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CHINESE FILM SCREENINGS
All the films are
sponsored by The Reel China Documentary Biennial (www.reelchina.net)
All the films have
English Subtitle.
SCHEDULE
NEW YORK ASIAN
CULTURAL CENTER
September 18th,
Monday, 6:30pm
Dr. Zhang
September 25th, Monday, 6:30pm High School Senior Year
October 2nd, Monday, 6:30pm Floating Life
October 9th, Monday, 6:30pm Modern Fortress Besieged、Nostalgia
NEW JERSEY ASIAN
CULTURAL CENTER
September 18th,
Monday, 7:00pm
High School Senior Year
September 25th,
Monday, 7:00pm Dr. Zhang
INTRODUCTION TO MOVIES
Doctor Zhang
Directed by Huang Ruxiang, 90 mins; 2005; English Subtitles
Dr. Zhang is a man around fifty who has a long-cherished dream
to work in Russia as an interpreter. Forced to quit school in
1966 when the Cultural Revolution just started, he was
determined to teach himself Russian. Later, he became a regular
auditor in the Foreign Languages Department of Sichuan
University and studied for seventeen years, hence the nickname
"Doctor Zhang". In the meantime, he scratched a living as a
cleaner for the school and lived in a basement. His chance came
when in 2002 the Agriculture Bureau of Sichuan Province started
recruiting students majoring in Russian as part of a labor
export program regarding Russia. Dr. Zhang started to contact
the Bureau. When he finally was waiting for his passport, Dr.
Zhang participated in a TV talk show in Hebei Province. However,
after he came back, he discovered that the Bureau had decided to
remove him from the export labor list. Dr. Zhang had to go back
to his original life and kept hoping for another opportunity.
One day, he got a phone call that assured him that he could go
to Russia now. He began to pack happily and boarded the train to
Russia.
High School
Senior Year
Directed by Zhou Hao, 95 mins; 2005; English Subtitles
In the No.1 High School of Wuping County in western Fujian
Province, 78 high school seniors have only one chance to advance
to higher education, i.e. through taking the annual national
entrance exam. Eighty percent of students in the school come
from surrounding rural areas. Their parents tell them that if
they don’t want to become farmers, the entrance exam to high
education is their only chance to change their lives. The
documentary records the hardworking, high-pressured as well as
lonely lives of a group of seventeen-or-eighteen-year-old Hakka
descendants who are high school seniors at the No.1 High School
of Wuping County. As one student puts it, “I can’t stand the
idea to go through another senior year.
Floating Life
Directed by Huang Weikai, 93Min; 2005; English Subtitles
The drastic economic disparity between rural and urban areas in
contemporary China causes large numbers of the rural population
to pour into cities. The Chinese laws and regulations on the
detention and repatriation of permit-less vagrants and beggars
in the cities have made these new migrants susceptible to
punishment and discrimination.
Originally coming from the rural Henan Province, Yang is a
singer who scratches a living by singing in the underground
passages of urban business centers in the city of Guangzhou.
Everyday he carries with him his temporary residency card and ID
card to avoid being caught and detained by the local police. To
protect his business, he has to bribe the security guards who
are in charge of the underground passages where he sings. Many
of Yang抯 friends have been detained by the local police and sent
back home, but soon after that they come back to the city and
continue their drifting life. Already turning thirty, Yang is
thinking about ending his drifting life and going back to his
home village to start a married life with his first love. But
back home life is even more chaotic. In the end Yang, like his
other friends, is caught by the police in Guangzhou and sent
back home.
2005 Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Forum
Black Pottery Prize Award and Audience Award
Nostalgia
Directed by Haolun Shu, 70 mins, 2006, English Subtitles
Shanghai is
filmmaker Haolun Shu’s hometown, where he also lives and works
now. His family has an old house in Da Zhongli, one of
Shanghai’s oldest neighborhoods. Shus had lived there for three
generations including him. Now his grandma still lives alone at
their old house in Da Zhongli.?A bad news comes to him that Da
Zhongli faces a new round of so-called “Urban Reconstruction”,
which means that the whole neighborhood is going to be
completely demolished. Then he decides to go back there with
camera.
So this is a documentary about Haolun Shu’s revisit to the
modest, warm Da Zhongli that has not been yet bulldozed to make
way for gleaming skyscrapers, intertwined with his memory of the
innocent 1980s in which he had spent living there, and the
Shanghai that hadn’t yet become a modern cosmopolitan city full
of skyscrapers.
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