和你在一起 | Together

Chen Kaige, director of the Oscar-nominated Farewell My Concubine, composes a richly imagined and “tender symphony” (Screen International) about love, ambition and destiny in China’s high-pressure world of classical music. Surging with “warmth, humanity and a sense of humor” (The Hollywood Reporter) , this lyrical, enchanting “heartwarmer” (Variety) is a “sure fire crowd pleaser” (Los Angeles Times)! When a violin prodigy Xiaochun and his father head to Beijing seeking fame and fortune, they soon discover a fierce world of cutthroat ambition. But when Xiaochun is “adopted” by a famous music tutor, success finally seems within reach – until a shocking discovery begins to unravel his entire world, and the boy must make the most difficult choice of his life. Can he achieve the fame his father had always hoped for without losing the extraordinary passion that sets him apart?

Directed by Kaige Chen | Starring : Peiqi Liu, Yun Tang, Hong Chen, Zhiwen Wang, Kaige Chen | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Moscow Film Festival, Copenhagen Film Festival, Bergen Film Festival

二嫫 | Ermo

Ermo is a film that revolves around a self-assertive peasant woman named Ermo, who is sexually frustrated because of her impotent husband. Ermo feels unwanted and becomes passionate about money, which becomes the substitution of her sexual needs. Frustrated by her neighbor’s privileged status as the only one who owns a 27-inch TV in the village, Ermo becomes obsessed with buying a 29-inch TV. Driven by her desire, Ermo transforms from a rural woman who sells twisted noodles in a local market to a consumer of Western cultural products such as TV programs. At the end the film, Ermo validates her life’s worth with the 29-inch colored TV, a television so big and expensive that even the head of the county cannot afford. However, the void in Ermo’s soul is left unfilled after she worked so hard and spent all her money on the TV. The big TV does not bring her happiness in the end. The film ends with an ironic scene where Ermo goes back to the local market and starts to make her living as a seller of twisted noodles again. The film director uses Ermo’s quest for a TV set to show the inevitable cultural disruptions and the struggle of the individual in a consumer society, which are caused by China’s modernization under its economic reform during the early 1990s. The film director uses one woman’s pursuit of “televisuality” as a social commentary on China’s collective national agenda of modernization and globalization under Deng Xiaoping. The film criticizes the capitalistic consumer culture, where everybody is struggling for material goods and become obsessed with money.

Directed by Xiaowen Zhou | Starring : Liya Ai, Peiqi Liu, Zhijun Ge, Haiyan Zhang, Zhenguo Yan | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival

杏花三月天 | The Story of Xinghua

This Chinese melodrama presents an allegory tinged with feminism with it’s portrayal of life and free enterprise in a modern, liberalized Chinese mountain village. Wanglai is the shady town grocer who steals stones from the Great Wall to sell as souvenirs. His neighbor Fulin is nothing like him. Fulin is sensitive, educated and spiritual. He makes his living planting saplings. Wanglai’s store-bought bride Xinghua cannot bear him children; he therefore, frequently batters her then cheats upon her. In the gentle Fulin Xinghua finds a soul-mate. Fulin too, is drawn to her and shyly tells her so. The two passionately consummate their love during a rainstorm. Xinghua gets pregnant and wants to divorce her cruel husband. Fulin becomes uneasy. Though he is more liberal than Wanglai, he is still bound by tradition. When Wanglai discovers he has been cuckolded he ruins Fulin’s plantation and beats Fulin and then Xinghua mercilessly. He wants her child regardless of the father, but she destroys him by pointing out that he, not she, is the infertile one.

Directed by Li Yin | Starring : Wenli Jiang, Guoli Zhang, Shaojun Tian, Haiyan Zhang, Xingli Niu | Presented at Cannes Film Festival