Zhang Tuoyu

Zhang Xianchi is a man thrown into the Cultural Revolution and its afterimage, plunged into the ideological deadlocks of the era and suffering its consequences beyond it. Born into a family that supports the nationalist Kuomintang, Zhang eventually became a leftist and joined the Communist Party. But his family’s background eventually catches up with him, and in a series of bureaucratic measures, he is labelled as a Rightist, leading to a slew of irrational yet life-affecting consequences. His story is told through an exhilarating hybrid of forms, blending documentary-styled interviews and spectral theatrical displays within an ever-mutating studio-space. Hypnagogic in its imagery and ironic in attitude, Mr. Zhang Believes is a tour-de-force treatise of a man caught within dogmatic political maneuverings, which it critiques indirectly with creative and stoic fervour.

Small-town kid Boy K is fleeing his job at the duck-down factory when he stumbles into a motley crew of urchins boogieing on the pavement for likes and shares. This is gaga dance: a form of spirited freestyle championed in China by ‘the king’, Pink Hair. Boy K quickly becomes the rising star in Pink Hair’s crew, amassing thousands of subscribers. Will he win the affections of fellow gaga dancer B Girl, or cause trouble in his gang – and the gaga dance underworld beyond it?