Chinese Film

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 10, 2007

Harrison Kash
(417) 625-9614

 

JOPLIN, MO (SNS) - The next film in the Chinese Film Festival at Missouri Southern State University will be Farewell My Concubine (Ba wang bie ji).

The film will be shown at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 18  in Cornell Auditorium in Plaster Hall at MSSU.

Directed by Chen Kaige (1993), this is a drama of epic sweep, with a trio of main characters who share a complex bond: two Chinese opera stars that have become famous for playing a king and his concubine in the title opera; and a feisty yet vulnerable prostitute, whom one of them marries.

The stories of the characters play out in a sweeping background that covers the Japanese defeat of China in the 1930's, the surrender of the Japanese at the end of World War II, the rule of the Nationalist Government, the Communist victory in 1949 and, finally, the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

Chicago Sun-Times reviewer Roger Ebert has written:

“Farewell, My Concubine is a demonstration of how a great epic can function. I was generally familiar with the important moments in modern Chinese history, but this film helped me to feel and imagine what it was like to live in the country during those times. Like such dissimilar films as Dr. Zhivago and A Passage to India, it took me to another place and time, and made it emotionally comprehensible.”

The film at MSSU is free and open to the public.

 

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