Cinema Alley: Sydney's Chinatown hosts one-night street cinema event

An open-air street cinema will pop-up in the hub of Sydney’s Chinatown district as 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (4A) presents the third annual one-night only Cinema Alley event on Friday 11 February 2011.

Coinciding with the City of Sydney’s 2011 Chinese New Year Festival, Cinema Alley celebrates contemporary Chinese video art with the screening of five significant short films by Asian artists and filmmakers in an open-air street cinema located on Parker Street, Haymarket in the heart of the Chinatown district.

Initiated in 2009, Cinema Alley is an annual free event that is open to the public, although due to its popularity and the 500-person seating capacity, you'll need to book here, and quickly. 

For the first time in 2011, 4A has partnered with uber-cool Sydney bar Grasshopper to host Cinema Alley Bar that will offer guests food and drinks from 7pm in advance of the 8pm film screenings.

Curated by 4A Director Aaron Seeto, Cinema Alley features a selection of short film and video-based art works by five leading contemporary Asian artists: Chen Cheih-Jen; Jun Yang; Ou Ning and Cao Fei; Wang Qingsong; and Yuan Goang-ming. The films explore the artists’ different perceptions of their cities, transformation, experiences of alienation and the effects that history and tradition place on the individual.

Dani Marti and some kitchen scourer love...

This stunning amorphous work by artist Dani Marti is featured at BREENSPACE in Waterloo as part of a group exhibition that will launch the 2011 calendar for the Waterloo based gallery.

Barcelona-born Marti divides his time between Sydney and Glasgow and is responsible for numerous public art and architecture commissions throughout Australia, including, most recently, a site specific installation on the exterior of the new Westfield City building in Sydney's CBD.

Created from hundreds of common metal kitchen scourers (these particular ones are all copper in colour) the work has turns an object of banality into an art work of unexpected beauty.