The Monkey Kid
(Hou Sanr)
by Wang Xiao-Yen
China
Script: Wang Xiao-Yen
Cinematographer: Li Xiong
Editing: Andy Martin, Wang Yen, Wang Xiao-Yen
Sound: Zhang Shanyan
Music: Li Xin-Cao
Cast: Fu Di, Fang Shu, Yang Guang, Yang Lin, Chang Hung-Mei Wang Yang, Zhao Yi-Jun, Cao Yi, Du Chang-Tai, Shi Teh-Rong
Production: The Beijing San Francisco Film Group
Distribution:
Les Films du Paradoxe
BP 47
92270 Bois Colombes
France
Tel: 0033 1.46.49.33.33
Fax: 0033 1.46.49.32.23
Mail: [email protected]
www.filmsduparadoxe.com
Year: 1994
35 mm, Colour, 95 min
OV Mandarin with French Subtitles
Cannes Film Festival 1995
Grand Prize at Aubervilliers Film Festival 1996
We are in 1970. Shi-Wei is a nine-year-old school girl during the Cultural Revolution. Her parents and her brother have been sent to a rehabilitation camp to be taught 'the lesson of the peasants'. Left alone with her sister in Peking, she tries to organise her life with the help oh her neighbour. The sons of the workers living in a close by housing estate pester her and her friends, calling them “Intellectual”. The fearless young girl fights back. Carefree as any girl of her age, she enjoys jumping from her cupboard with her umbrella by way of a parachute; she reaches school late and plays blind man's buff on the fifth floor balcony ledge…
“The Story of The Monkey Kid is the story of millions of children of my generation whose intellectual parents were sent to the country. It is based on my childhood's experience. All the stories are true stories. When I was a child, my parents preserved us from the atrocities which took place every day. Every Chinese has been marked by the ideology and the process of the Cultural Revolution.” Wiao-Yen Wang
