Until 1989, the village of Dafen in the city of Shenzhen, China was little more than a hamlet. It now has a population of 10,000, including hundreds of peasants-turned oil painters. In the many studios, and even in the alleyways, Dafen’s painters turn out thousands of replicas of world-famous Western paintings. Nobody thinks anything of an order for 200 Van Goghs. To meet their deadlines, painters sleep on the floor between clotheslines strung with masterpieces. In 2015, the turnover in painting sales was over $65 million.

Directors Haibo and Kiki Tianqi Yu, the father-daughter team, followed one of the painters, Xiaoyong Zhao. He and his family have painted around 100,000 Van Goghs. After all these years, Zhao feels a deep affinity with Van Gogh. Having never seen van Gogh’s original paintings, Zhao’s biggest dream is to travel to Amsterdam to see the works of his legendary associate. After struggling and saving, he fulfils dream. In Europe, his encounter with van Gogh’s paintings brings an epiphany. Although dejected at the revelation, Zhao is inspired by van Gogh’s paintings and the hardships he suffered, and resolves to dedicate himself to his own original art, searching for his own authentic voice in order to be true to the spirit of his hero and mentor – Vincent can Gogh. China’s van Goghs not only presents how this painter pursues his dream, but also tells the human story of challenge and struggle during the journey, emblematic of the journey that China is going through from ‘made in China’ to ‘Created in China’.

Director and Cinematographer:

YU Haibo 余海波 is a filmmaker and a well-known Chinese social photographer. He’s the Director of Shenzhen Professional Photographers Association and the Chief Photo Editor of Shenzhen Economic Daily. His most prominent photo story China Dafen Oil Painting Village won the 49th World Press Photography Contest 2006, and was collected by San Francisco Modern Art Museum, V&A Museum, London. Yu is the pioneer in surrealism photography in China for his work “on the other riverside of the illusion chain” which won the top prize at the 15th National Photography Exhibition in 1988. Since 1989, he has been working on documentary photography, and his photo stories including “Tibet”, “Music Youth”, “China’s urban expansion”, have won many prizes and been exhibited internationally. Yu published a book Living in China’s Shenzhen (2008), and a photo-essay film One Man’s Shenzhen (2012).

Filmography

2016 China’s Van Goghs (Feature documentary film)

2012 One Man’s Shenzhen (Photo-essay film)

yuhb@szed.com

Producer and co-director:

Kiki Tianqi Yu 余天琦 is a filmmaker, scholar, film curator. She worked as associate professor of Film Studies at USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, base in Shanghai. Her films include feature length documentary China’s van Goghs (2016), which was premiered at IDFA 2016 and entered the 48th Vision Du Reel 2017. Her other award-winning films include Photographing Shenzhen (2007) (Discovery), and nonfiction moving image work Memory of Home (2009) collected by DSLCollection, Tube (2008) and Children of Tibet (2007).

Kiki’s research focuses on documentary theory, practice and industry, essayistic nonfiction, amateur cinema and cultural memories, Chinese cinemas and artist moving image. She publishes on Studies in Documentary Film, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, among others. She is the co-editor of China’s iGeneration(Bloomsbury, 2014) and the author of the forthcoming monograph ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China (Edinburgh University Press, 2018). Yu holds a PhD in Cinema Studies (Documentary) from the University of Westminster, London, and an MPhil in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She is the daughter of Yu Haibo. 

Filmography

2016 China’s Van Goghs (Feature documentary film)

2009 Memory of Home (Exhibition film)

2007 Photographing Shenzhen (Discovery Channel)

kikiyu19@gmail.com

 

Executive producers: Zhao Lijun, Yu Haibo

Co-producer: Reinette van de Stadt

Associate producer: Anthony Thomas McKenna

Editors: Soren Ebbe, Tom Hsin-Ming, Axel Skovdal Roelofs

Music composer: Julian Lukas Lentz, Weiqi Yu

Sound design: Klink Audio

Calligraphy: Mi Nanyang