Cinema
Mama
媽媽
Zhang Yuan · 1990
Synopsis
In Beijing, a librarian whose husband has left her raises alone their thirteen-year-old son, whom brain lesions, after a seizure at the age of six, have left disabled and epileptic. She still hopes he will recover, but the schools turn him away one after another, the state gives her no help, and her confidence wears thin. The narrative is interspersed with interviews with mothers of disabled children and with scenes filmed in one of the few Chinese centres that take them in.
Context
The project, drawn from a story by Dai Qing, was turned down by the children's film studio, then abandoned by the army studio after the events of 1989; Zhang Yuan and Qin Yan took it up on their own, with money from relatives, and shot it in 1989 in the director's apartment, for one hundred thousand yuan. The film, mostly in black and white, was registered with the Xi'an studio, which gave it only a minimal release, the censors judging it too bleak. The Berkeley film archive gives it as the first independent feature film shot in China since 1949.
Who it is for
A film an hour and a half long, almost without colour; shown in France at the Festival des 3 Continents in 1991.
Prizes and reception
It received at Nantes in 1991 a prize for direction and a special jury prize, each shared ex aequo, as well as an audience mention.
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