Christian Frei presents his filmmaking in Peking

The internationally award-winning Swiss documentary filmmaker Christian Frei will be placed in the limelight at the interdisciplinary Crossing Festival, which takes place in Beijing from September 21 to October 8, 2010.

20.09.2010

The internationally award-winning Swiss documentary filmmaker Christian Frei will be placed in the limelight at the interdisciplinary Crossing Festival, which takes place in Beijing from September 21 to October 8, 2010. The newly elected president of the Swiss Film Academy will present his films “Space Tourists” (2009), “The Giant Buddhas” (2005), “War Photographer” (2001) and “Ricardo, Miriam y Fidel” (1997). He will also work directly with eight Chinese documentary filmmakers while leading a five-day workshop (September 21-25).

Together with this focus on works by Christian Frei, the Crossing Festival will screen new Chinese documentary films and present the international film festivals from Tampere (Finland) and Tokyo.

The Crossing Festival in October and the May Festival in May have established themselves as important independent platforms for documentary film, experimental video works, contemporary dance and theatre. Their main focus is on the areas of "Film Forum" and "Performance Space." In this context, the Living Dance Studio Beijing, led by Wen Hui and Wu Wenguang, developed the "Memory" performance which can be seen at Theaterhaus Gessnerallee in Zurich and at the Kaserne Basel in November in conjunction with "Culturescapes." Wu Wenguang will present parts of his Villager Documentary Projects, which he showed earlier this year at Visions du Réel in Nyon, at Filmpodium Zürich also in November.

Christian Frei is already the fifth Swiss documentary filmmaker to travel to China and work together with Wu Wenguang and Wen Hui, who founded the Caochangdi Workstation. The series was launched in autumn 2008 with Peter Liechti and continued in spring 2009 with Edna Politi and Fernand Melgar in autumn. This past May Vadim Jendreyko was in Beijing. SWISS FILMS thus continues to carry out one of its projects developed together with Pro Helvetia "Swiss Chinese Cultural Explorations" cultural programme.

Zurich, September 20, 2010