Xiu Xiu - The Sent Down Girl
by Joan Chen
China
Script: Yan Geling, Joan Chen
Cinematographer: Lu Yue
Editing: Ruby Yang
Sound: Jay Boekelheide
Music: Johnny Chen
Cast: Lu Lu Lopsang, Gao Jie, Lu Yue, Yan Ping, Wang Wenliang, Min Jiangchi
Production: Whispering Steppes L.P.
Distribution:
I.D. Distribution
9 rue de Mulhouse
75002 Paris
Tel: 0033 1.42.33.25.07
Fax: 0033 1.42.33.25.89
Mail: [email protected]
www.iddistribution.com
Year: 1997
35 mm, Colour, 100 min
OV Mandarin with French Subtitles
In 1975, while China witnesses the death throes of the Cultural evolution, Xiu Xiu, the daughter of tailor in Chengdu, is sent to the country to do a "mass rehabilitation program". She is among the last ones to join the revolutionary movement which had enrolled seven and a half million young intellectuals and whose objectives are now seriously criticised. During six months, Xiu Xiu looks after the horses while she is promised a female cavalry battalion soon. She does not know that such battalions do not exist any more and that no one will come to look for her is this remote place. Lao Jin, her 'instructor' is a Tibetan shepherd who feels closer to his horses than to his Chinese and Tibetan neighbours who look at him as a pariah. Both of them have to share a shabby army tent….
Joan Chen was an actress in Shanghai before taking exile in the USA. Through the eyes of Xiu Xiu, she made a film about her own youth, paying a tribute to the young victims of the Cultural Revolution and calling for individual resistance.
