We’re proud to announce that Ying Liang, whose films The Other Half and Taking Father Home are standouts of the dGenerate catalog, has another international award to add to his collection.
During the IFFR 2010 Awards Ceremony for Short Films on Monday, February 1, 2010 in festival location Rotterdamse Schouwburg, the award-winning short films of the 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam were announced. The three Tiger Awards for Short Film were granted to Wei Wen (Condolences) by Ying Liang (China), Atlantiques by Mati Diop (France/Senegal) and Wednesday Morning Two A.M. by Lewis Klahr (USA).
The film was even cited by film critic Neil Young in his top ten list for the 2000s in the Best Chinese Films of the 2000s Poll conducted by dGenerate.
The jury had this to say of Ying Liang’s new short in their award citation:
Wei Wen (Condolences) by Ying Liang (China) “A fixed camera position, reminiscent of the early days of cinematography, gives the viewer the opportunity of objectively gazing into a theatre which develops around a grandmother who lost two of her relatives in a traffic accident. Her personal tragedy is turned into a precisely choreographed analysis of a social structure in which all participants are out for their own benefit. Only after the circus is over does our heroin move into the spotlight.”
To raise the profile of short films as a highly influential form of art but also as the realm in which cinema has been both democratized and popularized by the online and digital developments, the International Film Festival Rotterdam founded its Competition for Short Films in 2005. In this year’s edition, thirty-one films of up to sixty minutes in length were presented to the international jury consisting of Jeremy Rigsby (programmer of Media City Festival in Windsor, Canada), Shai Heredia (director of Filter India Festival, Mumbai, India) and Albert Wulffers (filmmaker, writer, visual artist and teacher, The Netherlands).