Chinese Cultural Courses
A weekly free film showing of selected Chinese movies runs throughout the academic terms from September - March. Showings take place in the small 'movie theatre' in the basement of the David Hume Tower accessed from Buccleuch Place or George Square.
Last term's programme is shown below to illustrate the diversity of films offered. This information will be updated prior to the start of the Autumn 2010 term.
Friday Film Programme.
The afternoon programme of Friday films is now completed. See below for information on the films shown in the last few months.
Click on the title to see a brief synopsis of each film
Friday 11 January The King of Children 1987
Friday 18 January Black Snow 1990
Friday 25 January Farewell My Concubine 1993
Friday 1 February Morning Sun 2003 (Documentary)
Friday 8 February Raise the Red Lantern 1991
Friday 15 February To Live 1994
Friday 22 February In the Heat of the Sun 1994
Friday 29 February A City of Sadness 1989
Friday 7 March Blind Shaft 2003
Friday 14 March Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles 2005
Friday 21 March Still Life 2006 - THIS SHOWING IS CANCELLED DUE TO EASTER BREAK
King of the Children (1987) Original title: Haizi wang 孩子王
Director: Chen Kaige
Cast: Chen Shaohua, Xie Yuan, Yang Xuewen, Zhang Caimei, Xu Guoqing,
Gu Changwei
Inspired by Ah Cheng’s novella King of the Children and directed by
the ‘Fifth generation’ filmmaker Chen Kaige (famous for masterpieces
such as Yellow Earth and Farewell My Concubine) the film is set during
the Cultural Revolution, and narrates the story of Lan Gan, a young
man sent out to the Yunnan countryside and then appointed as teacher
in a village-school there. In the end, the protagonist is dismissed
due to his unorthodox teachings and leaves the school. Apart from portraying
aspects of the Cultural Revolution, what is outstanding in this work
– in a way which recalls the techniques used in Yellow Earth – is the
attention camera shots give to landscape, visual details and a sense
of space.
Black Snow (1990) Original title: Ben ming nian 本命年
Director: Xie Fei
Cast: Cai Hongxiang, Meng Jin, Liu Xiaoning, Liang Tian, Jiang Wen, Fang Zige, Cheng Lin, Yue Hong
Written by Liu Heng and shot by Xiao Feng, Black Snow was directed by Xie Fei, who is a renowned filmmaker and Professor at the Beijing Film Academy. The film tackles the issue of the Lost Generation, whose education has been affected by the years of the Cultural Revolution. The story narrates the experience of Li Huiquan, who comes out of prison at the end of the 1980s and due to his lack of education and familiarity with social change, struggles to recognise and cope with a transformed Beijing. In 1990, Black Snow won the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Festival.
Farewell My Concubine (1993) Original title: Bawang bie ji 霸王别姬
Director: Chen Kaige
Cast: Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, Gong Li
An adaptation of the 1985 novel by Li Bihua (Lillian Lee), Farewell My Concubine represented a turning point in ‘Fifth Generation’ movies, bordering on the usage in ‘Sixth Generation’ movies of urban environments as scenarios reflecting personal memory. The film roughly covers fifty-three years of political events and history, from the pre-1949 period to the end of the Cultural Revolution, and is set in the director’s native city, Beijing, paying homage to the city itself, Beijing opera and Chen Kaige’s personal memories linked to the context. Main characters of the story are Douzi and Shitou, who become famous Beijing opera actors known as Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (played by Zhang Fengyi). Dieyi – who plays female roles – is attracted to Xiaolou, causing Xiaolou’s wife (Juxian, played by Gong Li) to be jealous.
Following the establishment of the PRC in 1949, Dieyi adopts Xiaosi’r, who rebels, rejecting the idea of pursuing the Beijing Opera tradition, and leaves after denouncing his adoptive father. This has often been read in an autobiographical sense, in that Chen himself as a Red Guard denounced his father, who had been linked with the (pre-1949) KMT nationalist regime. The end of the movie is marked by Dieyi (Douzi’s) suicide. The title of the film comes from the famous opera piece Farewell My Concubine, which originally made Dieyi and Xiaolou popular in Beijing opera circles and is frequently performed by the protagonists in the movie, creating a parallel between the play and the plot of the film.
