Official Trailer for Liu Jian’s Animated Look Back at ‘Art College 1994’

Official Trailer for Liu Jian’s Animated Look Back at ‘Art College 1994’

by Alex Billington
April 21, 2024
Source: Vimeo

“Who gets to decide what art is?” Dekanalog has revealed a new trailer for Art College 1994, an animated drama from Chinese filmmaker Jian Liu, also known for Have a Nice Day. This initially premiered at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival more than a year ago, and it played on the festival circuit all of 2023. Beginning on April 26th, Art College 1994, Liu Jian’s latest strikingly animated & affecting feature, opens for a week-long NYC exclusive theatrical run at Metrograph In Theater. Lao Wang works in a security department of a college in a big school town. Xiao Wang is a freshman. He has a conflict with his roommate and is taken to security by his counselor. In a room on this foggy winter day, Lao Wang and Xiao Li are tasting the life of their own, and something unexpected is about to happen… The town is waiting quietly for the next day as it always is. Described as a “shaggy, Slacker-ish tale from the pre-millennium Middle Kingdom,” based on the director’s own experiences at art college in China in the 1990s. Starring the voices of Dong Zijian, Chizi, Zhou Dongyu, and fellow filmmakers Jia Zhangke & Bi Gan. Animation fans especially need to see this.

Here’s the two official trailers (+ poster) for Jian Liu’s Art College 1994, direct from Vimeo (via TFS):

Based on its director’s own experiences spent living on the campus of the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts in the mid-1990s, Art College 1994, which returns to the meticulous hand-drawn 2D animation style of predecessor Have a Nice Day, is Jian Liu’s affectionate, bittersweet group portrait of a pack of would-be geniuses preparing to revolutionize the arts when not locked into impassioned conversations about grunge and Van Gogh, its ensemble cast of characters voiced by a line-up of talent that includes directors Bi Gan and Jia Zhangke, as well as Metrograph retrospective subject Wang Hongwei. Art College 1994, also known as 藝術學院 in Mandarin, is directed by Chinese animation filmmaker Jian Liu, director of the other animated films Piercing I and Have a Nice Day previously. The screenplay is written by Shan Lin and Jian Liu. Produced by Shen Lihui, Gao Shiming, & Cheng Yang. This first premiered at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival last year. Dekanalog will debut Jian Liu’s Art College 1994 in select US theaters on April 26th, 2024 this spring – starting at the Metrograph in NYC. For more info, visit Dekanalog’s official site. Curious?

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