yunfest.org for the festival schedule, program and announcements.

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Comments

I went to a couple of great documentaries at the 2009 edition. Great to see that Yunfest is back!

[UNF]

Shame the yunfest.org website seems to have vanished (as of Fri 25th morning) so there's nowhere to find a schedule for the films :(

Could the gokunming staff be so helpful as to post a list of films + times?

Saturday Corrections (according to the most recent schedule) -

Yunnan Library 3rd theater: No listings for Friday afternoon 14:00-18:00.

Everything else is the same per schedule posted by Dan.

Oops. That's Saturday afternoon, 14:00-18:00, no showings listed for the 3rd theater in the Yunnan Library.

Dan: thanks for the posting the Yunfest 2011 schedule on the GoKunming Website, very helpful.

Does anyone know why the yunfest.org Website is not accessible?

the yunfest.org website is accessible, in so far as connections are being accepted by the server, but the homepage is throwing a 404 error (page not found.)

given these symptoms, i'd have to diagnose incompetence.

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