Sunday, April 12 

Time: 6.30pm for 7.00pm

 Chai Lounge at Chai Living Gallery, The Embankment Building, 370 Suzhou Bei Lu, near Henan Lu.

 河滨大楼，苏州北路370底楼 （在四川路河南路之间)

Strongly autobiographical (the lead character has his childhood name Wang Han)  this film by the director of Beijing Bicycle (2001) and Shanghai Dreams (2006) looks at the last years of the Cultural revolution through a young boy’s eyes. Unlike most of the films that have dealt with this period, Wang Xiaoshuai gives a delicate, and at times even humorous, insight into the daily life of the times. Set in the remote hinterland of China in Guizhou where many key industries and urban workers with their families were relocated as part of the ‘Third Line’, part of Mao’s defence strategy against his fear of invasion from the Soviet Union following the onset of the Cultural Revolution. Like the films of Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai concentrates on individuals caught up in social upheavals that they can do little about. In this case a young boy on the edge of puberty is caught up in the struggles of his simple country life, but what is key about the film is how Wang never loses sight of its youthful point of view. The result is a poignant story, constructed from Wang Xiaoshuai’s own memories, that gives a personal and moving account of the times.

As with Shanghai Dreams, the story revolves around the son of a relocated Shanghai family, but the father here is not an industrial worker but an actor. Wang Xiaoshuai’s father was a teacher at The Shanghai Drama Academy before being sent to Guizhou. Whilst the factory is part of the physical and social landscape of the film, Wang Han’s mother works there, the political references in the film are more associated with the fate of intellectuals than the position of workers. The larger context is patently the Cultural Revolution, but as events are seen through a child’s eyes, the concerns are those within his neighbourhood. As these events include a murder and a mysterious neighbour they are not without drama and connect his life with the brutalities of the day. The story is particularly clever in how it uses the simple desire for a new shirt to be woven into the events that follow with oblique references to the adult word through overheard conversations and stolen glimpses. This oblique method of connecting Wang’s world with a wider reality is also seen through the exchanges between Wang and his father when he introduces the boy to art and Monet. The beauty of the film really lies in its simplicity and its capacity to capture the curiosity of children.

A Variety critic said of the film “Set during the waning stage of China’s Cultural Revolution, 11 Flowers is by turns wistful, hopeful, and even funny, balancing a momentous historical context with a stirring evocation of childhood. Among Wang Xiaoshuai’s finest films.”  Wang Xiaoshuai certainly gives a very different picture of life in the remote hinterland from both the beautiful landscapes of 5th Generation directors like Chen Kaige’s or Zhang Yimou and the rawness of Jia Zhangke. Wang Xiaoshuai has said that his intention was to make a film about his childhood inner life: 'We always remember our childhood based on carefree, vivid details,’ he says. ‘We use a lot of fadeouts on the boy, like having him disappear into the darkness, or into the woods. That’s how memories are to me – close to the heart yet impossible to recreate.’ He says that as a director this will probably be the last of his films to explore this period of China’s past.

Wang Xiaoshuai is a leading member of the 6th Generation of filmmakers and has benefitted from the Government’s push almost a decade ago to relax censorship in the media and to work with previously underground directors. The film deals with taboos that would, until recent years, have caused it to be banned, as was his first film Beijing Bicycle which was banned for 3 years. 

(Running time 110 minutes)