A Useless Fiction
Graduate of Freie Universität Wins 2015 Rising Star Award of the Canada International Film Festival and Will Show Film in Cannes
№ 128/2015 from May 11, 2015
The film A Useless Fiction by Cheong Kin Man, a graduate of Freie Universität Berlin, won the 2015 Rising Star Award at the Canada International Film Festival. It will be shown at the Cannes International Film Festival from May 13 to 24 in the Short Film Corner category. Cheong Kin Man, a translator and interpreter from Macau, studied at Freie Universität from 2012 to 2014 in the Visual and Media Anthropology master’s program. The film is his final project; it was graded with a German 1.3, which corresponds to A+ in the international context. A Useless Fiction was the first film by a director from the Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, Macau, to win any awards at an international film festival. It is also the first film by a citizen of Macau to be shown in Cannes.
The 31-minute film – the original full title is “uma ficção inútil - 小說無用 - tiểu thuyết vô dụng,” in English A Useless Fiction – shows multi-layered fictional and true stories, in which the director draws on scenes from his daily life and the process of filmmaking to address the difficulties of communicating with the audience. Translations, subtitles, and voiceovers raise questions about the power of language and the different interpretations that result from the different languages. In the coming months the film will be presented at the Cinemística Film Festival in Granada and the Festival of Migrant Film in Ljubljana.
Further Information
Cheong Kin Man, Graduate of the Visual and Media Anthropology Master’s Program at Freie Universität Berlin, Tel.: +32 487 393 250, Email: cheongkinman@gmail.com