Opera

One of the highlights of the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing was a duet performed by a western tenor and a classical Chinese opera singer. The Video project Opera is a selection of Chinese and Dutch video makers.
They all sing the same song – with different voices, intonations and nuances-about longing, based on collective and personel memories.
How to adapt to this crazy Global World. How to keep your identity, values and traditions.
And ... which ones?

Opera is a special program compiled for the streaming Festival 2008.
By SaE (Sino and Europe Cultural Interaction Foundation)

Curated by Xiaowen Ju and Paul Donker Duyvis

Life is drunk,death is a dream Zeng Tu

from last place to here from last second to now from last breath to this... between last door and next one there is my drunk life and my dreamy death existing in continuing continuing is the only way continuing to the end I exist by continuing...

No news is Right news Zeng Tu

Seriously,no joke, watch TV seriously, cause people made it very seriously.

The Times are Summoning Meiya Lin

The times are summoning is personal memory from the artist's childhood. By filming a bunch of kids who do the morning exercise every single morning. Presenting a matter of fact: strikt rules and simply obey. Conceptually it is a heavy issue to deal with. Moreover there could only be one action, one thought after all. But It happens to the generation nowadays, a completely..

Lost Paradise Meiya Lin

"Lost Paradise", the background sound is mainly the key word for this video which is based on a very popular communist song in China. Singing for the beautiful flower and the nice blowing spring wind. The tone of the song is bright and communistic cheering up. The general meaning is about how joyful to spend the time outside in the perfect communist society, and how bright our..

15 minutes behaviour Liang Shuo

This Movie contains 3 real life episodes of the life of a Young man: in his room waiting, drinking, smoking, doing nothing and everything. Fifteen minutes precise slow motion acting reduced by high speed play back to one minute normal movement. The second part is a walk over the local market and the third a close up of a meditative exercise in making fire. Total playing time..

Fifteen Colors Liang Shuo

This Movie contains 3 real life episodes of the life of a Young man: in his room waiting, drinking, smoking, doing nothing and everything. Fifteen minutes precise slow motion acting reduced by high speed play back to one minute normal movement. The second part is a walk over the local market and the third a close up of a meditative exercise in making fire. Total playing time..

Physical Material study (Lighter) Liang Shuo

This Movie contains 3 real life episodes of the life of a Young man: in his room waiting, drinking, smoking, doing nothing and everything. Fifteen minutes precise slow motion acting reduced by high speed play back to one minute normal movement. The second part is a walk over the local market and the third a close up of a meditative exercise in making fire. Total playing time..

Opera Wu Junyong

Wu Junyong (HangZhou) makes hand drawn animations with simple contrasting colors. Red is the dominant element. He depicts complicated social and political behaviour in simple images. Not a soft poetic view, but an ironical, raw, sharp and sometimes cynical analysis of the people around him. The play with the red flags and banners is a direct political statement.

Carps Wu Junyong

Wu Junyong (HangZhou) makes hand drawn animations with simple contrasting colors. Red is the dominant element. He depicts complicated social and political behaviour in simple images.

Paradise Regained Jerome Symons

The compact video's of Jerome Symons are often critical, always poetical. With sober means he handles subjects like elections in Beirut, Indian workers in Dubai or, like here, women's protest in Tehran and the expansion of China. Above all the video's explore the endless space of a short timeline(that's life!). Exploring new territories outside the workers paradise.

Silk Road Jerome Symons

The compact video's of Jerome Symons are often critical, always poetical. With sober means he handles subjects like elections in Beirut, Indian workers in Dubai or, like here, women's protest in Tehran and the expansion of China. Above all the video's explore the endless space of a short timeline(that's life!). Tribute to the brave ladies demonstrating on International..

Die Krähe Sonja Wyss

In "Die Krähe" (the crow), Sonja Wyss lets a number of elements interact with each other. Images of a screaming girl, black crows against a blue sky, and a snow-covered woodland landscape are edited together in slow-motion. With this sequence of images, fragments of the song of the same name (Die Krähe), from Schubert‘s Winterreise, can be heard. This music reinforces the..

Hoch-Zyte Sonja Wyss

"Hoch-Zyte" ("weddings", but also: "high times"), shows in a dreamlike setting three women and their fantasies and yearnings about marriage. An 11 year old girl is knitting a weddingsavingsock (Hochzeitssparstrumpf), and it is getting longer and longer, since a wedding is not in sight. She is dreaming and waiting for her prince, but he is not coming, not yet. A woman, she..

Two Women Drinking Tiong Ang

On the morning Pim Fortuyn was murdered in The Netherlands, I was having a cup of coffee in my friend Roelandt’s kitchen in his apartment in Kunming. His wife Weili suffered from eye problems and she was drinking some herbal medicine from a bowl. My friend Diego took me to a rehearsal of an experimental theatre group in East London. I watched all actors having a good..

Candles Paul Donker Duyvis

The two video's form a diptych: an old serious woman slowly moving and young girls full of laughter jumping around. An old woman performs a daily ritual in a church. She does it with devoted gestures and creates a happy atmosphere She is always the only one in the church. If she disappears this generous space will vanish with her...

Guilin Girls Paul Donker Duyvis

A Story of an Encounter without Words about watching each other with curiosity. The beautiful music comes from a cassete given to me by a traditional Singer living in Inner Mongolia. I heard the woman singing and I was moved. She saw it and gave me a cassete with her songs. A few days later these Guilin Children jumped upon me with a generous smile. I decided to combine these..

Airpacker Marnix Goossens

A space fully packed with transparant balloons filled with air. Watching the room through the window from outside give s a view of hundreds os of frozen milky soap balls. Then suddenly comes a hand with a sharp pin and lets the air free...

Untitled Zhifei Yang

A repetition of similar shots of a sleeping girl dressed in white. Zoomed in the camera shows an innocent young woman sleeping in a long white dress on a clean white cushion and sheet. When the camera zoomes out the cushion is enormous...and the background becomes more and more prosaic.

Day dream Zhifei Yang

A white bed in a dark space. The sound around tells that we are outside in a garden or parc. Slowly a white creature approaches through a long soft yellow tube and climes in the bed. Loud noise of airplanes flying over...fadeout...black