New Waves - Sacrificed Youth (20:30)
Aug 3, 2014 9:13:10 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2014 9:13:10 GMT -5
Launched in 1966, the Cultural Revolution paralysed cultural and intellectual life, and violently uprooted society in the cities and countryside: swarms of militant young Red Guards attacked or publicly humiliated their ‘backwards’ elders and destroyed artifacts of China’s historical and religious heritage, while the military, the factories, and even the Communist Party itself were subjected to systematic purges. As with all the other arts, cinema was profoundly affected by the ravages of the Cultural Revolution: film production was stopped altogether for a time, and only gradually restarted with an exclusive output of ideological model operas.
As the Mainland finally emerged from the shadow of this cataclysmic event a decade later, the filmmakers who became known as the ‘Fourth Generation’ of graduates of the Beijing Film Academy sought for ways to express the ordeal. The result was the so-called ‘scar films’ – simple, affecting dramas that employed intimate narratives focusing on individual tragedies as microcosmic representations of massive societal trauma. It was a style of storytelling that would prove remarkably influential.
Marked by radical aesthetic experimentation and boldly emotive performances, films from the Fifth Generation, including Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum and Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Horse Thief, came to represent a definitive break with preceding Mainland cinema. And though markedly different in many ways, the roughly simultaneous cinematic renaissances that occurred in Hong Kong and Taiwan shared some powerful links with the emergence of the Fourth and Fifth Generation filmmakers on the Mainland. Whether through intimate character study (Women from the Lake of Scented Souls), arthouse rigour (A City of Sadness) or displaced allegory (Boat People), the weight of history is keenly felt in the films that emerged from all of these assorted New Waves.
The Third - A Century of Chinese Cinema - Spring in a Small Town
In 'Qingchun Ji' (1985), a city girl is surprised by the inhibitions of the rural folk she’s lodging with. Gender equity programmes after 1949 saw the emergence of influential female voices in Chinese cinema, most famously Zhang Nuanxin. As a Sacrificed Youth, a teenage girl is transported to a mountainous and remote region during the Cultural Revolution. The daughter of urban intellectuals, she’s initially shocked by the locals’ sensuality but then begins to share in their uninhibited ways. Zhang’s use of landscape is breathtaking, and she displays an ethnographic, empathetic filmmaking style. It could be good!
BFI - A Century of Chinese Cinema: New Waves - Sacrificed Youth
Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading 'The Third' is cordially invited to Sacrificed Youth promptly at 20:30 (BST) on Tuesday 5 August 2014.
As the Mainland finally emerged from the shadow of this cataclysmic event a decade later, the filmmakers who became known as the ‘Fourth Generation’ of graduates of the Beijing Film Academy sought for ways to express the ordeal. The result was the so-called ‘scar films’ – simple, affecting dramas that employed intimate narratives focusing on individual tragedies as microcosmic representations of massive societal trauma. It was a style of storytelling that would prove remarkably influential.
Marked by radical aesthetic experimentation and boldly emotive performances, films from the Fifth Generation, including Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum and Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Horse Thief, came to represent a definitive break with preceding Mainland cinema. And though markedly different in many ways, the roughly simultaneous cinematic renaissances that occurred in Hong Kong and Taiwan shared some powerful links with the emergence of the Fourth and Fifth Generation filmmakers on the Mainland. Whether through intimate character study (Women from the Lake of Scented Souls), arthouse rigour (A City of Sadness) or displaced allegory (Boat People), the weight of history is keenly felt in the films that emerged from all of these assorted New Waves.
The Third - A Century of Chinese Cinema - Spring in a Small Town
In 'Qingchun Ji' (1985), a city girl is surprised by the inhibitions of the rural folk she’s lodging with. Gender equity programmes after 1949 saw the emergence of influential female voices in Chinese cinema, most famously Zhang Nuanxin. As a Sacrificed Youth, a teenage girl is transported to a mountainous and remote region during the Cultural Revolution. The daughter of urban intellectuals, she’s initially shocked by the locals’ sensuality but then begins to share in their uninhibited ways. Zhang’s use of landscape is breathtaking, and she displays an ethnographic, empathetic filmmaking style. It could be good!
BFI - A Century of Chinese Cinema: New Waves - Sacrificed Youth
Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading 'The Third' is cordially invited to Sacrificed Youth promptly at 20:30 (BST) on Tuesday 5 August 2014.