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Bamboo Shoots
U.S. PREMIERE : DIRECTOR PRESENT
Director: JIAN YI
A naïve older gentleman attempts to save both himself and his entire village from complete humiliation by intercepting a care package to township offi cials that contains a most inappropriate New Year’s gift in producer/writer/editor/director Jian Yi’s playful satire of petty politics.
Old Yang (Wang Jianbao) is a fifty-something commoner who mistakes a prophylactic for a preservative and respectfully throws it in along with some bamboo shoots being sent to township offi cials as a New Years gift. Upon realizing the true purpose of the presumed preservative, the desperate Old Yang embarks on a Quixotic quest to retrieve the errant package before it reaches its intended destination.
An immediate and evocative journey through contemporary rural China, first fiction feature prize in Montreal. The film by independent director, visual artist and author, Jian Yi, comes out of a studio that has done more than 10 documentaries on Chinese village life. (*His definitive portrait of Chinese youth (2007), Super Girls, unscheduled as yet, may get an added fest spot while he is here, so check “Festo-O-Grams.”)
Party to follow
CHINA • 2007 • 104 MINUTES • DIRECTOR: JIAN YI
Comments
Bamboo Shoots
This is an amazing film, an anti-melodrama with the gritty realism of a documentary. It parodies a familiar plot—the poor commoner petitioning to ever-higher levels of government. But in this case the commoner is is not pressing a grievance, but simply trying to track down a cardboard carton of bamboo shoots containing a potentially offensive item. Along the way, he meets many people who are being displaced, exploited, or left behind by China’s economic boom, and a group of people who have found their own way of opting out of a society increasingly fueled by greed.
This film is all the more
This film is all the more amazing considering that the director made it in his home town (I think he said Mao was born there) and used entirely non-actors – family members and friends. It is in a documentary style (partly to make it easier on the non-actors) which adds a nice touch of realism to fascinating story providing a glimpse and commentary about life in rural/urban China. The film certainly won’t be shown in an theater in China. Indeed, the director thinks he is most likely on the government blacklist but is still able to make films, such as this one, that can be shown outside the country and which will hopefully provide documentation about conditions today for the next generation.
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