Over the past ten years, a new generation of Chinese filmmakers, born in southern China and capturing their native region with poetic flair, detached emotion, and keen observation, has garnered attention both domestically and internationally. The films from these filmmakers, infused with sensuality unique to the geographic and cultural reality of southern China, reveal forms, styles, and themes that feel "new" compared to earlier Chinese cinema. These cinematic works resonate, contradict, communicate, and echo each other. Together, they evoke a humid, suffocating, mysterious, hypnotic, and chaotic southern China, mirroring a rapidly transforming and turbulent Chinese society amidst the country’s economic rise. We present five short films with diverse themes, motifs, and emotions by directors from southern China, all set in the South.
Over the past decade, a new generation of filmmakers from South China has gained recognition both domestically and internationally. Notable examples include:
Bi Gan (born in Kaili, Guizhou Province), whose debut feature Kaili Blues (2015) won the Best Emerging Director Award at the Locarno International Film Festival, and whose second feature Long Day's Journey into Night (2018) was selected for the "Un Certain Regard" section at Cannes.
Gu Xiaogang (born in Fuyang, Zhejiang Province), whose first feature Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (2019) closed Cannes Critics' Week and was featured in Cahiers du Cinéma's 2020 Top 10.
Qiu Sheng (born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province), whose debut feature Suburban Birds (2018) was nominated for the Golden Leopard in Locarno’s “Filmmakers of the Present” section.
Gao Ming, originally a designer and documentary filmmaker since 2006, whose fiction debut Damp Season was featured in Rotterdam’s “Bright Future” section.
Other emerging talents include Zhu Xin (Vanishing Days), Huang Zi (All About ING), and many more.
This rapid emergence of young talents, debut features, and innovative styles has led to the labeling of this phenomenon as a "New Southern Wave" in Chinese cinema.
Since the French New Wave pioneered by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, and Eric Rohmer, the term "new wave" has been used by critics, academics, and cinephiles to describe emerging cinematic movements that are youthful, creative, and break away from established conventions within regional or national cinema. Today, we also speak of the Czech New Wave, Japanese New Wave, Romanian New Wave, and Hong Kong and Taiwanese New Waves. Similar to its French origins, this Southern Wave in Chinese cinema was identified not by the filmmakers themselves but by critics, who recognized this southern energy in the new generation of Chinese filmmakers. This term was used to signify the emergence of a phenomenon and, notably, to valorize these films through positively "sensationalist" editorial strategies. Unlike the French New Wave, which had a home base with Cahiers du Cinéma, these young Southern filmmakers have found meeting places at auteur film festivals in China, such as FIRST and Pingyao.
We believe it is appropriate to regard the emergence of these Southern filmmakers and their regionally focused films as a new wave in Chinese cinema for two main reasons. First, it demonstrates and results from the decentralization of the Chinese film industry. Beijing and the Beijing Film Academy, which nurtured the fifth and sixth generations of Chinese filmmakers, are no longer the sole epicenter of Chinese cinema. Second, these filmmakers consciously pursue and create a new cinematic language to depict on screen their experiences and sensibilities shaped by the nature, customs, and culture of the South.
In China, as in other parts of the world, the South is not just a geographical entity but also a cultural imagination compared to the North. Since China’s economic reforms began in 1978, the South has been associated with economic growth, prosperity, adventure, opportunities, the future, and hope, contrasting with a North symbolizing political power, order, and tradition. While Northern culture has long been central to the canon of Chinese culture, the new Southern Wave of Chinese cinema challenges this narrative. For the first time, the South is being viewed, represented, and told from the perspective of insiders. The Southern Wave represents a rediscovery of the region through the lens of cinema (e.g., its geography, dialects, daily life, and emotions of its inhabitants). Conversely, the distinct characteristics of the South have enabled new ways of seeing, representing, and storytelling.
The North-South dichotomy is far from sufficient to capture the geographical and cultural diversity of China. This is why, among the films of this new Southern Wave, filmmakers from different southern regions explore widely varied subjects, themes, and styles based on their places of origin. Filmmakers and their styles are closely tied to their native regions, such as Bi Gan and Guizhou Province, Gu Xiaogang and Hangzhou, or Gao Ming and Guangzhou. We plan to divide our programming into several sections based on these southern regions. By choosing the early short films of these filmmakers, we will attempt to reconstruct the genesis of this phenomenon in Chinese cinema by asking the broad but essential question: What is this new Southern Wave?