The golden age of streaming indie films is here. With the launch of their new streaming platform OVID, Icarus Films has given independent film lovers access to a deep and eclectic catalogue of documentary and international cinema from a number of independent distributors including dGenerate Films. Streaming in the mix with legendary films from Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, and Jean Rouch are more than a dozen dGenerate titles, many of which are available to stream in the US for the first time. Ranging from a catalogue of immersive works by prolific documentarian Wang Bing to Cai Chengjie’s hauntingly stylish debut feature The Widowed Witch, OVID is a welcome milestone in American audiences’ access to the best of Chinese independent cinema.
Currently, OVID offers fifteen titles from the dGenerate catalog (See the full list below). From Wang Bing, master documentary filmmaker and acclaimed observer of some of China’s most traumatic periods, the site offers the film Bitter Money, in which Wang’s deceptively casual observation unravels a world of grim monotony for rural youth indentured to factory work. In Dead Souls, a trilogy of harrowing sweep and depth into historical trauma that Sight & Sound called “a monumental achievement,” Wang’s film gives voice to the survivors of reeducation camps that represent a particularly brutal period of the Community Party’s Anti-rightist campaign of 1957.
Two Chinese films about the environment are streaming on OVID – Jian Yi’s What’s For Dinner, which follows meat supply chains in China; and Wang Jiu-liang’s Beijing Beseiged by Waste, an astonishing exposé on the enormous, hidden piles of waste that surround China’s capital and play host to a distinct environmental and social system in crisis. Also streaming is Huang Weikai’s documentary collage Disorder, a black and white surrealist portrait of Guangzhou fraying at the edges, a society of watchers’ attention offset by frissons of chaos.
As far as OVID’s narrative offerings, available to stream is Pema Tsenden’s tragi-comedy Tharlo, the story of a Tibetan sheep herder who goes to the city in want an identity card only to lose himself entirely. The Widowed Witch, Cai Chengjie’s deadpan-magical-realist-feminist fairy tale is streaming; as is Huang Ji’s Egg and Stone, a deeply personal film about the danger and discovery of a rural teenage girl’s sexual awakening.
OVID will continue to add additional titles over the coming months and years. “We’re going to keep adding films until we can’t add any more,” said Jonathan Miller, President of Icarus Films. “There needs to be a continuing space for independent, challenging films and we have to make it ourselves,” said Miller, who united several independent distributors to create a diverse and expanding catalogue of films on OVID. “We can’t keep relying on the big companies. We know there’s an audience for indie film across the country, so we have to bring our communities together to make this happen.”
The following dGenerate Films are available to stream on Ovid.tv:
Before The Flood I and Before The Flood II – dir. Yan Yu and Li Yifan
Bitter Money – dir. Wang Bing
Three Sisters – dir. Wang Bing
Dead Souls I, II, III – dir. Wang Bing
Ta’ang – dir. Wang Bing
‘Til Madness Do Us Part – dir. Wang Bing
Beijing Besieged by Waste – dir. Wang Jiu-liang
Disorder – dir. Huang Weikai
What’s for Dinner – dir. Jian Yi
The Widowed Witch – dir. Cai Chengjie
Egg and Stone – dir. Huang Ji
Tharlo – dir. Pema Tseden