KwanTeo Film Archive · Topic
KwanTeo Night — Midsummer 2023
观潮之夜2023盛夏The name "KwanTeo Night" appeared for the first time (August 19, 2023, Dolby Cinema, Shantou MixC): three Chaoshan films of the 2022–2023 crop — Miss Chen's Forest, Wild Chaoshan, and The Day Before Midsummer — from a French Chaoshan-dialect animation to a Chaoshan film seen at Cannes.
About the Topic
In 2023, KwanTeo entered its "2.0 era": from the spring screening to the August midsummer event, the program expanded dramatically. Midsummer 2023 unfolded across five units — Shi Bei (classics), Nong Chao (annual shorts), Gan Hai (summer camp), Tiao Dao (exchange), and Ta Lang (screenings) — over two weeks. "KwanTeo Night" was introduced in the announcement as the fixed name for the annual Chaoshan short-film screening.
At 8 p.m. on August 19, the Dolby screen ran three films in sequence: Denis Do's Miss Chen's Forest, a Chaoshan-dialect animation made in France tracing six generations of Chaoshan people — longing and connection reaching from overseas back home; Ding Quan's Wild Chaoshan, a natural documentary of the Chaozhou land; and The Day Before Midsummer, supervised and written by Lan Canzhao and directed by He Yupeng, marking a breakthrough in local storytelling. The curatorial note ran: "From the wild natural documentary, to the narrative breakthrough of the fiction short, to the animated epic of six generations — the Chaoshan films of the 2022–2023 crop in KwanTeo's vision keep manufacturing endless surprises and occasions for reflection."
Around that time, a Chaoshan film seen at Cannes was gradually being recognized worldwide. From then on, KwanTeo Night became the fixed screen of every summer and spring, sending each season's Chaoshan shorts back to Shantou.