88 Events Last Year Racked Up Over 39,000 Attendees#
This week, the JUE 觉 | Music + Art Festival will return to Shanghai and Beijing for its fifth year of celebrating the best of both cities’ local creative communities and international talents. Presented by Split Works, JUE is a collaborative, open-source affair where each event organizer is free to set his or her own entrance fee and to keep 100 percent of the proceeds.
Racking up over 39,000 attendees over the course of 88 events at last year’s festival, JUE anticipates an even larger crowd this year as the itinerary is packed with a whole range of events throughout the city covering film, spoken word and more. On the film front, JUE offers a workshop on experimental cinema with musician and filmmaker James Harrar, one half of Cinema Soloriens. JUE is also teaming up with Electric Shadows for Asian Cinema Week, presenting a screening of Chai Chun Ya’s Four Ways to Die in my Hometown and a Short Film Screening, showcasing cutting-edge, form-shifting and boundary-breaking short films.
While China’s music scene has often been met with doom and gloom caused by recent music festival cancellations and downright failures — among them the highly controversial Chengdu Big Love Music Festival and Xi’an Zebra Festival, Black Rabbit, Kama Love, Music Funhill, Midi Rizhao, Megadeth, Caliban, and Modern Sky (all of which were canceled in 2012) — JUE’s rising stature is an optimistic reminder that some music festivals are still going strong, and China’s fans are more pumped than ever.
For the full program lineup, check out the JUE website.
JUE 觉 | Music + Art Festival#
March 8 - 24, 2013