The second edition of the FánHuā Chinese Film Festival was born in the difficult circumstances of a year marked by uncertainty and upheaval. In this saddening atmosphere, the idea that cinema is able offer some kind of contrast to the misunderstandings that undermine human relations is the guiding star that justifies the work of all those who contributed to a result that eventually went beyond the most optimistic expectations. Because after a budding first edition full of promise, the second endeavour of the FánHuā Chinese Film Festival does justice to its Chinese name, with a rich flowering of films and of other proposals.

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This year, in fact, in a perspective of cultural conversation extended beyond cinema, the festival proposes two meetings ideally associated under the title "The New Silk Roads", to explore respectively the relations between Chinese and Italian cinema and international markets, and the interest of the Italian publishing world for China and the East. Also, with this in mind, we have decided to offer the Florentine community two workshops (one on cooking and one on mask-making for children) organised in collaboration with Mercato Centrale, to bring more public in contact with the manifold expressions of Chinese culture.

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And for the first time, we will also offer a morning presentation dedicated to schools, aimed at introducing younger generations to the cinema, with a special screening of the festival's opening film, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. A thirty-five year old masterpiece celebrating in the very days of our festival its Italian premiere. An anniversary that seemed to us an excellent opportunity to re-propose this film of enormous importance, not only for its value as a masterwork of the Seventh Art or for the nine Oscars it won, but because it was the beginning and the crowning achievement of a new season of openness and mutual interest between the Western world and China, which symbolically opened for the first time the doors of the Forbidden City to an occidental film troupe. Therefore, this opening film is proposing both a cinematographic rediscovery, with a 35 mm. projection, and a return to a time of détente, openness and sharing.

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In the same spirit, the closing of FánHuā 2022 also proposes a commemorative choice under the sign of relations between China and Italy, as a bridge towards the West. The Story of Qiu Ju by Zhang Yimou was in fact the first film from the People's Republic of China to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, exactly thirty years ago, in 1992. An anniversary that celebrates the opening of the West to the vitality of a cinematographic  production that in those years was beginning to build a name for itself with singular artistic heights.

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The selection of unreleased films turns its gaze once again to the multifaceted identity of contemporary Chinese cinema, opening up for the first time to short films (with a programme that includes the latest work by the enfant prodige Bi Gan, but also a short by Italian Xin Alessandro Zheng and the BFI London Film Festival winner I Have No Legs and I Must Run) and documentaries (with Sean Wang's ironic and fascinating A Marble Travelogue). Among the eight new feature films, competing for the first time to win the audience award, there are five international or European premieres, a pleasant and unexpected confirmation of how the FánHuā in just one year has gained great respect among the Chinese film professionals. These include the prestigious European premiere of One and Four, a breathtaking Tibetan thriller, between Kurosawa and Tarantino, directed by Jingme Trinley, son of the acclaimed director Pema Tseden. A florilegium lined up over the three days following the opening, linked by a series of very recognisable common threads: "New Talents", "Women's Outlooks" (thus also paying tribute to the coincident "Eredità delle Donne” - Women's Legacy - event) and "Past and Present".

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A second FánHuā full of surprises and consistently devoted to broadening its cultural proposal so as to bring the Florentine audience closer to a reality that is distant in terms of geography, but not so far-away in its cultural, cinematographic and human outpourings. With the hope that cinema may be a means to overcome the new barriers and obstacles between cultures and people raised by circumstances.

Enjoy the screenings!

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​—— Paolo Bertolin

Artistic Consultant