Li Shaohong (Director)

Born: 1955



Li's pictures are shot by her cinematographer husband, Zheng Nianping.

On Blush, she collaborated with the BFA teacher and film critic Ni Zhen, who also worked on the script for Raise the Red Lantern.






Jonathan Rosenbaum: "Blush was adapted by director Li Shaohong from a novel by Su Tong, a popular short-story writer whose better-known works include “Wives and Concubines,” the basis for Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern... The only female member of China’s celebrated Fifth Generation of filmmakers [sic?], Li was born in 1955, but has made only four features to date. I haven’t seen the first, The Case of the Silver Snake (1988), a thriller commissioned by the Beijing Film Studio. But my interest was piqued by the second — a loose adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold known here as Bloody Dawn or Bloody Morning (1990); it was banned by the Chinese government but shown abroad. The third, a nuanced contemporary comedy-drama called Family Portrait, was even better."

Ermo (Film)

1994. Dir: Zhou Xiaowen.



Context:

Economic reforms during the Deng era led to more consumerist desire for material goods. The 'Responsibility System' put in place and adopted by 90% of peasant families, led to increased production and more buying power for peasants, stimulating demand for consumer commodities, like TV sets and so on...




The Film:

"Zhou shares Zhang Yimou’s interest in sexuality and rural life, but has a darker sense of humor. This is an underseen masterpiece, apparently never released on a DVD with English subs (though there are laserdisc rips floating around). Ermo is a rural woman who has a fierce rivalry with her neighbor. The neighbor gets a TV, so Ermo decides that they must get a TV too, but a bigger one. To raise the money, Ermo begins making noodles at night, eventually traveling into the city to sell them. She also starts an affair with her neighbor’s husband, who makes frequent trips into the city. Zhou’s tone is at once serious and satirical, sighing over changing values in Chinese society as it mocks them. It’s also relatively light on policing adultery, and Zhou films the noodle-making scenes with a sensuality not unlike sex scenes. While Zhang’s rural films are mixed with nostalgia and criticism of the past, this film takes a darkly comic look at their modern descendants." - http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13398&start=225#p506931











Reception:
The film won a prize at Locarno Film Festival.
Zhou Xiaowen, who in the 1980s was making more urban films, seems by 1994 and with this film to be catering more towards the international appetite for the accepted 5th Generation 'style', and makes a rural film, with a female central character. In a 1994 interview Zhou himself admits that this shift had something to do with trying to replicate the success of more international celebrated 5th Generation directors.

Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAc7sMiNGYY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKXTsq0ExPQ
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC42folder/Ermo.html

Farewell My Concubine (Film)

Ba wang bie ji. 1993. Dir: Chen Kaige.

Context:
Based on a novella by Hong Kong writer Lilian Li. Previously adapted for TV by Alex Law in Hong Kong, in 1982. (That version was more faithful - see Stanley Kwan's doc for brief details)

In some ways reminiscent, even influenced by, Xie Jin's 'Two Stage Sisters': "Two Stage Sisters features the story of the relationship between two Shaoxing opera performers from their beginnings as itinerant entertainers in the feudal countryside of 1930s China through success in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, eventual separation, and reunion during the post-Revolutionary period. Changes in the style of the operas presented in the film (for example, folk opera, Western-influenced critical realist operas, Mao’s favored ‘‘revolutionary romanticism’’ in opera form) also parallel broader social and political changes."[International Dictionary of Directors]




The Film:

• .The complex story of the friendship between two Peking Opera stars (Leslie Cheung and Zhang Fengyi) spanning five decades of tumultuous Chinese history.
• Politics/history as stage/performance/opera metaphor. People had to act/perform to stay alive in front of the eyes of the outside world, always trying to ensure citizens were 'good communists', and had to publically denounce others during the Cultural Revolution, hence paranoia and the dissolved line between performance and authenticity. Opera (and performance) of course also ties in with Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) and her influence/censorship during the Cultural Revolution. Opera then was a battleground between banned titles and state-accepted titles, which were decided by Jiang.
• See: http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13398&start=225#p506931

Reception:

• .
• Banned in Taiwan (verify) due to having too many mainland Chinese actors, thereby breaking regulations.

The Tales of the Water Margin (Culture/History)

Classic Chinese tales, regarded as dating back to the 14th Century and deemed one of the 'Four Great Classical Chinese Novels', featuring 108 different characters, some of them Robin Hood-style outlaws, others less morally likable. Each usually has an animal associated with them.

A clear influence on Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin. It is also of course an influence whenever there are bandits in a Chinese film, e.g. The One and the Eight, Red Sorghum, etc.

Shen Congwen (Culture/History)

1902-1988. Writer, typically regarded as a forefather of modern Chinese literature, along with Lu Xun. Cited by Jia Zhangke as a major influence on his sensibilities. Writer of the original source for Xie Fei's film A Girl from Hunan.