DING Dawei

DING Dawei (born in Hebei, China) is a curator, critic, and film producer. His work revolves around documentary films, archival films, and experimental cinema. He founded the Beijing International Short Film Festival (BISFF) and has served as the festival director since 2017. He collaborates with museums and institutions, curating time-based media exhibitions and screenings as part of his professional endeavors. As a film critic, his articles have been published in over 50 magazines, newspapers, and websites, including Cinema World, Leap, The Paper. He is a member of L’Académie des Lumières in France. The films he produced have been selected and awarded in various festivals, including Berlinale, Locarno FF, Jeonju IFF, Golden Horse FF, and exhibitions. He is currently based in Paris and Beijing.

DING Dawei participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was DING Dawei’s submission:

Thanks for the invitation, polls always difficult to me, so I just grabbed some titles and names that sparked in my head at the first thinking, maybe it still could be called a way of choose. And as a curator, maybe sometimes I mix importance and preference. And I skipped films and filmmakers you mentioned in the invitation.

— DING Dawei
Movie Original Title Director Country Year Duration
Koropa Laura Henno France 2017 19’
Personne Christophe Girardet , Matthias Müller Germany 2016 15’
The Crown Jewels of Iran گنجینه‌های گوه Ebrahim Golestan Iran 1965 10’
The Worldly Cave 凡洞 Zhou Tao China 2018 48’
Cremaster 1 Matthew Barney USA 1996 40’
The Phantom of Regular Size 普通サイズの怪人 Shinya Tsukamoto Japan 1986 18’
In Order Not To Be Here Deborah Stratman USA 2002 33’
The Rare Event Ben Rivers , Ben Russell United Kingdom, Switzerland, France 2018 48’
A Day of Joy Deň radosti Dušan Hanák Czechoslovakia 1972 22’
Lovemaking Stan Brakhage USA 1968 36’