Morning Sun (2003, documentary) Original title: Ba jiu dian zhong de taiyang 八九点钟的太阳
Produced and directed by: Carma Hinton, Geremie Barmé, Richard Gordon
This two-hour documentary, released in 2003, is about the Cultural Revolution. Material and sources used in it include documentary footage, and exclusive interviews with the Red Guard leader Luo Xiaohai and Liu Shaoqi’s widow and daughter. Available in English and Mandarin, in the U.S. the documentary was successful and nominated for a series of awards, receiving the American Historical Association John O’Connor Film Award in 2004. Narration is mainly through the eyes of the generation born some time around the founding of the PRC in 1949, and who fully lived through the period of the Cultural Revolution. The intriguing features of this piece of work lie in the fact that it does not provide the viewer with a purely historical and chronological insight into this stretch of time, but instead attempts to depict events from the inside, reflecting the connection between dry political facts on the one hand, and the psychological factors, emotions and images they produce on the other.
Raise the Red Lantern (1991) Da hong denglong gaogao gua 大红灯笼高高挂
Director: Zhang Yimou
Cast: Ma Jingwu, Kong Lin, Jin Shuyuan, He Saifei, Gong Li, Cao Cuifen
Based on the 1990 novel by Su Tong Wives and Concubines and directed by the popular Zhang Yimou, Raise the Red Lantern is a Chinese-Hong Kong-Taiwan production, starring the internationally acclaimed actress Gong Li, who also played in other Zhang Yimou films like Judou and The Story of Qiu Ju. Although the screenplay of Raise the Red Lantern was approved, the movie was then banned in China, and received several awards overseas. The story is set in China in the 1920s (during the Warlord Era) and narrates the story of Songlian, a nineteen year-old young woman who is obliged to give up her studies after the death of her father and become one of the concubines (in the film she is referred to as ‘Fourth Mistress’) of the wealthy Master Chen. In ‘competition’ with the three other mistresses, she soon discovers the importance of the red lanterns in the household, lit accordingly to who the master decides to spend the night with. Seeking constant attention, Songlian spreads the news she is pregnant, although when her lie is discovered the enraged master orders her lanterns to be covered. After the death of her servant Yan’er, and witnessing the hanging of the Third Mistress Meishan (accused of having a love affair), Songlian becomes more and more depressed and lonely, and is shown as turned insane in the last scenes of the movie.
To Live (1994) Original title: Huo zhe 活着
Director: Zhang Yimou
Cast: Ge You, Gong Li, Niu Ben, Guo Tao, Ni Dahong, Jiang Wu
Based on the same name novel by Yu Hua, To Live was banned in Mainland China due to a satirical perspective on Communist policies and campaigns. The plot begins around the 1940s and narrates the struggles of a family up to the years around the Cultural Revolution. Xu Fugui (Ge You), addicted to gambling, is initially left by his wife Jiazhen (Gong Li), although the family is reunited before Fugui and Chunsheng (his work partner) are captured by the Communist forces accused of being part of the Kuomintang. Xu Fugui then finds out that the man he lost his fortune to when gambling, called Long’er has been accused by the Communists and executed. After depicting the happiness and unity of Fugui’s family during the later period of the Great Leap Forward, the plot suddenly turns into tragedy with the accidental death of Fugui’s son Youqing by means of a truck driven by Chunsheng. Shifting to the period of the Cultural Revolution, Chunsheng, who has been defined reactionary, tells Fugui and Jiazhen that he wishes to kill himself and leave all his money to their family to make up for what he did. Jiazhen however refuses with the remark “you still owe us a life!”. In the end Fengxia, Fugui and Jiazhen’s daughter, dies while giving birth to her son - mostly due to the shortage of doctors in the county hospital - although her son, Mantou, lives on.
In the Heat of the Sun (1994) Original Title: Yang guang can lan de ri zi 阳光灿烂的日子
Director: Jiang Wen
Cast: Xia Yu, Ning Jing, Han Dong, Jiang Wen, Geng Le, Liu Xiaoning
Adapted from the novel by Wang Shuo Wild Beast, the movie is set in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, and provides us with a new and insightful account of these years, depicting memories in a dream-like scenario, and differing from productions of ‘Fifth Generation’ film-makers (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige). The plot is narrated from the perspective of Monkey (who in the film is supposed to be Jiang Wen as a teenage boy), and tells the story of Monkey and his friends, a group of youngsters who, because their parents are away or busy due to the Cultural Revolution, are free to wander about the streets of Beijing. The film was awarded the Venice International Film Festival's Best Actor prize for its leading actor Xia Yu, and won six Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan.
