Monday 29 September 2014
To Live (Film)
http://www.aems.illinois.edu/downloads/To_Live.pdf
http://www.filmsufi.com/2010/04/to-live-zhang-yimou-1994.html
Saturday 20 September 2014
The Blue Kite (Film)
1993. Dir: Tian Zhuangzhuang.
The Film:
Lu Tonglin: "The film, mainly based on the life story of a boy from Beijing named Lin Dayu or Tietou (Iron Head), presents the world from his perspective. Along with his mother, Tietou lives through the most important political movements in the history of Communist China, that is, the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, the Great Leap Forward in 1958, and the Cultural Revolution in 1966. His mother, Chen Shujuan, loses her three successive husbands during these political movements. Tietou’s father, Lin Shaolong, sent to a labor camp in a border region as a rightist, is killed by a falling tree while chopping wood. His “uncle,” Li Guogdong, falls in love with his mother partly out of guilt (during the Anti-Rightist Campaign he had reported his private conversation with Lin and another friend). Soon after his marriage to Shujuan, Li dies of liver failure partly due to malnutrition caused by “three years of natural disaster” – a convenient name for the economic disaster caused by the Great Leap Forward. Tietou’s later stepfather, Wu, suffering from severe heart disease, dies during the Cultural Revolution after humiliation and torture at the hands of Red Guards. The film is divided into three segments, each of which has a title written in a childish hand: “father,” “uncle,” and “stepfather” – successive fathers for the protagonist. Despite its highly subjective perspective, Blue Kite, like the two minority films, reveals a concern with one fundamental problem: individuals facing a powerful social institution."
"Furthermore, from 1986, the year he made Horse Thief, to 1993, the year for Blue Kite, Fifth Generation filmmakers underwent radical changes. On the Hunting Ground and Horse Thief were sponsored by the stateowned studios Inner Mongolian and Xi’an in the mid-1980s. At the beginning of the open-door reformist policy, Xi’an Studio was famous for its support for formal innovations. In this context, box-office failure would not greatly effect the financial situation of the filmmaker’s socialist “iron bowl.” By 1992, since the film industry in China had become market-oriented, box-office value had become predominant in measuring a film’s success or failure. At the same time, well-known Fifth Generation directors started seeking investments from multinational corporations. In this case, their works depended even more on commercial success in a global market. Understandably, the antinarrative and experimental tendency in Tian’s minority films can no longer survive in the new world. Since the relative commercial success of Zhang Yimou’s first three movies in the international market, most Fifth Generation directors have multiplied their efforts to make conventional narrative films, often by re-creating eroticized and suffering images of Chinese female beauties in the early 1990s. In this respect, Tian’s Blue Kite bears many characteristics of its time. Nevertheless, Tian followed the Zhang Yimou model31 more discreetly than most of his colleagues – such as Chen Kaige, for example, who wholeheartedly embraced this model in his Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Temptress Moon (1996). Although Tian’s film was forbidden in China, ironically, it was one of the few films made by Fifth Generation directors during this period that tried genuinely to address the Chinese audience despite its focus on the global market. Unlike most films in the Zhang Yimou model, Blue Kite avoided ritualizing Chinese tradition."
Reception:
Distribution: Kino International (US theatrical and home video); UGC Distribution (France theatrical).
The Film:
Lu Tonglin: "The film, mainly based on the life story of a boy from Beijing named Lin Dayu or Tietou (Iron Head), presents the world from his perspective. Along with his mother, Tietou lives through the most important political movements in the history of Communist China, that is, the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, the Great Leap Forward in 1958, and the Cultural Revolution in 1966. His mother, Chen Shujuan, loses her three successive husbands during these political movements. Tietou’s father, Lin Shaolong, sent to a labor camp in a border region as a rightist, is killed by a falling tree while chopping wood. His “uncle,” Li Guogdong, falls in love with his mother partly out of guilt (during the Anti-Rightist Campaign he had reported his private conversation with Lin and another friend). Soon after his marriage to Shujuan, Li dies of liver failure partly due to malnutrition caused by “three years of natural disaster” – a convenient name for the economic disaster caused by the Great Leap Forward. Tietou’s later stepfather, Wu, suffering from severe heart disease, dies during the Cultural Revolution after humiliation and torture at the hands of Red Guards. The film is divided into three segments, each of which has a title written in a childish hand: “father,” “uncle,” and “stepfather” – successive fathers for the protagonist. Despite its highly subjective perspective, Blue Kite, like the two minority films, reveals a concern with one fundamental problem: individuals facing a powerful social institution."
"Furthermore, from 1986, the year he made Horse Thief, to 1993, the year for Blue Kite, Fifth Generation filmmakers underwent radical changes. On the Hunting Ground and Horse Thief were sponsored by the stateowned studios Inner Mongolian and Xi’an in the mid-1980s. At the beginning of the open-door reformist policy, Xi’an Studio was famous for its support for formal innovations. In this context, box-office failure would not greatly effect the financial situation of the filmmaker’s socialist “iron bowl.” By 1992, since the film industry in China had become market-oriented, box-office value had become predominant in measuring a film’s success or failure. At the same time, well-known Fifth Generation directors started seeking investments from multinational corporations. In this case, their works depended even more on commercial success in a global market. Understandably, the antinarrative and experimental tendency in Tian’s minority films can no longer survive in the new world. Since the relative commercial success of Zhang Yimou’s first three movies in the international market, most Fifth Generation directors have multiplied their efforts to make conventional narrative films, often by re-creating eroticized and suffering images of Chinese female beauties in the early 1990s. In this respect, Tian’s Blue Kite bears many characteristics of its time. Nevertheless, Tian followed the Zhang Yimou model31 more discreetly than most of his colleagues – such as Chen Kaige, for example, who wholeheartedly embraced this model in his Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Temptress Moon (1996). Although Tian’s film was forbidden in China, ironically, it was one of the few films made by Fifth Generation directors during this period that tried genuinely to address the Chinese audience despite its focus on the global market. Unlike most films in the Zhang Yimou model, Blue Kite avoided ritualizing Chinese tradition."
Reception:
Distribution: Kino International (US theatrical and home video); UGC Distribution (France theatrical).
Root-searching literature (Culture/History)
Literary movement, coming in the 1980s, shortly after the Scar literature movement.
References
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~chen24r/classweb/wp/Postmao.html
References
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~chen24r/classweb/wp/Postmao.html
Monday 8 September 2014
A Girl from Hunan (Film)
Xiang nu xiao xiao. 1986. Dir: Xie Fei.
Based on story by Shen Congwen, a famed Chinese veteran writer whose work often critiqued old traditionalist Chinese ways of life.
Based on story by Shen Congwen, a famed Chinese veteran writer whose work often critiqued old traditionalist Chinese ways of life.
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