Chinese 5th and 6th Generation

Chinese 5^th and 6^th Generation

1)     Raise the red lantern ( ZHANG YIMOU, 1991)

The film is set in early 1920s China during the warlord era, years before the Chinese Civil War. Nineteen-year-old Songlian ( Sònglián, played by Gong Li), whose father has recently died and left the family bankrupt, marries into the wealthy Chen family, becoming the fourth wife or rather the third concubine or, as she is referred to, the Fourth Mistress ( Sì tàitai) of the household. Arriving at the palatial abode, she is at first treated like royalty, receiving sensuous foot massages and brightly-lit red lanterns, as well as a visit from her husband, Master Chen (Ma Jingwu), the master of the house, whose face is never clearly shown. When Songlian started to live in a new husband’s house, she came to find out about the 3 wifes.   The First Mistress, Yuru (Jin Shuyuan), appears to be nearly as old as the master himself. Having borne a son decades earlier, she seems resigned to live out her life as forgotten, always passed over in  favour  of the younger concubines. The Second Mistress, Zhuoyun ( Zhuóyún, Cao Cuifen), befriends Songlian, complimenting her youth and beauty, and giving her expensive silk as a gift; she also warns her about the Third Mistress, Meishan ( Méishn, He Caifei), a former opera singer who is spoiled and who becomes unable to cope with no longer being the youngest and most favored of the master's playthings. As time passes, though, Songlian learns that it is really Zhuoyun, the Second Mistress, who is not to be trusted; she is subsequently described as having the face of the Buddha, yet possessing the heart of a scorpion. Lastly, after having tough time at her husband‘s home which Songlian, already in agony due to the fruitlessness of her life, witnesses the entire episode and is emotionally traumatized. The following summer, after the master's marriage to yet another concubine, Songlian is shown wandering the compound in her old schoolgirl clothes, having gone completely insane.

Yellow earth (CHAN KAIGE, 1985)

The movie Yellow Earth by Chen Kai-ge (Farewell My Concubine, Life on a String) was the first film of the so-called fifth generation of filmmakers who introduced a new aesthetic and social awareness to Chinese cinema. It is set just before World War II in Shaanxi province in Northern China near the Yellow River, an area referred to as gian shan wan he (thousands of hills and ten folds more gullies). Based on Ke Lai's novel, "Echo in the Deep Valley", the film shows the struggle of the peasants in the area known for its unyielding harshness and the folk traditions they drew on to express their anguish. As the film begins, cinematographer Zhang Yimou creates a feeling of desolation with panoramic shots of the vast landscape as a soldier from the Communist Eighth Route Army, Gu Qing (Wang Xueyin), walks over the barren hills to a small village. He says he is there to collect folk songs for the army to use so that "the people will know why they are suffering, why their women are beaten, and why they should rise up".

The world (JIA ZHANG KE, 2004)

The World tells the story of two workers at Beijing World Park : a performer, Tao (played by actress Zhao Tao ), and Taisheng (ChenTaisheng), a security guard and Tao's boyfriend. The movie tells about how humans have a difficult in bonding, full of jealousy ad miscommunication.