'Red Amnesia' brings China's reflection into Venice

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Chuangru zhe, or Red Amnesia, by Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai, aroused reflection on China as the film competing for the Golden Lion was officially presented at the ongoing Venice film festival on Thursday.

A poster of "Red Amnesia" [File photo]

 

The film's protagonist, Deng, is a retired widow who spends her days caring about her two grown up sons and her elderly mother. But her daily routine starts derailing when she keeps receiving anonymous phone calls and harassment.

Who is the intruder? The humanized ghosts in this film are demons of the heart, the burden in all people's life, Wang told a press conference.

But observed from multilevel angles, what Deng suffers are also the fears of Chinese older generations "who have lost their consciousness," he stressed.

"People aged 70 today grown up around 1949, after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, dedicated their entire life to the construction of their home country, to the others and to their family," Wang elaborated.

Over the past 30 years, China has experienced rapid economic growth but also some disorder in society's values, the main actress Lu Zhong told Xinhua. Acknowledgement of past errors, she highlighted, can benefit her country and help build a better future.

Chuangru zhe, she noted, portrays the universal sense of loneliness and generation gap of the world's elderly, but also the individual hardship of a woman who lived through a special period of China's history.

The film's premiere was warmly welcomed in Venice by a large audience of international cinema professionals who said they appreciated a variety of elements, from the technique and recitation to the story.

"Deep reflection about China's recent history is a new and very interesting angle of this film," a cinema expert at an Italian publishing group, Federica Guarnieri, told Xinhua after watching Chuangru zhe.

Another viewer who defined herself as a "China and cinema enthusiast," Valentina Sangiorgi, said she has started studying Chinese in recent times.

"Cinema is important to learn new words and aspects of contemporary China that I had only approached in books so far," she added.

An Italian movie director, Giorgio Grasso, said he particularly liked the technique and recitation of Chuangru zhe. "I loved some details in the photograph as well as the main actress' recitation. She was sublime," he told Xinhua.

As a highly experienced stage actress from Beijing People's Art Theatre, Lu is 73 years old and she has played in several films.

In Grasso's view, Chuangru zhe marks the increasing quality rise of Chinese cinema that year after year is better known and appreciated at the international level.

A total of seven Chinese-language works were presented in the 71st Venice film festival, which also hosted for the first time a China Film Forum entirely dedicated to the Asian country.

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