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Young Chinese and French photographers, filmmakers, and
designers joined hands in a collective show titled "Signs of
Existence," which will soon set to travel to France.
The new cross-continental arts-fest, called Crossings (www.festival-croisements.com.cn)
has also featured a contest of images and image-makers called
"Objectif France" that set its sights on finding the best
photographers in Chinese universities and art schools.
The works of five semi-finalists in the "Objectif France" photo
competition have been exhibited at the French Cultural Centre in
the Chinese capital, and "the two best photographers will be sent
to an international photography exhibition in the French city of
Arles this summer," said Olivier Guyonvarch, press attache at the
French Embassy in Beijing.
"Many more Chinese artists will be invited to join cultural
festivals across France as Crossings takes off in the future,"
Guyonvarch added.
The kaleidoscope of images projected onto Chinese cities during
the Crossings Festival has thrown a spotlight on China's own
history.
In an exhibition presented at the Dashanzi Art District in
eastern Beijing, two photographers one French and one Chinese
presented their camera-captured visions of daily life in the
Chinese capital during the chaotic "cultural revolution" of
1966-76.
The French photographer, Solange Brand, worked in the French
Embassy in 1966 and returned to Beijing this spring to open the
show, said Guyonvarch.
Her hastily shot images cut from thunderous Red Guard rallies to
truck-loads of red star-capped workers who are seemingly stunned
into silence by the presence of a young female French
photographer.
Discover others
The spotlight on photos, videos and filmmaking during the first
Crossings Festival is due in part to the background of organizer
Pierre Jean de San Bartolome, French cultural attache at the French
Embassy and one of the main forces behind the festival.
Bartolome began making experimental cinema in the 1970s with
French actress Isabelle Adjani and playwright Eugene Ionesco.
After being mesmerised during his first trip to the East more
than a decade ago, San Bartolome said he organized "the East Meets
West festival (in France) to help the French people discover the
cultures of Asia."
And despite being tapped to help direct France and China's
cross-cultural extravaganzas of the past few years, the French
cultural attache has stolen time to continue his career as a
photographer.
His cool cyber-snapshots of Chinese cities, bathed in moonlight,
neon and/or shadows, were featured in a retrospective at National
Art Museum of China in 2005, and in a digital-age catalogue called
"Ombres Chinoises," or "Chinese Shadows."
Feng Yuan, former director of the Beijing museum, opened that
show by explaining the French attache's "images reflect the
evolution of our country, the feverish rhythm of demolition and
construction" across urban China.
San Bartolome said his top objective for the Crossings
culture-fest is not just bringing together image-makers and other
artists from China and France, but also linking up their
imaginations.
"The guiding idea is to help artists from each side create
something new together."
Building cultural dialogues
Some of the festival's leading figures suggest that building
dialogues between artists, people and cultures might one day end
the clashes of civilizations that have plagued humanity for
countless centuries.
When the Berlin Wall, the Eastern Bloc, and the Soviet Union
fell like a line of super-sized dominoes, one scholar-seer
predicted the post-Cold War world would be threatened by battles
between the planet's most powerful cultures.
Yet fears of a titan-like contest between the West and the East
have since been countered by leaders across the continents
launching a great dialogue of civilizations: One cross-cultural
bridge created during the Year of China in France and the Year of
France in China of 2003-2005 is now evolving into an expanding
platform for collaboration by French and Chinese artists.
When China and France set up a massive network of cultural
exchanges in the new century, they aimed "not only to help the
people of each side sample the other's culture, but also to start a
dialogue between the East and the West," said Sun Jiazheng, Chinese
minister of culture, in an inscription to the book "Les Annees
France/China 2003/2005."
Guyonvarch said that "the first two years of wide-ranging
cultural exchanges have been considered a great success, and a web
of friendships has been created that stretches from Beijing to
Paris."
During a visit to France last December, Premier Wen Jiabao said
the countries should continue these types of cultural exchanges and
festivals, Guyonvarch said.
The Crossings Festival will be held each year and bring together
an expanding coterie of French and Chinese artists in theatres,
museums, galleries, academies, conservatories and parks across both
countries, said San Bartolome.
"From the first contacts centuries ago between Louis XIV and
Emperor Kangxi through the recent Year of France in China, each
side brought samples and glimpses of its culture to the other,"
explained San Bartolome.
"But the new wave of exchanges moves beyond this by having
artists from both countries work together, discovering similarities
and differences in their cultures."
The destructive power of cross-cultural clashes can be found on
the northern outskirts of Beijing, across the ruins of the
once-fantastic Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace) palace complex,
which was looted and burned down by French and British troops a
century and a half ago.
Pearl Lam, creator of a series of Contrasts art galleries across
China, and a long-term patron of Chinese-French cultural exchanges,
explains why she is such a fervent supporter of cross-civilization
contacts.
"Pick up any newspaper in any part of the world, and the front
page will be a compilation of riots, wars and bombings," she
said.
"The majority of these events are a result of ignorance,
intolerance or a combination of these eradicable evils."
Lam, a prominent promoter of the Crossings Festival, adds that
"to combat the escalating violence that threatens every corner of
the world, we must create open-minded communities by sharing with
each other the differences that make our world cultures unique and
precious."
Scholar Samuel Huntington would probably agree. He concluded his
doomsday tome "The Clash of Civilizations" with a potential means
to save the world and the future: "Different civilizations will
have to learn to live side by side in peaceful interchange,
learning from each other, studying each other's history and ideals
and art and culture, mutually enriching each others' lives."
"The alternative," he warned, "in this overcrowded little world,
is misunderstanding, tension, clash and catastrophe."
(China Daily July 4, 2006)
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