Director: Zhong Jian
Length: 90 min
Production: 2005
Synopsis:
22-year-old Jian Zhong escorts his mother on a visit to the country village where she grew up. He films her while they walk through the village and across the land, pay a visit to his grandmother's grave and chat with some villagers. Every place brings back fresh memories. His mother is quite cheerful and there is a good deal of laughter. But most stories are serious and always involve two subjects that dominated the childhood of this almost fifty-year-old woman: hunger and the Cultural Revolution. The family of seven sisters toiled hard on the land, but despite excellent crops they often had nothing to eat. Jian Zhong's mother was the only one permitted to go to school, so she could keep a tally of the family production. She also recalls that all families in the village smashed their nice vases, because personal possessions were considered capitalist; that she could not comprehend that people were beaten because they were allegedly bad; and that you could only cross a certain intersection if you had quoted a few lines from the Red Book. These are the personal recollections of a woman, but also the history of a generation that should not be forgotten.
Zhong Jian, born in Yunnan, graduated Film and Video Department of Yunnan Art Institute in July 2005. Try to Remember is his fist documentary film. The film has been screen in Yamagata International Documentary Festival, Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival.
SNIPPETS
Director: Yan Junjie
Length:84 min
Production: 2005
Synopsis:
This film takes footage of my band, friends, college, home, romance and personal life from 2001-2005. I took these to make an experiment: to use documentary to find an answer to life, or to use one’s own life to search for documentary. This is how Snippets was born.
This can’t be called a documentary in the strictest sense. What is a true documentary anyway? I’ll leave that question for the adults to research.
As my graduation piece, I finally finished a piece on “using film to search for the self”.
Yan Junjie, born in Yunnan Province, China, November 1981,graduated Film and Video Department of Yunnan Art Institute in July 2005.He has films:SPRING SLEEPING(2002), MY FAMILY VIDEO(2003)
