<h1>Youth Festival</h1>
(1985, China)
Screenwriters: Zhang Nunxin, Zhang Manling
Director: Zhang Nunxin
Starring: Li Fengxu, Guo Jianguo, Feng Yuanzheng
Nominated for best original music at the 6th Golden Rooster Awards
tale:
During the Cultural Revolution, the female Zhiqing Li Chun went to the Dai people to join the team, when she first arrived, she was initially disliked and did not like to dress up, and later developed a deep friendship with the landlord's father and grandmother, felt the simple rural style of the Dai people, and gradually followed the customs, wearing Dai clothes and being close to the villagers. The adolescent girl's spring mood is budding, and she has a delicate relationship with Ren Jia, who has just returned from abroad, and the landlord's eldest brother who has just returned from abroad also takes good care of Li Chun. On a festival celebrated by the villagers, the landlord's eldest brother fought with Ren Jiada, and Li Chun finally left Dai Village because he could not accept cross-ethnic feelings. In the end, the landlord's grandmother died because of missing Li Chun, and Ren Jia stayed in Dai Village forever because of a mudslide, and left behind the memory of Li Chun's entire youth.
Film critics:
This film is based on Zhang Manling's novel "There is a Beautiful Place".
The fourth generation of directors has never given up the exploration of "poetic realist aesthetics", they proposed to "throw away the crutch of drama", focusing on the pursuit of natural style and prose poetic structure, intending to excavate the philosophy of life from ordinary life. Whether it is Xie Fei's "The Year of Life", or Wu Yigong's "Old Things in Seongnam", Teng Wenji's "The Vibrato of Life", and Huang Shuqin's "Man, Ghost, Love", all represent the efforts and explorations of a whole generation of directors. One of the most distinctive is the female director among them, Zhang Nunxin.
Zhang Nunxin examines the Cultural Revolution era from a unique female perspective, and in the context of this era, she takes "youth" as the motif of image exploration, which has led to the emergence of a series of female films such as "Sand Gull" and "Youth Festival", which is rare in the history of new Chinese cinema.
"Youth Festival" is such a work that emphasizes women's consciousness, and she uses documentary lens language and prose culture narrative to show the delicate poetic style unique to female directors. She places the story in a remote Dai village far away from the grand narrative of "revolution", erasing the background of cultural conflict and focusing on depicting the simple folk customs and quiet scenes of ethnic minorities, all of which are recorded by a foreign female intellectual. From this perspective, Zhiqing Li Chun is both an "intruder" of Dai Village and a "bystander" of ethnic minority style, so the ambiguous emotion of intervention and alienation makes the entire Dai Village, under Li Chun's "bystander", become full of "documentary" color, and become more mysterious and "poetic" because of her "intervention".
In the life of the Dai girls, their pursuit of "beauty" infected Li Chun, this gray-headed, dirty-faced, native cloth old clothes of the female Zhiqing came here, and finally let go of all the ideological guards in the city, put on beautiful Dai clothes, and dressed herself exquisitely. It was also here that her youth began to sprout, began to realize the beauty of women, and began to expect something from the opposite sex.
In the film, renjia, the male zhiqing, and the landlord's eldest brother both have a good feeling for Li Chun, and Li Chun is inseparable between the two. Ren Jia is a vigorous intellectual youth, always with a fresh desire for knowledge and a heart of enthusiasm for art, he is a typical representative of the "Cultural Revolution" Zhiqing, he and Li Chun have a ardent hope for "returning to the city", but he is resentful, Huai Cai did not meet, he did not really integrate into the Dai village, this is the difference between Li Chun and him. On the contrary, the landlord's eldest brother is taciturn and has a thick and simple personality, and between the three of them, the emotions that cross the nationalities seem out of place. The landlord's eldest brother could not sing love songs to this Han woman like ordinary Dai youths, nor could he turn a blind eye to this beautiful girl wearing Dai clothes. This ambiguous feeling between them represents a cultural collision, and although Li Chun is willing to integrate into the Dai ethnic group, he always seems awkward in identity.
During this period of intervening time, Li Chun was shocked by the simplicity of ethnic minorities. The Dai women's understanding of "beauty" goes beyond the general category, and here, the "body" is more displayed as a sign of youth. They dared to expose the beauty of women in the spring water, and they were full of strength in hard labor. This "natural beauty" is not like the feminine urban women, although wrapped in a tight working-class uniform, it looks extremely strong, but it is the strong and the body is weak, and this is not difficult to see from Li Chun's initial ridicule. In terms of personality, Dai women dare to love and dare to hate, and life is hard but happy, and there is a simple happiness here.
Li Chun's youth grew up in this land. Her feminine consciousness is revived here, her love is sprouted here, and she witnesses how villagers face the loess day after day fight disasters and celebrate harvests. But it all ended with a mudslide. Along with the farewell, there is Li Chun's landlord grandmother, and the old man finally died because he missed her.
And the beauty of ethnic minorities will always remain in Li Chun's memory. This is a ritual of youth and growth. This image is not Zhang Nunxin's personal poetic memory.
Author: An Gongdao, Master of Drama, Film Critic, Operating Self-media "Kaimai La". Obsessed with the history of Chinese cinema, he loves the Republic of China, Hu Jinquan is a die-hard fan and a veteran fan of Westerns.
This article was published in the "Youth Film Handbook - The Top 100 Youth Films in Film History"
The seventh series of the Youth Film Handbook brings together 18 young film critics
Describes the 100 most moving youth films in the history of cinema
Cheng Qingsong is the editor-in-chief
Xu Jinglei inscribed the title of the book
Director Wang Xiaoshuai Shunji Iwai led the cover
Post-90s actor representative Spring Summer Dong Zijian Youth Dialogue
Many filmmakers sincerely recommend
Together, we witness the light and shadow of youth!
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