On the evening of September 29, the "2022 Beijing International Puppet Festival" opened in the Juyin Theater of Beijing People's Art Theater. From September 29th to November 30th, brand activities such as "Let’s talk about the Play", "I Have Masterpieces", "Gala for puppets", "Let's talk about Shadow &Puppet Arts together" will be held successively. With the combination of online and offline, exhibition and and broadcasting, a wonderful shadow & puppet journey was here set to sail.
This art festival is jointly sponsored by Beijing Municipal Federation of Literary and Art and Tongzhou District Committee and District Government, and co-organized by Beijing Dramatists Association, Publicity Department of Tongzhou District Party Committee, Taihu Town People's Government of Tongzhou District, and Xinian Star (Beijing) Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. As the first large-scale outdoor international art week with the theme of "Shadow & Puppets" in China, the main venue of the art week is still located in Taihu Park, Tongzhou District. In early November, it will set five open tent theaters in Taihu Park, where 10 performing groups, including the China Puppet Art Theater and the Tangshan Shadow Puppet Troupe, will perform four-day rolling performances.
In order to explore the diverse possibilities of puppet art, this year's art festival has specially launched the online unit of the "Who is the Puppet" short video creative competition. Since its launch, the event has received a total of 853 valid submissions, including paper puppets, shadow dramas, body dramas, puppet animations and other forms. After the preliminary screening of the organizing committee and the final review of the judges, 11 award-winning works were finally evaluated, including the Encounter Creative Award "Zhi Xing", the Encounter Story Award "Ophelia's Shadow Theater", the Encounter Thought Award "Little Lamp", the Encounter Performance Award "Memory" and "Waiting for You".
In order to widely disseminate Chinese and foreign shadow & puppet masterpieces, the online screening unit of "Let’s talk about the Play" was displayed from September 29 and will last until November 30. At that time, 13 film and puppet dramas from 9 international teams such as Britain, France, Brazil, Poland, Mexico, Spain, Bulgaria and Georgia and 10 high-quality dramas from China will be exclusively screened in Bilibili for a limited time. During the online exhibition, ten theater experts will be invited to be guests of the "Let’s talk about the Play" live broadcast guide column.
The "I Have Masterpieces" section of this year's art festival has carefully set up two major sections of theater screening and theater performance. Five international high-quality plays of France's "Fighting again", South Korea's "Dara's Story", Germany's "Skin of Man, Heart of Beast", "The Fall of the House of Usher", and Bulgaria's "I, Sisyphus" will be screened on the scene at the Caoyu Theater of the Beijing International Theater Center. At the same time, the art festival also invited China Puppet Art Theater Co., Ltd., Tianjin Children's Art Theater and Tangshan Performing Arts Group Co., Ltd. Shadow Theater Troupe to bring six special performances for the benefit of the local audience from October 1 to 31.
In 2022, coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the birth of French classical dramatist Mr. Molière, and also the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, in order to promote the interactive exchange of Chinese and French and Korean puppet dramas, the International Forum has set up two sub-topics: "Sino-French Puppet Drama Convection" and "Korean Puppet Drama Creation Theme and Practical Significance". From November 29th to 30th, this art festival will invite theatre experts, scholars and puppet art practitioners from China, France, and South Korea to hold these two academic forums to discuss the development status of Chinese and foreign cinema and its social value in the new century.
Translator: WANG Jiahui
Reviewer: ZHANG Ruochen
