Art College 1994 tells a story of a group of friends studying at an unnamed art school in the early 90s China. They go through their everyday lives as people in their early twenties tend to anywhere in the world: being brave, lazy, and foolish; questioning the meaning of life and the meaning of art; falling in love and experiencing heartbreak; dreaming of possible and impossible futures; drinking beer; listening to music; laughing; throwing stones into the river.
All of this is captured lovingly and in incredible detail by the director and his visual team. Every frame is a masterpiece full of carefully rendered details: from crumpled papers in the grass, to peeling posters on the walls, to an old mop leaning in the corner. Although the city where the story takes place is not specified, anyone familiar with Nanjing will easily recognize its iconic views recreated beautifully on screen: from glimpses of the Sacred Way of the Ming Mausoleum to the silhouette of the Purple Mountain looming in the background. The characters hang out at the shores of Zixia lake and on the Yangtze River Bridge. The 'art college' in the title is modelled on the School of Arts of Nanjing University.
This visual feast, however, is only one of the film's strengths. The characters - goofy, talented, hapless, eccentric - are memorable and relatable. We share their joys and sorrows and desperately hope that they will make it, sane and unharmed, through the mess of young adulthood. One of the greatest gifts of this film is that you don't need to have a particular interest in China or in the world of art to enjoy it (even though either or both will help to provide a bit more context to the action and conversation on screen). The main thing you need is to remember what those summer nights out drinking with friends felt like, and how the coming dawn could leave you tittering on the edge of the abyss of the tomorrow you were too scared to face. Capturing these fragile, fleeting moments is a remarkable achievement of the creative team behind Art College 1994.
I hope more people will get a chance to immerse themselves in this film's lovingly constructed universe: a bubble of time and place miraculously rescued from the great rush of changes that China's next three decades would bring. It's such a special space - the one I'm certain to revisit.
