Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers is a landmark of Chinese independent cinema, capturing the lives of five artists navigating Beijing in the late 1980s. Shot with an intimate, handheld style, the film follows painters, writers, and performers as they confront precarity, censorship, and shifting ideals after the Cultural Revolution.
Presented in conjunction with the Smart exhibition Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart, the film is shown in collaboration with UChicago Doc Films at Max Palevsky Cinema in Ida Noyes Hall.
Free; with RSVP.
IMAGE
Movie poster for Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990). Public Domain.