City of Sadness (1989) Original title: Beiqing chengshi 悲情城市
Director: Hou Xiaoxian
Cast: Xin Shufen, Wu Yifang, Taibao, Liang Chaowei, Gao Jie
The movie is generally regarded as the first element making up a trilogy about Taiwanese history, including also The Puppetmaster (1993) and Good Men, Good Women (1995). City of Sadness is a historical drama narrating the struggles of a family during the period known as “White Terror”, inflicted on Taiwanese people by the KMT (Kuomintang government) throughout the late 1940s. The production was the first to openly tackle the KMT’s actions after its takeover of Taiwan from Japan in 1945, and the 1947 “228 Incident” (an uprising in Taiwan suppressed by the KMT and which caused thousands of civilian deaths). While the eldest brother in the family portrayed in the film is killed by gangsters, another is locked up in a Kuomintang jailhouse going insane. The youngest brother Wen-ching (played by Liang Chaowei, or Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) is a deaf-mute photographer, and wishes to escape to the mountains to join the anti-KMT resistance forces. In the end he is the only one who survives and can narrate the story of his family.
Blind Shaft (2003) Original title: Mang jing 盲井
Director: Li Yang
Cast: Qiang Li, Baoqiang Wang, Shuangbao Wang, Jing Ai, Zhenjiang Bao, Sun Wei, Jun Zhao, Yining Wang
Based on Liu Qingbang’s short novel Shen mu (Sacred Wood), Blind Shaft was directed by Li Yang, who is based mostly in Hong Kong and Germany. Banned in China, the movie won several awards overseas of which the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003. The movie, set in coal mines on the border between the Shanxi and Hebei provinces, is often referred to as a cynical black comedy because of its condemning and denouncing tone. It narrates the story of two con artists, Song Jinming and Tang Zhaoyang, who meet a young man in need of a job and trick him into a plan of their own. After convincing him that they and a relative have found mining jobs, they erroneously make him think the relative has not turned up and invite him to join them, pretending to be the missing relative. On the mine, they murder the young man setting up his death as an accident, and obtaining compensation from the mine management. The pair then finds another victim, although the men’s behaviours diverge as Song feels pity and compassion, while Tang coldly carries on thinking about money.
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005) Original title: Qian li zou dan qi 千里走单骑
Director: Zhang Yimou
Cast: Takakura Ken, Nakai Kiichi , Terajima Shinobu
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles is a Chinese-Japanese production directed by Zhang Yimou. The title of the movie derives from one of China’s classics based on the theme of loyalty and part of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The film is centred on the complex and moving relationship between Takata (played by Takakura Ken) and his son Ken-ichi (Nakai Kiichi). After many years of separation, Ken-ichi and his father reunite when Rie (Ken-ichi’s wife, played by Terajima Shinobu) tells Takata his son is seriously ill. This however turns out to be only a strategy thought up by Rie to seek attention and strengthen the father-son relationship. After Takata is given a significant videotape by Rie, he sets off on a journey across China to find the actor Li Jiamin and tape his performance for his dying son Ken-ichi. The movie was Best Asian Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2007.
Still Life (2006) Original title: San xia hao ren 三峡好人
Director: Jia Zhangke
Cast: Zhao Tao, Han Sanming
Directed by the “Sixth Generation” film maker Jia Zhangke, in a slow moving capturing documentary-like form it narrates the story of a group of people obliged to depart from their town because of the building of a dam, and their return there after some time. The film was shot in a small village on the Yangtze River, Fengjie, which was destroyed by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Within the plot, two parallel stories take place providing us with a thoughtful picture of how the project has affected the everyday life of local people. Han Sanming (played by an actor with the same name) returns to the village after sixteen years to seek his ex-wife and daughter, only to find the place completely transformed. Shen Hong (played by Zhao Tao), on the other hand, returns to search for her husband (a worker on the dam project) who she suspects of having an affair. The movie was a last-minute entry at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and won the Golden Lion Award for Best Film - surprising most critics.
Please contact the Confucius Institute for Scotland for further information or to book.