"Devils" premiered at Cannes two years ago and won the Grand Prix, but the film was subsequently banned in China. Jiang himself has been blacklisted from making any more films, but he has managed to continue his acting career.
As young filmmakers do everywhere, those in China tend to focus on the problems of their own generation. In "Conjugation" Tang looks at the growing malaise of a group of students after Tiananmen Square in 1989. Haunted by the fact that one friend has gone "missing" (probably killed or jailed), they halfheartedly go through the days thinking up moneymaking schemes and drinking way too much. Soon love and friendships fall apart.
Discontent also underlies the protagonist of Wen Hai's "Beijing Suburb," an artist who creates large expressionist canvases "about how people torture one another" for himself and the occasional "Van Gogh" sunflower on commission. He's also into performance art, and in one private performance, he stands onstage in the airplane position -- bent over, arms stretched up behind him, a position those punished during the Cultural Revolution were forced to take -- while a comically lackadaisical chorus sings a popular children's song. The refrain -- "Our homeland is a garden with colorful flowers. We are under warm sunshine with a smile on everyone's face. Wahaha, Wahaha
Indeed, in reality, art shows have been shut down and artists arrested for producing "subversive" work, with subversive broadly defined. While slowly paced, the film would be of interest to anyone who wants to know the particular struggles of contemporary artists in China -- who are, not surprisingly, a macho bunch of guys, into tough talking and hard drinking.
But lest we forget that China is still predominantly rural and agricultural, the series includes Ning Ying's "Railroad of Hope," an unexpectedly moving film that is also the sole documentary in the series. Her narrative films ("On the Beat," "I Love Beijing") have often had the matter-of-fact feel of documentaries, and here she demonstrates her narrative gifts in an actual one.
Every year in August and September thousands of Sichuan peasants squeeze onto overcrowded trains to take a 50-hour trip to Xinjiang, where they have been promised short-term jobs that net them a small fortune. Ning Ying and her crew interviewed about a dozen men, women and children en route about their expectations and their aspirations. The lucky ones have seats; the less fortunate are crammed into the aisles and passages.
