Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Film
Twenty foreign films are passed for domestic Chinese consumption every year
by notoriously prickly censors. There are plenty of cinemas to see them in but
generally all films are dubbed into Mandarin; exceptions are noted below.
For
art-house
flicks, in addition to the possibilities below there are irregular
screenings of art films at the DDM Warehouse (see p.134) and every Thursday
night at
Arch
café (see p.114). Maria's Choice is a club for cineastes that arranges
private screenings of indie foreign and Chinese films with English subtitles.
They gather once a month at the Kodak Cinema in Xujiahui; email for a
schedule (
mariaschoice-subscribe@topica.com). In mid-June the city hosts
the Shanghai International Film Festival (
E
www.sif.com), when there is much
W
more varied fare on offer.
Broadband International Cineplex
6th Floor, Times Square, 99 Huaihai Lu
T
Paradise Warner International City
永华电影城
y
www.swy99.com.
Multiplex
showing Chinese releases. Tickets ¥50
and up.
Cathay Theatre
国泰电影院
guó tài diàn y
W
63910363,
6th Floor, Grand Gateway, 1 Hongqiao Lu,
Xujiahui
y ng huá diàn y
y ng chéng
www.paradisewarner
.com.
Shows foreign films in their original
languages, alongside Chinese releases (in
Mandarin Chinese only). Tickets from ¥50.
Shanghai Film Art Centre
上海影院中心
shàng h
i y
T
64076622,
W
870 Huaihai Zhong Lu
y
n
g yuàn
T
54040415,
W
www
.guotaifilm.com.
Grand, rather creaky, old
venue with much cheaper tickets than the
multiplexes (from ¥15) for much smaller
seats.
IMAX
Science and Technology Museum
160 Xinhua Lu, near Panyu Lu
y ng yuàn zhōng xīn
T
62804088,
W
www.filmcenter. com.cn.
The only vaguely
art-house cinema, which has at least some
non-mainstream content. Tickets from ¥45.
UME International Cineplex
国际影城
guó jì y
T
68622000,
W
www.sstm.org.cn.
Daily science spectacu-
lars - they were screening films about
comets at the time of writing (see p.91).
Kodak Cinema
5th Floor, Metro City, 1111 Zhaojiabang Lu,
Xujiahui
5th Floor, South Block, Xintiandi
y ng chéng
63733333 (an
English schedule follows the Chinese when you
call),
T
01758472.
Hosts monthly cine club
Maria's Choice (see above).
T
www.ume.com.
Original-language
films; tickets from ¥50.
W
Art
Of all the arts, the most thriving scene, and certainly the most accessible to
the visitor, is
contemporary art
. Chinese art is hot, and is being snapped
up by international dealers, though it remains to be seen, when the dust
clears, how worthwhile this hyped-up work will turn out to be: much is a
sophisticated form of chinoiserie, selling an image of China for foreign
consumption. Still, there's plenty of good stuff out there, and for once the
government is not meddling.
A
cluster of new
art museums
- the Duolun (see p.95), MoCA (see p.62) and
Zendai (see p.92) are stimulating the scene, and the
Shanghai Biennale
, held
every even-numbered year between September and November and centring on
the Art Museum (see p.61), gets bigger every time (
www.shanghaibiennale
.com). But the first stop for the artily inclined has to be
50 Moganshan Lu
, a
derelict suburban textile factory that was first taken over by artists in the 1990s
because rents were cheap, and has now become one of the city's premier tourist
attractions. For a detailed account of the best of its many galleries, see p.84.
W
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