Really got to get into the habit of this blog thing - it's already been a week since my beloved actors from Beijing Actors Workshop got together with the Subterranean Writers to do "Broken Not Broken". The event took place at Time Zone 8 Editions gallery in the Factory 798 art district in the suburbs of Beijing as part of the Dashanzi International Art Festival (www.diaf.org) and also served to launch a beautiful multilingual avant-garde litterature-philosophy-science mag called Homonomous. How to describe the gig? A series of 15 performances ranging from poetry to structured improvisations to dance and music, each overlaping one another, and each somehow all connected to idea that, in Beijing, what is broken or strange is often quite normal.

So at the end of the first 3-way spoken word performance and chair rearranging question game, a fight broke out between an angry customer and a cappuccino waitress who had apparently spilled something on him. As this turned nasty, I assumed my organizer role and kicked all 120 people out of the gallery and in to the street on the premise that everything had gone wrong and the space needed to be freed up for another event. As people were herded out the door, Bob started up on the mic with a fresh poem. But we didn't allow anyone to turn back, so everyone confusedly piled into the street and were about to drift off when a character called "The Stumbler", played by Josh, led everyone, prophet-like down the broken path and past a typical hutong scene of two Chinese folks in an argument. This scene ended amicably and was commented on so to speak by two dancers who came waltzing in around the two actors frozen in position after their scene. Following them and a tamtam drummer, the crowd was led further around the block to a window where a man was breaking into a house, which turned out to be the home of one of the dancers, who we learn is the ex-girlfriend of the thief. And so on. The highlight for me was Phil's "Chai Politician" hyping the benefits of old neighbourhood demolition in order to build shiny new buildings, all while riding the back of a delivery tricycle and having two rollerskating cuties passing out beers to the crowd. At least one spectator stormed away from this political satire in anger, not waiting for my "entartreur" character to slam a cream pie into the face of said politician.

Our interventionist and spoken word performances continued around the block and back into the gallery, where all our actors and writers got together to do a mimed improvisation on the idea of a printing press machine, complete with machine sounds and paper going through to the beat of Jorge's rapping rhymes. Bookstore/gallery owner Robert was kind enough to have left us 3 or 4 kegs of beer to celebrate after, and dispite a few performance glitches, a very good time was had by all. I can't wait to see the video at tonight's actors workshop.

Just brushed my teeth with pirated Colgate. At 2 kuai or about 25¢, the price is nice, but the taste is something between bamboo salt (a common toothpaste flavour here) and Preparation H, not that I'm a user of Prep H. It can be hard to avoid pirated goods here sometimes, especially if you're not rich enough to afford the real thing. A typical Beijing night out might involve dressing up in pirated branded clothes, riding in an unofficial cab, eating chicken at a fast-food joint whose logo bears an uncanny resemblance to Colonel Sanders, listening to a band do decent covers of the Sex Pistols while drinking pirated Bud, Tsing-Dao or Jack Daniels, and finishing off the evening with a pirated DVD.

There seems to be lots of speculation about where DVDs are pirated from. From my rough estimate, less than 10% are actually ripped by guys sneaking into theatres with handicams. If you buy King Kong one day after its US release, it's likely to be theatre-shot, with poor sound and the occasional head in the way, but wait a few weeks and you'll get something a lot better. Official studio screener copies, with their pop-up warning messages during the film, make up a decent chunk, but the vast majority are simply high-quality copies made from real DVDs. Current Beijing prices in USD break down like this:

DVD 5 usually with subtitles but nothing more

Street price: 62¢ - 75¢ depending on the neighborhood (some DVDs at this range have no subtitles)
Store price: $1 - $1.25 depending on how nice the store and the packaging is
Warner official price: $2.87

DVD 9 with all the extra features

Street price: $1.25 - $1.62 depending on the neighborhood
Store price: $1.87 - $2.49: depending on how nice the store and the packaging is
Warner official price: $3.49 and up

Pirate DVD packaging is getting really nice, with beautifully printed and embossed cover art recreated from an orginal DVD pack but with a Chinese title added. English language synopsis and credits on the back, however, often have nothing to do with the film. Occasionally they print excerpts from film reviews that hilariously trash the film. In a similar vein, my Chinese friends report that many of the Chinese subtitles are poorly translated.

