OPENING FILM
West Coast Premiere     2014

Director: Wang Xiaoshuai
Producer: Liu Xuan
Screenwriter: Wang Xiaoshuai, Fang Lei, Li Fei
Cinematographer: Wu Di
Production Designer: Lou Pan
Editor: Yang Hongyu
Sound: Fu Kang
Composer: Umeit
Cast: Lv Zhong, Shi Liu, Feng Yuanzheng, Qin Hao, Amanda Qin
HDCAM / DCP, color, in Mandarin w/ English s/t, 110 min. 

In her modest Beijing apartment, a stubborn widow, Deng, receives anonymous phone calls, and strange things are happening to her. Is she delusional and losing her mind? Is the young boy (Shi Liu) who keeps crossing her path a real person, or a figment of her imagination? No less puzzled, her two sons – one married (Feng Yuanzheng), one gay (Qin Hao) – try to solve the mystery. Skillfully interweaving a realistic depiction of ordinary lives in contemporary China and an oneiric “return of the repressed,” celebrated Sixth Generation director Wang Xiaoshuai completes the third part of a trilogy – started with Shanghai Dreams (Jury Prize at Cannes, 2005) and continued with 11 Flowers (2011) – based on his memories of time spent in Guiyang, the area in southwest China where his family was “sent down” during the Cultural Revolution. 

Taking his family’s grief and burning desire to return to the city as the departure point for his fictional interrogations, Wang constructs a complex Möbius strip in which memories are buried in a strange and confusing time when innocence and guilt were politically coded words, and survival of the fittest and most cunning the unspoken rule of the game. The past literally keeps haunting the present, emerging through layers and layers of the eponymous “red amnesia” that casts its shadow over contemporary China. The film is arguably Wang Xiaoshuai’s best of late – for his sharp societal observations – but also for his daring narrative choices, as it is entirely structured around the emotional, physical and intellectual landscape of a 70-year-old woman, who is alternately feisty, ornery, generous and vulnerable, never sentimentalized nor depicted as “weak,” and whose plight is made palpable through veteran actress Lv Zhong’s splendid performance. – Bérénice Reynaud 

In person: Wang Xiaoshuai, Liu Xuan 

A Beijing Film Academy graduate, Wang Xiaoshuai became one of the most noted “Sixth Generation” directors at age 27 with his first film, The Days (1993). The film was banned and Wang directed Frozen (1997) under the pseudonym of Wu Ming (“No Name”). His first “above-ground” film, So Close to Paradise (1998), was shown at Cannes, thenBeijing Bicyle (2001) won the Grand Jury Silver Bear Award in Berlin. This was followed by a string of successes:Drifters (2003), shown at Cannes; Shanghai Dreams (2005), Jury Prize at Cannes; In Love We Trust (2008), Silver Bear for the Best Screenplay in Berlin; Chongqing Blues (2010) and 11 Flowers (2011).

www.global.ucla.edu/cob

Sponsor(s): zConfucius Institute, Film and Television Archive, Part of the 2014 China Onscreen Biennial (银幕中国双年展) presented in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Hawaii. For more information, including the full program schedule, film descriptions, and ticket and venue information, please visit the website.