“Summer Knight” is the first feature film by You Xing and Winner of the Asian Future Best Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2019. It is also the first Chinese language production made by Xs Media (“A Kid like Jake” 2018) and Untitled Entertainment (“Margin Call” 2011).
“Summer Knight” is available from Flash Forward Entertainment
In the summer of 1997, set before the Hong Kong handover, schoolboy Tian-tian attempts to capture the bike thief, but he is stopped by his family which puts him in a moral quandary. Being disappointed by the indifference of his family and submissive to the bullies at school, Tian-tian is eager to search for the meaning of justice. Therefore, he finally plucks up the courage and decides to capture the bike thief on his own.
The nostalgic drama plays within a modest Chinese family. Tian-Tian’s mother is abroad in Japan to provide a living for her parents,...
“Summer Knight” is available from Flash Forward Entertainment
In the summer of 1997, set before the Hong Kong handover, schoolboy Tian-tian attempts to capture the bike thief, but he is stopped by his family which puts him in a moral quandary. Being disappointed by the indifference of his family and submissive to the bullies at school, Tian-tian is eager to search for the meaning of justice. Therefore, he finally plucks up the courage and decides to capture the bike thief on his own.
The nostalgic drama plays within a modest Chinese family. Tian-Tian’s mother is abroad in Japan to provide a living for her parents,...
- 4/4/2020
- by Alexander Knoth
- AsianMoviePulse
In his second part of an informal trilogy, director Li Yang critiques the patriarchal structures within the rural China. In 2003, his debut feature-length film “Blind Shaft” depicted the grim realities of the mining industry in his country of origin. To the director’s surprise, it was banned from release in China. The rebel director came back in 2007 with “Blind Mountain”, and in 2018 he managed to finish the trilogy with “Blind Way”, which focused on the problem of child beggars.
“Blind Mountain”uses documentary aesthetics to tell the story of young university student Bai Xuemei (Lu Huang). It opens with a scene of her in a bus driving into the region, and this is actually the last time we will be able to see her fully free and mobile. A couple of sequences later, she is kidnapped and sold as a wife to a backward family in a remote village.
“Blind Mountain”uses documentary aesthetics to tell the story of young university student Bai Xuemei (Lu Huang). It opens with a scene of her in a bus driving into the region, and this is actually the last time we will be able to see her fully free and mobile. A couple of sequences later, she is kidnapped and sold as a wife to a backward family in a remote village.
- 12/17/2019
- by Olek Młyński
- AsianMoviePulse
Often presented as a glossy corporate fantasia in the country’s government-approved commercial cinema, China tends to look like a very different place in the independent films that manage to escape its borders (and receive prominent exposure at festivals around the world).
Hardly a new phenomenon, this dichotomy seems to have grown even more severe with the last two generations of Chinese directors — while googly-eyed studio claptrap like “Monster Hunt” slays at the box office, scrappy, auteur-driven fare like Li Yang’s “Blind Mountain” and Diao Yinan’s “Black Coal, Thin Ice” paint the People’s Republic as a bleak wasteland where many laws don’t apply, and the ones that do seem sadistically designed to test the morality of the people they’re imposed upon. And, of course, to serve as prompts for some very dark thrillers.
Read More: Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films Picks Up Johnny Ma’s Debut Feature...
Hardly a new phenomenon, this dichotomy seems to have grown even more severe with the last two generations of Chinese directors — while googly-eyed studio claptrap like “Monster Hunt” slays at the box office, scrappy, auteur-driven fare like Li Yang’s “Blind Mountain” and Diao Yinan’s “Black Coal, Thin Ice” paint the People’s Republic as a bleak wasteland where many laws don’t apply, and the ones that do seem sadistically designed to test the morality of the people they’re imposed upon. And, of course, to serve as prompts for some very dark thrillers.
Read More: Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films Picks Up Johnny Ma’s Debut Feature...
