Sino Silver Screen: Your Must-Watch Movie List for July

Nix the Netflix, turn off your torrents, ditch the DVDs and go and watch a film in a theater for Pete's sake! The Beijing cinema scene is alive and well, as our column Sino Silver Screen will prove.

China Film Archive is screening 12 movies in July, from classics to recent releases. Here are our top three picks from that dozen, all to be screened with Chinese and English subtitles. All screenings will take place at the China Film Archives (Xiaoxitian Branch). 

The Piano in A Factory (钢的琴), 2011 
Set in the early '90s in a northern industrial city, this movie details plenty of upheaval after slews of factory workers are laid off. Its protagonist dedicates his newfound free time to building a piano alongside his fellow unemployed workers, a process that’s presented with witty black humor. More interesting still: the movie's soundtrack, which is replete with Soviet folk songs and traditional Chinese instrumentation rarely heard in modern times. 

Screens at Jun 30, 1.30pm; Jul 11, 6.30pm. Click here for tickets.

Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang (天梯：蔡国强的艺术), 2016 
This documentary is a comprehensive and fascinating introduction to the work and life of internationally renowned Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who sealed his place in the Chinese art canon with his firework design for the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.

The film captures Cai’s masterful use of gunpowder to express humanity's fleeting nature, with a special focus on the Sky Ladder, a site-specific project that took over 20 years to complete. He dedicated that project to his hometown, Quanzhou, and his beloved grandma, and hoped it would “connect the earth with the universe,” as Cai put in an interview. 

Told through the artist's own words and those of family, friends and vigilant observers, the documentary not only impresses you with Cai’s jaw-dropping fire bursts, but also tracks his meteoric rise and examines how and why he engineers artworks that stretch as far as the eye can see.

Screens at Jul 13, 4.15pm. Click here for tickets. 

Shower (洗澡), 1999
Public bathhouses for old Beijingers are far more than a place for bathing. They are also destinations for Chinese chess, pet cricket fights, and chit-chat.

Shower takes place in one such traditional bathhouse, providing a lively portrait of the daily lives of those people that frequent them. In this instance, the plot centers around Master Liu, the owner of the bathhouse, and his two sons, capturing the nuances of their familial and working relationship in a subtle and touching way.

Screened on Jul 17, 7pm. Click here for tickets. 

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Photos: Douban, Rotten Tomatoes