Synopsis
"Yellow Earth" (黄土地, 1984) is a landmark Chinese drama by director Chen Kaige — watch online on iFILM. The cinematography is by Zhang Yimou, working years before his own directing career began. The year is 1939, the setting a remote corner of Shaanxi province, and an Eighth Route Army soldier has arrived to collect folk songs.
He stays with a widowed peasant farmer and his two children. The younger daughter, Cuiqiao, is already pledged to a man she has never met. The soldier carries news of another world — one where women have a say in such things — and Cuiqiao holds onto that idea with the kind of hope that is painful to watch.
Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou built the film's argument in images: the loess plateaus fill the frame almost completely, and the human figures at the bottom are tiny. That scale says more than any dialogue could. Selected for the 1985 Berlin International Film Festival, the film announced Chinese Fifth Generation cinema to the world. Stream "Yellow Earth" (1984) online on iFILM.
Starring
Recommendations
Comments 0