- 11/29/2016
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Generally you can find plenty of information about your favorite stateside filmmaker, and depending on who they are (see: David Gordon Green), you can find a long list of potential upcoming projects to investigate. But being head-over-heels for a foreign director is a different story -- without the Hollywood system or independent film cliques to generate word of mouth or gossip, you can spend years without hearing a peep from even the biggest festival sweethearts, and only last week were were discussing around the Playlist water cooler where some of our favorite international filmmakers had gone in the last few years.
As we were pondering the status of these auteurs, good news hit the trades: Arnaud Desplechin's adaptation of Georges Devereux's "Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian" found a star in Benicio Del Toro and would be shooting June 18th in Michigan. Titled "Jimmy Picard," Del Toro would play the...
As we were pondering the status of these auteurs, good news hit the trades: Arnaud Desplechin's adaptation of Georges Devereux's "Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian" found a star in Benicio Del Toro and would be shooting June 18th in Michigan. Titled "Jimmy Picard," Del Toro would play the...
- 6/18/2012
- by The Playlist Staff
- The Playlist
"Chinese Whispers", a festival of contemporary films from China featuring works by sixth generation film makers, begins in New Delhi from Tuesday.
The April 6-27 festival will be held at the India International Centre (Iic). The sixth generation directors (1935-95), whose demanding dramas have won praise at festivals around the world and censure in their homeland, are successors to the famous fifth generation of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. However, their films are worlds removed from the "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Farewell, My Concubine" - those gorgeous parables of love, steeped in Oriental exoticism. In general, the fifth generation made pretty films, set in the rural past; the sixth generation made gritty films set in the urban present. Emperors and concubines have been replaced by the grungy malcontents of Zhang Yuan's "Beijing Bastards (1993)", the sixth generation' first major film. With their flat generic titles, their movies are about ordinary...
The April 6-27 festival will be held at the India International Centre (Iic). The sixth generation directors (1935-95), whose demanding dramas have won praise at festivals around the world and censure in their homeland, are successors to the famous fifth generation of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. However, their films are worlds removed from the "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Farewell, My Concubine" - those gorgeous parables of love, steeped in Oriental exoticism. In general, the fifth generation made pretty films, set in the rural past; the sixth generation made gritty films set in the urban present. Emperors and concubines have been replaced by the grungy malcontents of Zhang Yuan's "Beijing Bastards (1993)", the sixth generation' first major film. With their flat generic titles, their movies are about ordinary...
- 4/4/2010
- by IANS
- DearCinema.com
My heartfelt thanks to Michael Hawley for sharing his preview of the current Sffs Screen lineup with Twitch.
* * * 2008 was a wildly ambitious year for the San Francisco Film Society (Sffs). In addition to presenting a stellar 51st Sf International Film Festival and launching two successful new mini-festivals—French Cinema Now and Québec Film Week—they also assumed stewardship of the 32-year-old Film Arts Foundation and its broad range of services for Bay Area filmmakers. And as if that wasn’t a plateful, they also jumped into the film exhibition business with the Sffs Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.
Inaugurated last June as a venue for week-long runs of films with limited distribution, the Sffs Screen played host for three of my favorite films of 2008: Yang Li’s Blind Mountain, Andrea Staka’s Fraulein and Khuat Akhmetov’s Wind Man. I would have attended with greater frequency, but often...
* * * 2008 was a wildly ambitious year for the San Francisco Film Society (Sffs). In addition to presenting a stellar 51st Sf International Film Festival and launching two successful new mini-festivals—French Cinema Now and Québec Film Week—they also assumed stewardship of the 32-year-old Film Arts Foundation and its broad range of services for Bay Area filmmakers. And as if that wasn’t a plateful, they also jumped into the film exhibition business with the Sffs Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.
Inaugurated last June as a venue for week-long runs of films with limited distribution, the Sffs Screen played host for three of my favorite films of 2008: Yang Li’s Blind Mountain, Andrea Staka’s Fraulein and Khuat Akhmetov’s Wind Man. I would have attended with greater frequency, but often...
