Cult Youth Chinese Indie Comics Collective is so Young, Cultural [Video]

Commissioned by culture website Dazed and fashion label Diesel as part of their Diesel New Voices initiative, Cult Youth is a film about Chinese cartoonists with a passion for avant-garde comics. The short documentary earned funding by identifying a youth "micro-culture" that demonstrated positive social impact by "going against the grain, and forging a shared identity through opposition to social pressures." Indeed, an underground comics in China would definitely meet that criteria. And while we can't speak to the comic books themselves, the members of Cult Youth represent themselves on film with admirable punk ethos, with slogans like "the comic that makes rocks shed tears" and "mainstream comics are nothing more than smelly dogsh*t."

You can learn more about Cult Youth and see the whole eight-minute film by Coco Wang and Mi You after the jump.Cult Youth's manifesto, as revealed in the film of the same name, is simply wonderful.

"The most extraordinary and bizarre Chinese comics of this century! If you are not born in the 80s and couldn't decode the plots then give up! These are not for you! This is a new generation free of the reasons and worries of the past, full of comrades of varied and peculiar tastes. 'Never conceal your desires!' is the statement that sets them apart from the last generation. What's important to them is to say f*ck you to celebrities and dogma and stick out the middle finger to the generic masses."

Unfortunately we've had trouble tracking down any of the group's actual comics, but what we see in the film looks pretty neat.

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