The Chinese New Year celebrations in Dublin began on Friday the 1st of February in the Irish Film Institute with a small ceremony and a screening of Jia Zhang Ke’s ‘Still Life’ (Sanxia Haoren).

While modest, the organizational powers that be had managed a nice little arrangement with red Chinese lanterns hanging about the place. The walls were lined with Chinese astrology symbols and most importantly of any event there was a free bar. Granted, they’d begun boxing up the beer by the time my companion and I arrived, but we still managed to snaffle ourselves a glass of wine. There were also fortune cookies, a nice touch I thought and not wanting to seem greedy I pocketed one for later.

The Chinese Ambassador was there but this being Ireland the security was light. I’m not saying we don’t care, it is more the prevalent attitude seems to be “Ah who’d bother wanting to kill you in Dublin?” something not likely to change until a militant group somewhere does something. Granted though, if you think about it, an act of terrorism in Ireland? Never (Not that I’m looking at the RUC or anything). I didn’t see any Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) protesters about but did hear rumors of some trouble somewhere during the festivities. Whether those are true or not, I don’t know. I do find it good on many levels that, in Ireland at least, the visiting dignitaries at these events can drift through the crowd without the usual naval blockade of men in black pushing people out of the way.

Having to talk ourselves down from doing various evils to the person in the giant furry rat suit, we avoided the beginnings of the herding and darted to the bar. You may be able to stop me smoking during a movie; but you’ll never stop me drinking during one.

The opening ceremony went well, if veering vaguely toward the higgledy-piggledy, with a lot of moving to-and-fro by the participants. It began to take a quite surreal turn once Liu Biwei the Chinese Ambassador took the stage to speak. After first speaking to the crowd in some English and Mandarin, he introduced his interpreter who was called Bruce. I couldn’t help but find a global moment of ‘Yes, Minister’ surreal to the proceedings as I have a sneaking suspicion the Ambassador’s English is more than good enough to do the speech himself.

Bruce proceeded to produce a tiny little notepad and to jot down what the Ambassador was saying who in turn would stop and stare, waiting for Bruce to repeat the English of what he’d said. This would have gone fine; were it not for the fact Bruce couldn’t keep up with the Ambassador and often had to take a moment to flick back and forth through his little notepad to find where he was.

In my drifting through the crowds, talking to various people. I heard nothing but positive things regarding Liu Biwei. The general consensus being that he is a man committed to his job. In particular the strengthening of ties between Ireland and China; though not just through trade, but culturally and socially – a firm eye on working towards social understanding between the two peoples.

It is from that however in retrospect, that I could not feel a little bit sorry for him after viewing ‘Still Life’. As while beautiful and award winning, he hadn’t seen it and it did seem a slightly devious choice of movie to open the festival with.

Still Life Review