RAS FILM CLUB
Sunday 21 July - Time: 6.30pm for 7.00pm
Chai Lounge at Chai Living Gallery, 370 Suzhou Bei Lu. It's in the Embankment Building close to Sichuan Lu.
河滨大楼，苏州北 路370底楼 （在四川路河南路之间)
In line with the season, the film for this month is:
"Yángguāng cànlàn de rìzi" 1994
"In the heat of the sun"
Directed by Jiang Wen
Produced by Guo Youliang, Hsu An-chin, Pu Ki
Based on a novel by Wang Shuo
Cinematography by Gu Changwei
Original music by Guo Wenjing
Cast: Xia Yu, Ning Jing, Jiang Wen
Mandarin with English subtitles
Running time 134 minutes
RSVP: filmclub@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn
N.B. RESERVATIONS ESSENTIAL AS SPACE IS LIMITED AT THIS EVENT
Suggested donation: Members 20 rmb – Guests 50 rmb
Jiang Wen is a Chinese film actor, screenwriter and director, well known to regular visitors of the RAS film club. As a director, he is sometimes grouped with the "Sixth Generation" that emerged in the 1990s. As an actor, Jiang has starred with Gong Li in Zang Yimou's debut film Red Sorghum (1986) which the RAS film club showed last year. He also played the main character in Xie Fei's Black Snow (1990). In the Heat of the Sun is Jiang's first feature film. 2011, the RAS film club showed his second film, Devils on the Doorstep (2000), set during the Japanese occupation of China in the early 1940s. It won him the Grand Prix in the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.
"In the Heat of the Sun" is set in Beijing during one summer of the Cultural Revolution. It is told from the perspective of Ma Xiaojun nicknamed Monkey who is a teenage boy at the time. Monkey and his friends are free to roam the streets of Beijing day and night because the Cultural Revolution has caused their parents and most adults to be either busy or away.
This film is significant in its unique perspective of the Cultural Revolution. In The Heat Of the Sun is mellow and dream-like, portraying memories of that era with somewhat positive and personal resonances. It also acknowledges, as the narrator recalls, that he might have misremembered parts of his adolescence as stated in the prologue: "Change has wiped out my memories. I can't tell what's imagined from what's real", as the director offers alternative or imagined versions to some events as people seek to romanticize their youthful memories.
Awards:
51st Venice Film Festival: Best Actor Award for Xia Yu Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (It was the first mainland China film to win Best Picture in the Golden Horse Film Awards)