The poster for the 15th edition of the Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF) has some inspirations and messages that may lead you to take a closer look.
Designed by Huo Tingxiao, vice chairman of the China Film Association and president of the China Film Art Direction Academy and an art director on such films as Farewell My Concubine, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers, it wants to celebrate “harmony in diversity” and “the spirit of mutual learning among civilizations,” the festival says. “It deeply integrates the essence of traditional Chinese culture with cinematic art.”
The poster’s kaleidoscope look “symbolizes cinema as a medium that reveals a dazzling world,” it explains. “Our side of the kaleidoscope is a series of evolving colorful rings that incorporated the BJIFF windmill logo. Passing through the rings, a radiant ‘Morning Star’ hangs high in the night sky. The ‘Morning Star,’ the brightest object in the sky other than the Sun and Moon, embodies the role of cinema as a guiding light for dreamers.”
The poster also includes was the fest describes as “an Easter egg” in the form of a design inside the kaleidoscope. It is inspired by the Ming Dynasty caisson ceiling in the Wanchun Pavilion of the Imperial Garden in the Forbidden City in Beijing.
The caisson is a key element of Chinese wooden architecture. “It is like the ceiling of a building, to which skilled craftsmen in ancient China added exquisite carvings, paintings, and patterns,” read the fest notes about the poster. “Movies are like a caisson – ingeniously crafted by filmmakers to tell stories that are brilliantly imagined, deeply meaningful, and emotionally refined.”
Concludes the fest about this year’s poster: “The pattern suggests that Beijing, as a national cultural center and an international exchange hub, draws on its unique artistic charm to build a bridge of cinematic art that fosters mutual learning among civilizations, a journey akin to the upward gaze through a caisson into the sky. It also implies that China, through the lens of cinema, is presenting the image of a major country that embraces the future, engages in dialogue with the world, and is open-minded and inclusive.”
Check out the full poster below.
