China’s Pingyao Festival Sets New Programming Team, Development Fund

China’s Pingyao International Film Festival has confirmed Lin Xudong as its new artistic director and revealed seasoned film programmers Kamiya Naoki and Fukatsu Junko as its programmers for foreign-language films.

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The festival, founded by leading independent filmmaker Jia Zhangke, already counts Wu Jueren as its programmer for Chinese language films and Song Jia, as programmer for short films. (Jia who still considers himself to be Pingyao’s chief experience office, earlier this week confirmed rights sales for his upcoming “We Shall Be All” film.)

The announcements were made in Berlin on Sunday. At the same event the executive committee of Wings International was introduced as Jia, Tang Yan (chairman and CEO of Chinese social media firm Hello Group), Japanese film producer Ichiyama Shozo, Hong Kong film programmer Jacob Wong, and Casper Liang, CEO of Pingyao International Film Festival. The fund aims to support five foreign film projects of finished script each year.

Lin is a chronicler of the New Chinese Documentary Film movement and has hosted documentary film events in Beijing in 1997 and 2004, as well as been a jury member at multiple overseas film festivals. He was also editor and advisor to films including “Hey Daddy,” “Tie Xi Qu,” “Before the Flood,” “Beijing Flickers,” “Made in China,” “My Dear Friend” and Jia’s “Ash Is Purest White.”

Kamiya has worked for many tears at the Tokyo Filmex festival and at Kino Films and Kino Cinéma under the Kinoshita Group in late 2019. Fukatsu is a freelance journalist and a board member of Tokyo Filmex.

The Pingyao festival thanked Marco Mueller who was artistic director from 2017 to 2021, before moving into a consultancy role for the past two editions and who has now stepped away. Mueller this year led the inaugural edition of the Asia-Europe Youth Film Festival in Macau.

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