‘Circumstance’ Producer Karin Chien on the Importance of Distribution and the Making of Cannes Title ‘Man in Black’

variety.com:

Lise Pedersen Award-winning US producer and distributor Karin Chien (“Robot Stories,” “Circumstance”), whose latest co-production, “Man in Black,” is one of two films by Chinese director Wang Bing running in Cannes’ official selection, shared her experience with the crowd during a masterclass at Cannes Docs, the Film Market section dedicated to documentary films. “Man in Black” premiered at a special screening in Cannes on May 22.

Wang’s other film selected in this year’s edition is main competition title “Youth.” In the talk, moderated by Documentary Association of Europe co-founder Brigid O’Shea, Chien put on her distributor’s hat to talk about a job she said was “not pitched enough but [represented] some of the most meaningful work she [had] ever done.” “To bring these films to the U.S., that otherwise would never have come here, to be able to connect the films with the audience and send every quarter back to the filmmakers – the filmmakers I work with [from mainland China, Hong Kong, and, more recently, Taiwan] cannot distribute in their own countries so they have no source of revenue from filmmaking where they live,” she said of her role as co-founder and president of dGenerate Films, a leading distributor of independent Chinese film in the U.S. “Distribution is not complicated, it’s just that most people don’t understand it because it’s not taught in film schools: it’s not considered part of the filmmaking process,” she said, adding that hers was a different, self-taught journey after she had to distribute the first film she produced two decades ago, Greg Pak’s “Robot Stories.” The key, said Chien, who is committed to supporting innovative voices that help build radical practices of ethical filmmaking, is to