International Film Festival Rotterdam

Recent films by Chinese documentary makers and films by versatile artist Ai Weiwei will be screened during the 41st edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The films highlight hidden aspects of Chinese society in an intimate and surprising way. These films and Ai’s work will be shown in Hidden Histories, a themed program of the IFFR main Signals section.

Signals: Hidden Histories
What the films in Hidden Histories have in common is that their makers focus on hidden aspects of Chinese society such as for example poverty, corruption or misrule. The ‘hidden’ aspect also applies to the films themselves: screenings and distribution are often thwarted. In spite of this, the makers have managed to create convincing, substantively strong and visually impressive work on minimal budgets.

As part of Hidden Histories, the festival will also be showing works of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei: six long films which he refers himself to as ‘social documentaries’ and four documentary art videos. There is a remarkable difference between Ai’s sometimes highly conceptual art videos and his social documentaries. For the latter, he acts – before and behind the camera - as a committed research journalist, persistent to bring injustice in the open. Hidden Histories is being compiled by IFFR programmers Gertjan Zuilhof and Gerwin Tamsma.