Shanghai Dreams
(Qing Hong)
China
2005
Director: Wang Xiaoshuai
Synopsis
In the mid-60s, the Chinese government, fearing a conflict with the Soviet Union, called for strategically important factories to be moved inland to form a 'Third Line of Defence'. Answering their country's call, a large number of families left Chinese cities to settle in the poorer, barren regions of the country. The workers cultivated virgin land, established new factories and made new lives for themselves.
Shanghai Dreams, set in the 1980s, deals with the aftermath of this movement, focusing on the uprooted lives of a generation that moved from Shanghai in the 60s to the undeveloped Guizhou Province, renouncing their background and culture - but never their dream of returning home. Nineteen year-old Qinghong lives with her parents and brother in Guiyang where she has grown up, where her friends are, where she first experiences love. But her stern father believes their future lies in Shanghai. How can they live together when they do not share the same dreams?
Direction: Wang Xiaoshuai
Screenplay: Ni Lao, Wang Xiaoshuai
Cinematography: Di Wu
Editing: Hongyu Yang
Sound: Jingyan Zhang, Xiaozhu Long
Costume: Pang Yan
Production Design: Zhang Wu, Huatong Li
Principal Cast: Yuanyuan Gao, Bin Li, Anlian Yan, Tang Yang, Wang Xueyang,
35 mm / colour / 123 mins
Production: Debo Films Ltd., (China)
Awards
*Special Jury Prize, Cannes, 2005
Note on Director:
Wang Xiaoshuai was born in Shanghai in 1966. His family moved to Guiyang when he was an infant and later to Wuhan. He attended a high school attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1981, took a course in direction at the Beijing Film Academy, graduating in 1989. His first two features were made as 'underground' projects, and he was briefly blacklisted by the Film Bureau. His first 'legal' feature, shot in 1996 but completed only in 1998, was made under the aegis of the Beijing Film Studio. His Beijing Bicycle fetched him the Silver Bear in Berlin in 2001. Wang Xiaoshuai has acted in a number of films for other directors. His film, Drifters, won the NETPAC Award and the Best Actor Award for its protagonist Duan Long at Cinefan in 2003.
Director's Comment:
The film is steeped in memories of the community I once lived in. My family's hometown was Shanghai, but we uprooted ourselves and moved with the factory that employed my mother to Guizhou Province - just as Qinghong's parents did in the film. My parents were among the countless Chinese workers and their families at that time who left their native cities and scattered across the nation's interior. By the time I was approaching adulthood, my own generation had begun to put down roots in the new, inland communities. But our parents, realising the momentousness of the change taking place in China, started to devise ways of returning to our original homes. The adults in the film face exactly this problem…. This film is one I have long wanted to make. It is dedicated to my parents and to the many others who shared a similar destiny.
Director's Comment:
The film is steeped in memories of the community I once lived in. My family's hometown was Shanghai, but we uprooted ourselves and moved with the factory that employed my mother to Guizhou Province - just as Qinghong's parents did in the film. My parents were among the countless Chinese workers and their families at that time who left their native cities and scattered across the nation's interior. By the time I was approaching adulthood, my own generation had begun to put down roots in the new, inland communities. But our parents, realising the momentousness of the change taking place in China, started to devise ways of returning to our original homes. The adults in the film face exactly this problem…. This film is one I have long wanted to make. It is dedicated to my parents and to the many others who shared a similar destiny.
Select Filmography:
Drifters, 2003
After War, 2002
Beijing Bicycle, 2001
So Close to Paradise, 1998
Frozen, 1996
Suicides, 1994
The Days, 1993