Rare screenings of THE OLD WELL and RIVER WITHOUT BUOYS in Los Angeles. Pictured: Wu Tianming (2nd from left) and Zhang Yimou (2nd from right) on the set of THE OLD WELL.
The COB remembers the accomplished director who died this past March 4. As chief of the Xi’an Film Studio in the 1980s, Wu Tianming nurtured the groundbreaking cinema of the Chinese Fifth Generation. The COB Tribute revives two rarely screened landmark early works by Wu.
The Old Well 1986 (http: //global.ucla.edu/cob/film/10733)
老井 (Lao jing)
Director: Wu Tianming (吴天明）
Cast: Zhang Yimou, Lv Liping, Liang Yujin, Xie Yan, Niu Xingli
HDCam, color, in Mandarin w/ English s/t, 130 min.
In China’s mountainous interior region, a village struggles to find and maintain a water supply. Shooting against stunning highland backdrops, director Wu Tianming brings an almost ethnographic attention to the villagers for whom the dangerous, sometimes deadly endeavor has become a collective obsession. Woven into the story are the romantic entanglements of a prominent well-digger played by Wu protégé Zhang Yimou, soon to be internationally acclaimed for Red Sorghum (1987). – Paul Malcolm
In person:
Robert Rosen (Dean Emeritus, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television)
Janet Wu Yanyan (daughter of the late Wu Tianming)
LA Saturday, October 18, 7:30 pm • UCLA Film & Television Archive @ Billy Wilder Theater
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River Without Buoys 1983 (http: //global.ucla.edu/cob/film/10734)
没有航标的河流 (Meiyou hangbiao de heliu)
Director: Wu Tianming
Cast: Li Wei, Tang Qingming, Hu Ronghua, Li Shulan, Song Baosen, Chen Huifen
35mm (TBC), color, in Mandarin w/ English s/t, 99 min.
Wu Tianming’s early, elegiac reflection on the Cultural Revolution frames the tumultuous period through the reminiscences of an embittered rafter on the Xiao River. As Pan Laowu and his two raft-mates drift downstream to the city, his thoughts turn to the past and the violent forces that shaped his and his country’s destiny. Wu suffuses the film with the realism he championed as head of the Xi’an Film Studio and builds a seamless flow between past and present. – Paul Malcolm
LA Sunday, October 26, 7:00 pm • UCLA Film & Television Archive @ Billy Wilder Theater
Published: Saturday, September 6, 2014
