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Read an introduction to Qiu's work on our blog.
Qiu Jiongjiong’s visually magnificent new film is a unique hybrid of fiction, historical reminiscence, and experimental theatre. Its overview of China from the 1930s to the 1980s is filtered through Qiu Yu, a Sichuan opera “clown” whose character is based on the director’s own famous grandfather.
Qiu Yu’s childhood, his performances, family tragedies, and political perils are reviewed by his departing soul, negotiating his entry into Hades with two comic sidekicks.
This film of unparalleled aesthetic and political courage is embedded in modestly spectacular set designs: Qiu, a famous visual artist, has hand-crafted an exquisite miniature model village, a fantastical river landscape, a golden sun in the shape of a Buddha’s head. These images set the scene for constantly shifting acting style that embraces absurdism, political melodrama, comic vaudeville, and ritual tableaux. We are offered memory as re-lived collective experience, insistently comic in its mode, expansively humane in its vision. Description by Shelly Kraicer. (Dir.: Qiu Jiongjiong, China, 2021, 179 min., DCP, Mandarin with English subtitles)
Image courtesy of the dGenerate Collection at Icarus Films |
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