Red Sorghum (1987)

红高粱

91 min ·Not Rated

DramaWar

based on novel or bookrural areadistillery1940sjapanese occupation of chinawar crime

An old leper who owned a remote sorghum winery dies. Jiu'er, the wife bought by the leper, and her lover, identified only as "my Grandpa" by the narrator, take over the winery and set up an idealized quasi-matriarchal community headed by Jiu'er. When the Japanese invaders subject the area to their rule and cut down the sorghum to make way for a road, the community rises up and resists as the sorghum grows anew.

Flocks 1

Fifth Generation Chinese Cinema 1 members · 38 movies

The Fifth Generation (第五代) are the Beijing Film Academy's landmark class of 1982 — the first cohort admitted after the Cultural Revolution, trained in a system that had been shuttered for over a decade. Their films rejected the socialist-realist tradition of earlier Communist-era cinema, replacing ideological didacticism with visually lush, allegorical work rooted in Chinese history, folk memory, and landscape. Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige, 1984), shot by Zhang Yimou as cinematographer, is considered the movement's founding text. Zhang Yimou (张艺谋, born 1950) became the most internationally celebrated Chinese filmmaker of his generation: Red Sorghum won the Golden Bear at Berlin (1988); Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, and To Live are among the great films of the 1990s. He later moved into wuxia spectacle (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) and directed both Beijing Olympics ceremonies (2008 and 2022). Chen Kaige (陈凯歌, born 1952) directed Farewell My Concubine (1993), the first Chinese film to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes — a sweeping epic about performance, identity, sexuality and loyalty across decades of Chinese history. Tian Zhuangzhuang (田壮壮, born 1952) represents the movement's most uncompromising pole: The Horse Thief (1986) and The Blue Kite (1993) pushed formal and political limits that neither colleague dared approach.