First studio to officially release DVDs with a stated pricing strategy, Warner is banking on a real pirate DVD crackdown, and hoping people will buy into the idea of a guaranteed product. Personally, I feel Warner'sprices are fair, it's just too bad their films aren't better.

If you are really thrifty, you can rent pirated DVDs or VCDs for 1 or 2 RMB (12-25 ¢ per day. I've heard you can even do this with the street sellers, provided you bring back the disc in pristine condition. I should do this more often, because I hate the idea of accumulating a lot of medium-quality films that I really won't look forward to watching in the future.

To add my two cents to the piracy debate, in one way distributors are building their brands here at absolutely no cost. Among real film afficionados for example, the Criterion label is really gaining some currency as a purveyor of quality content. When the bulk of the Chinese market eventually goes legit, Criterion will have an established community of brand-loyal consumers without having spent a dime.

Next entry, I'll give you a tour of recent pirate DVD releases.

Three nights in a row home at 5am - that's a Beijing bender weekend. Thursday was Julie G's suburban double apartment exhibition party Celeste . I showed a short film I just edited called "Pipes", starring the above-ground pipes snaking around my favourite factory and set to Jakob's brother's minimalist glitch-influenced music. We screened the thing out an apartment window onto the next building. A neighbour got pissed off about the light beaming through his window, but otherwise a cool screening and exhibit. Julie hijacked a pedicab for the evening to shuttle people back and forth between the two apartments. Moved on to an amazing blues/nuyorican jazz gig downtown - Melvin Taylor and the Slack Band all the way from Chicago. Melvin really makes his guitar sing - some kind of Hendrix descendant.

Friday was 2nd edition of our Beijing Actors Workshop "Improv Night" - live in front of an audience. Rain bar is such a sweet venue - super views on Xihai lake from the panoramic 3rd floor and rooftop. We threw in the Subterranean Poets from Bookworm, and the 60-70 strong audience ate it all up - standing room only. Most hung around for my funk, old skool hip hop & rap DJ set - my first public djing gig, a bit stressful, but altogether too much fun.

Saturday was Katie & Mikeala's relaunch party at Vibes at 798. They had asked me for some artsy film to show, and so I projected my meditative "Pipes" over the heads of a mingling audience. Standing around chatting over dj music afterwards, the party then went to shit, literally. Suddenly, everyone is like, "what's that smell?", trying not to wrinkle their noses at what may be their friend's fart, then looking over shoulders at everyone backing away from this plastic bag full of shit (human) that has exploded on the floor. A hit and run - a young punk had apparently burst in, tossed his bomb and ran, bouncer on his heels. It seems the bar owner has a few enemies... Anyheck, the bar staff did a good job of cleaning up - practically flooded the place, and coaxed everyone back inside with free beers. Funny thing is, earlier in the evening we were talking about Dada performances. This shit-grenade may qualify more as art terrorism, but either way it was a party to remember.

It's really a drag to have to start my first blog with bad news, but this is important. Fellow Beijing filmmaker Hao Wu was arrested on February 22, apparently related to a film he had started shooting on a Christian church not recognized by the Chinese government. The news only came to me yesterday, as his family and close friends had agreed to keep the affair quiet pending initial negociations with authorities, but it has now been over a month that Hao Wu has been detained without charge. This free-spirited young dude has recently returned to China after 12 years in the US, and his main piece of work so far, a documentary on Chinese-born Americans called "Beijing or Bust" is far from politically sensitive. A good bet is that cops here want to use his recent footage to bring this new church down. Check out for more info on this case.

Just when you think things are going pretty good in China, random dictatorship shit like this happens.