In March 2019, Agnes Varda, who was called the grandmother of the French New Wave Movement, passed away. In her last interview during her lifetime, Varda recalled that her documentary, Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (2000), was her attempt to capture the "l'air du temps". " Some glean because they are forced by life. Some become gleaner because they are artists. Another group of people glean because they like to.” This famous saying was Varda's induction of three types of "scavengers", and she compared herself to the third one. " Wheat gleaning" means picking up memories which had been forgotten by people, and the picking itself is replaced by motions in the image.
BISFF invites active young female documentary directors in China to the festival. They have completed the enlightenment of the documentary and have begun their own creation. They are using the acuminous lens to capture the secret and unique events and people in the reality and picking up the memories of the times. Whether Varda's romantic depiction of female documentary artists is still applicable to contemporary documentary creation, and whether the sensitive, delicate, emotional and optimistic temperaments of female gleaners are consequent results of their gleaning on the spirits of the times, we are searching for the answers. Shen Hancheng
Guest host Tong Shan
Tong Shan received her Ph.D. degree from City University of Hong Kong. As a film scholar, she has long been concerned about transnational production and distribution of Chinese documentary and art film. Now she is engaged in film criticism and screenwriting. Her articles can be found in “Studies in Documentary Film” (academic journal), Tencent “Guyu Project”, “Southern People Weekly”, “Funscreen”，Mtime, etc.
Guo Rongfei
Documentary director / producer, graduated in Journalism and Documentary from New York University. Her debut documentary " Fairy Tales" has won the 2016 Student Academy Awards and the Best Short Documentary Award at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Over 40 international film festivals have exhibited her works, including Hot Docs, the most authoritative documentary film festival in North America, New York documentary film festival, St. Louis international film festival and so on and various platforms like Al Jazeera, Tencent, VICE, Fusion TV. She is now working for the Arrow Factory video of Jiemian News and has participated in the production of more than 30 short documentaries. She also teaches the multi-media master program of international journalism at Beijing foreign studies university - University of Bolton, UK.
Gu Xue
Manchu, director and curator. Master of Fine Arts from Communication University of China, co-founder of Inner Mongolia Youth Film Week, curator of " Boat Travelling on Land", jury members of FIRST International Film Festival Xining, and planner of Grassland Film Workshop. Representative works: " Peony Blossom", " The Choice".
Shen Ruilan
Shen Ruilan was born in Suzhou in 1993, living and working in Hangzhou. In 2015, graduated from the Experimental Image Studio，the School of Intermedia Art，China Academy of Art. In 2018, graduated from the Institute of Radical Visuality of China Academy of Art and was taught by the contemporary artist Zhang Peili. Her creation is mainly based on images, meanwhile, paying attention on writing texts and novels, trying to find out the possibility of intersect between text and visual language. The Cassock (2018), won the award of Tide Competition at the second Beijing international short film festival.
Gao Juan
Graduated from the school of journalism and communication of Tsinghua University in 2019, The Voice is her graduation work.
Liu Kuan
Documentary filmmaker, journalist, and editor of “Dandu Reading”.