Xie Jin's widescreen, color epic chronicles the life of one of China's outstanding heroines, the poet and revolutionary Qiu Jin, who struggled against the Qing Dynasty (1844-1911) and died a martyr in 1907. Born into wealth, Qiu Jin married a government lackey and wrote many poems lamenting her purposeless, confined existence. Eventually, she left him and their children for the life of a revolutionary. But, as director Xie Jin has noted, "During the last years of the Qing Dynasty people generally had little political consciousness. Qiu Jin felt lonely and indignant.... Before her execution, she hastily wrote the now often quoted lines, 'Autumn's wind and rain pierce me to death.' Frederick Engels said, 'Indignation makes a poet.' It was this indignation that made Qiu Jin a poet and a revolutionary." Qiu Jin's combination of bitter pragmatism (before her death she founded a magazine devoted to women's emancipation) and poetic idealism ("Do not tell me a girl cannot be a hero/ Night after night/ My sword sings above my head") form the basis for this portrait, set against a vivid tableau of the socio-political scene in China on the eve of the 1911 Revolution. (Selected for Filmex '85 and San Francisco International Film Festival '85.)