- 2/4/2009
- by Michael Guillen
- Screen Anarchy
A movie that got the censors in China bent out of shape, "Blind Mountain," has made it to DVD, courtesy of Kino.
The bureaucrats in Beijing forced filmmaker Li Yang to make numerous cuts to the film before it could screen at Cannes 2007. But even trimmed, it is a stinging and frightening indictment of mainland China.
Bai, a recent college grad, is tricked into going to a remote village in the mountains of northern China.
She has been promised a well-paying job, but discovers quickly that she's been kidnapped and sold into marriage to a 40-year-old pig farmer with bad teeth.
The bureaucrats in Beijing forced filmmaker Li Yang to make numerous cuts to the film before it could screen at Cannes 2007. But even trimmed, it is a stinging and frightening indictment of mainland China.
Bai, a recent college grad, is tricked into going to a remote village in the mountains of northern China.
She has been promised a well-paying job, but discovers quickly that she's been kidnapped and sold into marriage to a 40-year-old pig farmer with bad teeth.
- 1/25/2009
- by By V.A. MUSETTO
- NYPost.com
By Michael Atkinson
There are two ways to take on Li Yang's potent, concise "Blind Mountain" (2007), and both have horns: as the howling social-critique screed it was intended to be, and as a Chinese realist version of the "white trash" exploitation epics of the American '60s and '70s -- which makes the dynamic of the story universally human, not exclusively Chinese. But Chinese it is in actuality, through and through: simply put, unemployed college grad Bai (Lu Huang) accepts a job to collect medicinal herbs in the remote northern country, and after landing in a secluded village wakes up to find herself literally sold into slavery, as a bought-and-paid-for bride for a local ne'er-do-well. Li's approach is dead serious, and he's helplessly critiquing not a single issue or socioeconomic condition, but the mercenary callousness of an entire people. I've never been to China, but the Chinese films I've...
There are two ways to take on Li Yang's potent, concise "Blind Mountain" (2007), and both have horns: as the howling social-critique screed it was intended to be, and as a Chinese realist version of the "white trash" exploitation epics of the American '60s and '70s -- which makes the dynamic of the story universally human, not exclusively Chinese. But Chinese it is in actuality, through and through: simply put, unemployed college grad Bai (Lu Huang) accepts a job to collect medicinal herbs in the remote northern country, and after landing in a secluded village wakes up to find herself literally sold into slavery, as a bought-and-paid-for bride for a local ne'er-do-well. Li's approach is dead serious, and he's helplessly critiquing not a single issue or socioeconomic condition, but the mercenary callousness of an entire people. I've never been to China, but the Chinese films I've...
- 1/13/2009
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
By Neil Pedley
This week, our cup runneth over with a "Karate Kid" knockoff, a shot-for-shot remake and more documentaries than Michael Moore can shake an overpriced hot dog at.
"Blind Mountain"
The recipient of plenty of acclaim at last year's Cannes Film Festival, director Li Yang has a casual yet immediate style that's been touted as something of a Chinese answer to Ken Loach. "Blind Mountain" offers an uncomfortable but powerful indictment of China's one child policy and the sex trade that has flourished under it. The film follows the desperate struggle of a young woman who accepts a job in a remote mountain village, only to discover that she has unwittingly been sold into marriage as a slave.
Opens in New York.
"Doomsday"
Before anyone had heard of Angelina Jolie, model-turned-actress Rhona Mitra was the original face of "Tomb Raider"'s Lara Croft. Ten years later, she's traded...
This week, our cup runneth over with a "Karate Kid" knockoff, a shot-for-shot remake and more documentaries than Michael Moore can shake an overpriced hot dog at.
"Blind Mountain"
The recipient of plenty of acclaim at last year's Cannes Film Festival, director Li Yang has a casual yet immediate style that's been touted as something of a Chinese answer to Ken Loach. "Blind Mountain" offers an uncomfortable but powerful indictment of China's one child policy and the sex trade that has flourished under it. The film follows the desperate struggle of a young woman who accepts a job in a remote mountain village, only to discover that she has unwittingly been sold into marriage as a slave.
