Cinema
Yellow Earth
黃土地
Chen Kaige · 1984
Synopsis
In spring 1939, Gu Qing, a soldier in the propaganda service of the Eighth Route Army, arrives in northern Shaanxi to collect peasant songs, which the Party intends to rewrite to sustain the troops' morale. He lodges with a poor widower, attached to custom, together with his daughter Cuiqiao and his young son Hanhan, who grows fond of him. Cuiqiao is soon to marry a man much older than herself, and what Gu Qing tells of equality and women soldiers appeals to her.
Context
It is Chen Kaige's first film, shot by young graduates assigned to the Guangxi studio, with Zhang Yimou on cinematography. It starts from a story by Ke Lan about a collection of songs near Yan'an, from which it removes most of the love plot. According to The China Project, the crew scouted locations in Shaanbei with the composer Zhao Jiping, and the shoot lasted sixty days on site. In China, the censors reproached it for its complacency towards poverty and backwardness, and a Beijing cinema refunded tickets, according to The China Project.
Who it is for
A film of about an hour and a half, which tells its story mainly through images, with dialogue often spoken off-screen.
Prizes and reception
Presented at the Hong Kong festival in April 1985, it was acclaimed there and launched the international reputation of the Fifth Generation.
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