The ghost of the USSR hovered at the Chinese film festival in Moscow

Film screening “Meeting in Russia” introduced hits from Beijing

Moscow hosts the “Meet Russia” festival, which showcases relatively recent films dated mainly from 2019, selected by the China National Film Museum. The festival has become a kind of replacement for the film screenings of European countries that have become a thing of the past. There was no official delegation from Beijing as entry into the country from China was allowed when screenings began.

Director of the National Film Museum of China Chen Lin made a video message, and the audience had the opportunity to take a short tour of its halls. If not for the pandemic and its consequences, a grandiose exhibition could have been organized in Moscow, but so far we have limited ourselves to a modest movement about the milestones of the great Chinese cinema.

The festival opened with the spy thriller Over the Cliff by perhaps the most famous and titled Chinese director Zhang Yimou. At the Moscow exhibition, a personal stand was dedicated to him. Separately presented and his famous painting “Red Kaoliang” in 1987 with the participation of his favorite actress Gong Li. Imou is a two-time winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, a two-time British BAFTA winner, a Grand Prix winner at the Cannes Film Festival, and a three-time Oscar nominee. He made the films “House of Flying Daggers”, “Shanghai Triad”, “Hero”, “Shadow”. More than a decade ago, at the Busan Film Festival, Asia’s largest film festival, tickets for his film “Under the Hawthorn” sold out online in a record 18 seconds.

Zhang Yimou twice became the director of the grandiose opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics – in the summer of 2008 and in the winter of 2020-20. At the same time, in 2019, the world premiere of his film One Second about the Cultural Revolution in China, scheduled for the Berlinale, did not take place due to pressure from the Chinese leadership. Prior to this, Imou was awarded three times in Berlin. He received the Golden Bear for Red Kaoliang, the Silver Bear for The Way Home, and the Festival Founder’s Alfred Bauer Prize for Innovation for Hero. Yimou was himself a victim of the Cultural Revolution. He was expelled from school, sent to an educational and correctional commune because of his brother, who did not prove himself in those troubled years, not as it should be. And his painting “To Live”, which received the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1994, is banned from showing in China.

The action of the film “Over the Cliff” takes place in the early 1930s in the puppet state of Manchukuo, created by the Japanese military as a springboard for an attack on China. The snow does not stop there for a minute, and on the screen we see magnificent snow-white landscapes, a winter forest of fabulous beauty, powdered streets of a city reminiscent of Harbin. Many of the signs are in Russian. It seems that the city is inhabited exclusively by spies and secret agents, many of whom were trained in the USSR. The heroes say so: “They were trained in the USSR. They are the best”.

The ghost of the Soviet Union is in the air. The heroes take out a first-aid kit, and on one of the packages there is an inscription in Russian: “Bandage”. A secret “Morning operation” is being carried out, during which it is necessary to transport a witness of war crimes of the Japanese army abroad. Only in the finale does the snow stop, the sun shines brightly, and everything is resolved in the best possible way. Urban scenes were most likely filmed in scenery where everything takes place on two or three streets, and all life there is concentrated on a small heel, then winter nature was filmed in the forests of Manchuria at 35-degree frost. Only Zhang Yimou is capable of such grandiose scenes.

During the festival, the fantastic thriller The Wandering Earth by Frant Gwo, the animated film Nezha by Yang Yu based on the 16th-century Chinese classic novel Dedication of the Gods were shown. Almanac “I and my homeland” is like greetings from the past. It consists of seven short stories filmed by several directors led by Cannes Palme d’Or and Golden Globe winner Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine). The almanac tells about the greatness of China and was filmed for the 70th anniversary of the PRC, hence the absolute officialdom with a demonstration of the main attraction of Beijing – the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, which has seen a lot in its lifetime, but about which only what is permissible is told. The greatness of the army and the flight of the Chinese astronaut, the spirit of the common people are demonstrated.

The most intimate story of all presented is the documentary “The Moon in Your Hands” (directed by Zhang Xianfeng) about the oldest poetess and literary critic Ye Chian. She is over ninety. She was born in 1924. In 1942, as a young girl, she wrote poems about her experiences during the Japanese occupation in China. Ye Chian has taught at Harvard and Michigan Universities and lived and worked in Vancouver for a long time. It seemed that the main thing in her life had been done. Daughters became independent. But during the trip, the eldest of them died in a car accident along with her husband. At a very old age, Ye Chian returned to her homeland, where she had no one, and began to teach. Her numerous students also achieved high degrees. The picture contains impressive landscapes of ancient China, wall paintings and sculptures created many centuries ago. And the heroine herself has already become a living relic.