Opens in New York.
"Doomsday"
Before anyone had heard of Angelina Jolie, model-turned-actress Rhona Mitra was the original face of "Tomb Raider"'s Lara Croft. Ten years later, she's traded...
- 3/10/2008
- by Neil Pedley
- ifc.com
Blind Mountain
CANNES -- Massive applause broke out at the end of the first press screening of Li Yang's extraordinary film Blind Mountain, and it was as much for its final act as for the quality of the picture. The film screened in Un Certain Regard. Even though Chinese authorities forced the director to make many cuts before it could be shown in Cannes, the movie retains enormous political impact as well as being a moving drama.
It tells what has been a sadly familiar story in China where hundreds of thousands of women and children have been abducted and sold into slavery. Few of them escape or are rescued. The film's economical style, vivid cinematography and tremendous acting should attract audiences far and wide.
Li Yang wastes no time getting his story, set in Northern China in the early 1990s, off to a frightening start. Bai Xeumei (Huang Lu) is an attractive and bright young university student keen to make some money to help defray her father's expenses for her education. Having no luck getting a job, she's delighted when a fellow student tells her about an opportunity to sell medical supplies to rural folk. The two young women travel with a well-dressed executive type far into the mountains. After they're given refreshments however, Xeumei's drink knocks her out. She wakes up to find her two traveling companions have gone and her ID is missing. A leering man named Degui (Yang Youan), with bad teeth and a ubiquitous cigarette, informs her she is now his bride. Scared and furious, Xuemei demands to be set free but the man's gnarled mother (Zhang Yuling) and ancient father (Jia Yinggao) tell her that she has been bought and paid for and must remain.
When the young woman resists all attempts to make her submit, Degui rapes her while his parents hold her down. Repeated defiance results in increasingly severe beatings and no one in the village thinks there's anything wrong with that.
Astonished to discover that several wives in the community have been kidnapped in the same way, Xeumei decides to acquiesce until she can find a way to escape. It's a tough learning curve as she finds every avenue is closed to her from the remote location to the unwillingness of anybody to do anything to help without being paid for it. Each time she tries to flee, she is caught and beaten.
The local teacher, Huang Decheng (He Yunle), who has a lesser education than she does, is friendly and then falls in love with. She responds and they make love but then they are caught and he is banished. Desperate for money, she sells herself to the local shopkeeper but after paying for a ride to the nearest town and then buying a bus ticket to the city, she finds not even the police will prevent her husband and his family from taking her back.
As the months go by, and Xeumei becomes pregnant, she pins her hopes on the letters she writes to her father that the local mailman promises to send off. A local kid named Quingshan (Zhang Youping) whom she teaches when his father can no longer afford to send him to school also becomes her ally.
Helped greatly by the work of Taiwanese cinematographer Jong Lin (Eat Drink Men Women), Yang conveys the insular traditions of the villagers while abhorring their brutality and greed. He draws wonderful performances from a cast that includes local amateurs and professionals, including the utterly credible Huang Lu, who plays the abducted woman with intelligence and indomitable grace.
BLIND MOUNTAIN
Studio Canal
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-producer: Li Yang
Executive producer: Li Shan, Alexandra Sun
Director of photography: Jong Lin
Art director: Shu Yang
Costume designer: Liu Yi
Cast:
Bai Xuemei: Huang Lu
Huang Degui: Yang Youan
Ding Xiuying: Zhang Yuling
Huang Decheng: He Yunie
Huang Changyi: Jia Yinggao
Li Qingshan: Zhang Youping
Running time -- 97 minutes
No MPAA rating...
It tells what has been a sadly familiar story in China where hundreds of thousands of women and children have been abducted and sold into slavery. Few of them escape or are rescued. The film's economical style, vivid cinematography and tremendous acting should attract audiences far and wide.
