Liu Zhi, a young man living a depressed life from his marriage with a dominating girl, met Baober (an ageless young girl) on Beijing street one day. They fell in love and started to live a strange, mysterious life…
Directed by Shaohong Li | Starring : Xun Zhou, Kun Chen, Jue Huang, Fan Liao, Gang Wang | Presented at Telluride Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, London Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival
Rookie policeman Tai Lin yearned to be an artist before he failed an examination and followed in his father’s footsteps. One day he interrupts an apparent suicide attempt by a woman standing on the edge of a bridge. He detains her when she claims to have murdered her husband, despite her protests that it’s all a joke. It turns out that Liu Yun is a performance artist, but Tai Lin is not amused and is glad to be rid of her when she is released.
Directed by Jianqi Huo | Starring : Yueming Pan, Rujun Ten, Quan Yuan, Gang Wang, Yong Dong | Presented at Montréal Film Festival, Cairo Film Festival
Wuxia film production stopped on the Chinese mainland after 1949. In the wuxia blockbusters, made again on the mainland post-2000 (of which Zhang Yimou’s Hero is most well-known), there’s often an emphasis on heroes compromising with the authorities, traditional chivalry having disappeared without a trace. The Swordsman in Double Flag Town stands unique among mainland wuxia films, and it is certainly no coincidence that it was produced right after the Tiananmen crackdown. The vast, desert quality of the landscape has more than a little of the American Western about it, and the dangerous duels in which a single stroke decides which participant will live or die brings to mind the atmosphere of a Japanese samurai film. The unique characters and minimal dialogue accompanying these suggest the cinematic style favoured by the Fifth Generation directors, while retaining the suspense and the drama of the wuxia genre.
Directed by Ping He | Starring : Wei Gao, Mana Zhao, Jiang Chang, Haiying Sun, Gang Wang | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival
Chinese Cinema 