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Dumplings 饺子 (2004)

2 February 2017

Our New Year bonus film, by Hong Kong iconoclast director Fruit Chan 陈果, is 'a sinister story of diet, deception and death'.

Dumplings2
Time: Wednesday 8 February, 7pm
Place: IAS Common GroundSouth Wing, Wilkins Building

Dumplings are traditional fare at Chinese New Year. Tonight this film offers them up with a macabre twist. Fruit Chan's social satire on taboo topics of cannibalism and abortion could not be more topical in this New Year season.

Auntie Mei, a former abortionist from the PRC, is sixty going on sixteen on account of her longevity dumplings. Now living in Hong Kong, she turns her skills to good profit serving them up to Mrs Li, an aging former television actress, who is trying to stay young and keep control of her philandering husband.

The film presses many buttons about the excessive extremes of Chinese medical foodways, and brings into sharp focus underlying tensions between China and Hong Kong.

After the film some of the key ethical issues at stake will be discussed by Professor Cong Yali, PKU, Vivienne Lo, UCL and Patrizia Liberati.

Cong Yali, Professor of Medical Ethics and Deputy Director of the Institute of Medical Humanities, PKU, is one of the leading bioethicists in China and has published widely in both Chinese and international journals.

Patrizia Liberati is a Beijing-based China film specialist, award-winning translator of contemporary Chinese literature, and editor (with Silvia Pozzi), of Caratteri - journal of Chinese contemporary literature in Italian translation (Beijing: People's Literature Press).