KwanTeo Springtime

This is KwanTeo’s eleventh Spring Festival, and we are treating it as a true start from the top. Ten years are like a door. Step through it, and there is no new world behind it, only the old world seen more clearly: the sea is still here, the wind is still here, and the racing of the heart is still here too. Without noticing, our hands have taken hold of certain things, clearer, more urgent and, naturally, more tangled than before. “Waiting” is like the few seconds before the camera rolls: the world is not yet running, but the body already knows. The whir of the machine, the sound of breathing, the faint rustle of a sleeve brushing past surface in the dark. People on the coast are no strangers to such moments: the tide comes and goes of its own accord, and human affairs keep their own rhythm. All one can do is set the stools down steadily: bring the boat alongside, mend the nets, polish the lamps. The world is full of uncertainty; preparing is a lucid kind of order. “From the top” is the play button pressed once the rewind is done. The threads have been straightened, the light has been focused, and sound has returned to the room. Starting again is not a thunderous turn made for a grand entrance; it is more a series of small reconnections: tracing the threads, sorting out the reasons, setting the distance between people right, gathering a scattered mind back together. Hands come back to hands, and days come back to days. Over the years we have made many moving promises to you. But what wears us down most is often not the outcome itself, but things being left hanging. Left hanging long enough, even hope grows sharp: the denser the information, the thicker the fog; the more explanations, the fainter the sense of direction. The harder we try to understand the world, the more noise we are forced to take in, like standing on the shore listening to the sea: the roar of the waves comes ever closer while the ground under our feet is hollowed out ever more. So we have come to treasure a plain kind of self-possession: keeping our choices with ourselves, holding on at least to the body, to feelings and to relationships, and to that small part of us that can always begin again. Spring in the south is not very conspicuous. It often comes slowly: warming day by day, turning damp again and again, before it draws people out of their homes and into the streets, a handful at a time. Yet the sea wind still carries salt, and clothes may not dry in the sun. Light returns to the walls strand by strand, and sound returns to the halls thread by thread. Spring here is a kind of recovery: recovering the ability to stand, to breathe, and the strength to keep living from one day to the next. After many twists and turns, we have come to rest at the former Shantou Regional Film Company. Completed in 1980, the building is a concrete form of Shantou’s “Special Economic Zone dream” of reform and opening up: a house built for images, for industry and for song and dance. The dreamers who look after the place still keep it gleaming; all we need to do is add a little light and a few more seats, and try to let it, together with this industry that so many friends still hold dear, start again from the top with us. As always, we will make the two days as concrete as possible: walking a stretch of road, watching a show, listening to live sound together, sharing a pot of strong tea, throwing the light we have gathered back into the darkness to release it once more. We will also lay everything still unresolved into the rhythm of the tide, and place hesitation, reluctance and words not yet finished into each other’s gaze, exchanging them for something small that can be confirmed. Confirming that you are still here. Confirming that you are still willing to reach out a hand. Confirming that you still believe in starting from the top. KwanTeo Springtime 2026 From the Top Dates: February 20–21 (the fourth and fifth days of the first lunar month) Venues: the former Shantou Film Company, Jinping District, Shantou; Gurao, Guiyu and Heping towns, Chaoyang District; Chengtian Town, Chaonan District