Like other unlicensed productions, "Orphan" cannot be distributed theatrically in China, so director Wang Chao has publicly said he can give away free DVDs of the film to anyone who wants to see it.
Interestingly, two of the veteran filmmakers in this group, Jiang Wen and Tian Zhuangzhuang, have used the traditional Chinese literary device of looking backward to address the present. "Springtime in a Small Town" is Tian's first film since he was officially blacklisted for "The Blue Kite" (1993), about the excesses of the Cultural Revolution as seen through the eyes of a young boy. Authorities found it overcritical of government policy.
"Springtime" is classical, and Tian uses mostly unknown young actors to weave this graceful, bittersweet tale of love lost and gained. A remake of Fei Mu's 1948 masterpiece, the new film is a throwback to the composed, postwar Chinese melodramas. Zhichen returns to a bombed-out village to revisit his old friend Liyan -- who happens to have married Zhichen's childhood sweetheart, Yuwen.
Soon Yuwen finds herself torn between her Confucian obligation to her sickly, conservative husband and her heartfelt yearning for lively, progressive-thinking Zhichen, fresh from big-city Shanghai and dapper in his Western suits.
A birthday celebration becomes the excuse to unleash repressed emotions -- and Zhichen makes a public play for his old flame. That night Yuwen comes to his room, ready to take him up on his flirtation. The subtext is the tug between the old society and its stifling feudalism and the new society and its promise of free will and individual choice -- but here the results are something of an impasse. (See Screening Room on the next page for Kevin Thomas' assessment of "Springtime in a Small Town.")
"Devils on the Doorstep" takes place in a remote northeastern village under Japanese occupation in the 1940s. The villagers and the foreign troops coexist peacefully -- already an unorthodox depiction; a more traditional film would have shown the Japanese as bloodthirsty demons. The movie opens on a tone of broad comedy when two prisoners are thrown into the house of Ma Dasan (played by Jiang Wen himself) for safekeeping by a shadowy figure. This bit of skulduggery initiates a cycle of secretiveness and jailer mentality that the villagers aren't equipped for -- and ultimately leads to a tragedy of epic proportions.
The work is hailed as an "antiwar masterpiece" by Reynaud, who believes "it shows that there are no winners in a war. In a war everybody loses."
