Art College 1994

Director: Liu Jian

2023 / 118min / DCP

Based on its director’s own experiences 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 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. A shaggy, Slacker-ish tale from the pre-millennium Middle Kingdom.

Part of Liu Jian x2