Known for Acting
1993 film
Often cited as China’s first independent feature film, this low-budget drama, filmed largely in the director’s Beijing apartment, depicts the life of a single mother (a topic considered taboo at the time) caring for her mentally challenged son. Shot with a documentary aesthetic that includes interviews with families of mentally challenged persons, the film helped kick-start the Sixth Generation of filmmakers (including Wang Xiaoshuai and Jia Zhangke) and their ethos of employing documentary realism to depict the true conditions of contemporary China.
The story takes place in Xinzhuang Village in western Henan Province. Due to poverty, Heidun (played by Li Wangxiong) has not yet married and started a family at the age of 27. Ding Yunhe (played by Yu Shaokang) is a retired railway worker who has a unique skill in growing melons.The village party secretary Zhang Migui (played by Yang Zichun) was initially opposed to everyone abandoning the farm to plant melons. Now after the melon farmers harvested a good harvest, he refused to pay Ding Yunhe a large amount of remuneration according to the contract. He began to fabricate baseless charges against Ding Yunhe and took advantage of everyone's small-scale farmer consciousness to defraud Ding Yunhe. Ding Yunhe received the reward he deserved, and organized a farce to catch the rapist, falsely accusing him of having an affair with the landlady. Ding Yunhe angrily left this dishonest village.
The life of the 13th-century Venetian explorer who sought to connect the civilizations of China and Europe through trade.
Ten years before the outbreak of the Second World War in Asia, a Japanese Go master and his Chinese rival meet in China to play a game of Go (loosely described as an Asian version of chess). It soon becomes evident that the Chinese master's son is the most talented player that the Japanese master has ever encountered, and he convinces the boy's father to let him bring the child back to Japan to train him as a professional Go player. Years pass, and as the young Chinese master grows to maturity in Japan, the Japanese invasion of China forces him to choose between his triumphant career and his loyalty to his native country. His decision is complicated by his marriage to the daughter of the Japanese master, with whom he has produced a child. His choice will profoundly alter the lives of two families. Their saga serves as a reflection of the tragic relations between their two great countries, and the possibility of reconciliation and healing.
Xia Zhenglan is a young beautiful ballerina, and bride. On her wedding night, her husband dies oddly which causes her to become mentally deranged. The police become suspicious of her actions which forces her to be drawn into the fight for her life.