Li Yang wastes no time getting his story, set in Northern China in the early 1990s, off to a frightening start. Bai Xeumei (Huang Lu) is an attractive and bright young university student keen to make some money to help defray her father's expenses for her education. Having no luck getting a job, she's delighted when a fellow student tells her about an opportunity to sell medical supplies to rural folk. The two young women travel with a well-dressed executive type far into the mountains. After they're given refreshments however, Xeumei's drink knocks her out. She wakes up to find her two traveling companions have gone and her ID is missing. A leering man named Degui (Yang Youan), with bad teeth and a ubiquitous cigarette, informs her she is now his bride. Scared and furious, Xuemei demands to be set free but the man's gnarled mother (Zhang Yuling) and ancient father (Jia Yinggao) tell her that she has been bought and paid for and must remain.
When the young woman resists all attempts to make her submit, Degui rapes her while his parents hold her down. Repeated defiance results in increasingly severe beatings and no one in the village thinks there's anything wrong with that.
Astonished to discover that several wives in the community have been kidnapped in the same way, Xeumei decides to acquiesce until she can find a way to escape. It's a tough learning curve as she finds every avenue is closed to her from the remote location to the unwillingness of anybody to do anything to help without being paid for it. Each time she tries to flee, she is caught and beaten.
The local teacher, Huang Decheng (He Yunle), who has a lesser education than she does, is friendly and then falls in love with. She responds and they make love but then they are caught and he is banished. Desperate for money, she sells herself to the local shopkeeper but after paying for a ride to the nearest town and then buying a bus ticket to the city, she finds not even the police will prevent her husband and his family from taking her back.
As the months go by, and Xeumei becomes pregnant, she pins her hopes on the letters she writes to her father that the local mailman promises to send off. A local kid named Quingshan (Zhang Youping) whom she teaches when his father can no longer afford to send him to school also becomes her ally.
Helped greatly by the work of Taiwanese cinematographer Jong Lin (Eat Drink Men Women), Yang conveys the insular traditions of the villagers while abhorring their brutality and greed. He draws wonderful performances from a cast that includes local amateurs and professionals, including the utterly credible Huang Lu, who plays the abducted woman with intelligence and indomitable grace.
BLIND MOUNTAIN
Studio Canal
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-producer: Li Yang
Executive producer: Li Shan, Alexandra Sun
Director of photography: Jong Lin
Art director: Shu Yang
Costume designer: Liu Yi
Cast:
Bai Xuemei: Huang Lu
Huang Degui: Yang Youan
Ding Xiuying: Zhang Yuling
Huang Decheng: He Yunie
Huang Changyi: Jia Yinggao
Li Qingshan: Zhang Youping
Running time -- 97 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 5/21/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
- Lots of first time filmmakers make up this year's Un Certain Regard. Here is the complete list. (Still below: Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely)Bross Malos HABITOSValeria Bruni-tedeschi Le RÊVE De La Nuit D’Avant (Bad Habits)Carmen Castillo Calle Santa Fe (Santa Fe Sreet)Chung Lee Isaac Munyurangabo (Liberation Day)Lola Doillon Et Toi T’Es Sur Qui ?Enrique Fernandez & César Charlone El BAÑO Del Papa (And Along Come Tourists)Eran Kolirin Bikur HATIZMORETHarmony Korine Mister LONELYKadri KÕUSAAR Magnusli Yang Mang Shan (Blind Mountain)Daniele Luchetti Mio Fratello È Figlio Unico (My Brother Is An Only Child)Cristian Nemescu California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit) California Dreamin' (Endless)Jaime Rosales La Soledad (Fragments Of Loneliness) Barbet Schroeder L’Avocat De La TERREURCéline Sciamma Les PIEUVRESRobert Thalheim Am Ende Kommen TOURISTENEkachai Uekrongtham Kuaile Gongchang...
- 4/19/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.