In 1986 Jan Lauwers founded Needcompany, an artists’ company in which a core group of actors, writers, musicians, and other artists produce theater works.

As a companion to Lauwers’ UCCA discussion with Xu Bing (Vice President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts), entitled “Intercultural Exchange: The Role of Contemporary Art in Society,” UCCA Art Cinema will present a special screening of two movies related to Needcompany, with Lauwers in attendance.

Note:

Door close 30 minutes after event begins.

No late entry.

I Want (No) Reality

The interdisciplinary, international theater ensemble Needcompany was established in 1986. This documentary offers a sensual and entertaining glimpse into the workings of the young theater group, its experimental director, and a group of artists who made the choice to put creativity before everything else in their lives. Needcompany, an internationally renowned ensemble, is one of the most popular avant-garde theater companies in Europe. I Want (NO) Reality is a radical affirmation of the belief that without love, trust, and the courage to resist reality, all human enterprise is in vain.

Goldfish Game

The first feature film by Jan Lauwers, Goldfish Game tells the story of a small community violently torn apart. It is a true-to-life, contemporary moral fable that develops with the fatalism of a Greek tragedy. Apart from being a tale of human drama, it is also a perceptive and subtle anthropological study of the mechanisms that hold a group together and the forces that work towards its disintegration. At the center of these forces stands death, one’s own death and those of others, as the irreducible empty spot that determines and delimits all human behavior.

Embassy of France in China