After a slow couple of weeks as the local cinema scene recovered from Aftershock, things are picking up with the arrival of Hollywood’s latest hit Inception. Unlike most of what comes out of the Californian Hills, this looks like a movie that might tickle your brain as well as your senses. 798’s UCCA also has a couple of great screenings coming up of new, rarely seen Chinese features.

Inception opens today in Beijing, although the first screenings were actually at midnight last night. Speculation has been rife for weeks about when the film was going to hit China, as it swept through the US and most of Asia months ago. Its release was held up here to make way for Feng Xiaogang’s local blockbuster Aftershock. Now that that tremor has died down – after breaking all box office records for a locally-made film – Inception can sneak onto our screens.

Inception is a sci-fi thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, about a man who can enter people’s dreams to steal information. It’s directed by Christopher Nolan, who made a big splash back in 2000 with the equally mind-bending Memento. Since then he’s directed Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Inception is screening at cinemas around town, including Sanlitun Megabox and BC MOMA. Wanda Shijingshan (3rd floor, No. B18, Shijingshan Lu, Shijingshan District, 石景山区石景山路乙18号万达广场3层) and UME International Cineplex (Renmin University) are showing the film in IMAX.

At the smaller end of the scale, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) continue their excellent screening program this weekend with the Beijing debut of Zhao Dayong’s feature The High Life.

Zhao is one of the rising stars of China’s independent cinema scene, and his three-hour documentary Ghost Town was widely acclaimed when it screened at last year’s New York Film Festival. You can read more about that film here.

The High Life is Zhao Dayong’s first drama and it premiered at the Hong Kong Film Festival earlier this year. If you have a VPN you can read a detailed review of the film here. A multi-strand narrative set in Guangzhou, The High Life is rife with black humor and dark cynicism about life in contemporary China. The film also references certain unmentionable events from the 1980s. Check it out at UCCA at 5.30pm this Sunday, September 5. The film is in Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles, and director Zhao Dayong will be on hand afterwards for a Q & A. Entry is RMB 15.

Also coming up at UCCA is Xu Tong’s acclaimed documentary Fortune Teller. I haven’t seen this film yet, but it appeared on the top ten lists of several critics and filmmakers when degenerate Films conducted a poll about the top ten Chinese-language films of the past decade in January this year. Xu’s film will screen at 2pm on Saturday, September 18. It’s in Mandarin with English subtitles, and entry is RMB 15.