Zheng Junli: From Shanghai’s Golden Age to the Cultural Revolution

Zheng Junli: From Shanghai’s Golden Age to the Cultural Revolution

October 3–November 16, 2019

Anchored by new restorations from the China Film Archive, this series explores the extraordinary career of Zheng Junli, an actor, director, film theorist, and victim of the Cultural Revolution.

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  • Black-and-white film still of a smiling couple holding hands in a sparse interior, woman in patterned qipao.

    Struggling

  • New Women

  • The Spring River Flows East

  • The Big Road

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Struggling

    Shi Dongshan
    China, 1932

    Digital Restoration

    Thursday, October 3 7 PM
    Introduction by Paul Fonoroff and Weihong Bao; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

    The tale of a young woman’s battle against her bullying father expands into a rousing cry against all tyranny in Shi Dongshan’s strikingly fresh 1932 melodrama, recently rediscovered through a brilliant restoration from the China Film Archive.

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  • The Blood of Passion on the Volcano

    Sun Yu
    China, 1932

    Digital Restoration

    Friday, October 4 7 PM
    Introduction by Paul Fonoroff and Weihong Bao; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

    A warlord’s lusty nephew destroys a simple farming family’s pastoral idyll and sends its favorite son into tropical exile in Sun Yu’s delirious fusion of Chinese peasant drama with Hollywood-style island exotica.

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  • Crows and Sparrows

    Zheng Junli
    China, 1950

    Digital Restoration

    Crows and Sparrows also screens with a lecture by UC Berkeley professor Weihong Bao on Saturday, November 16.

    Sunday, October 6 1:30 PM
    Introduction by Paul Fonoroff

    A Shanghai apartment building serves as a microcosm of China’s class struggles in Zheng Junli’s striking urban drama, filmed during the last days of China’s Nationalist rule and already looking forward to, as one character says, “a New Society.”

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  • RESCHEDULED—The Spring River Flows East

    Cai Chusheng, Zheng Junli
    China, 1947

    Digital Restoration

    Rescheduled
    This film has been rescheduled to screen Saturday, November 16.

    Thursday, October 10 6:30 PM

    Included on the Hong Kong Film Awards list of the greatest Chinese-language films of all time, this decades-spanning epic following a couple’s separation during the Sino-Japanese War has been called China’s Gone with the Wind.

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  • Nie Er

    Zheng Junli
    China, 1959

    Digital Restoration

    Saturday, October 12 5:45 PM
    Introduction by Weihong Bao

    Shot in gorgeous color, this fascinating communist flipside to fifties Hollywood music biopics chronicles the life and tragic early death of Nie Er, the composer of the PRC’s national anthem.

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  • Husband and Wife

    Zheng Junli
    China, 1951

    Digital Restoration

    Sunday, October 20 4:30 PM

    A Shanghai intellectual marries an illiterate peasant woman–turned–collectivist hero in this Maoist take on the Hollywood marriage melodrama, as fascinating an example of genre filmmaking in the PRC as you’ll find.

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  • CANCELED—New Women

    Cai Chusheng
    China, 1935

    Canceled
    This screening has been canceled due to the UC Berkeley campus power shutdown. Please watch this page for ticket refund information.

    Digital Restoration

    Saturday, October 26 7:30 PM
    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

    A strong-willed teacher and writer (Ruan Lingyu) is driven to despair by gossip and lecherous men in this hard-hitting melodrama that gained further power from Ruan’s own post-filming suicide.

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  • The Big Road

    Sun Yu
    China, 1935

    Digital Restoration

    Saturday, November 2 5:30 PM
    Introduction by Weihong Bao; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

    A group of Chinese youth awaken to their patriotic duty while building a strategic highway in Sun Yu’s stirring agitprop drama, set during the Japanese invasion and starring a who’s-who of legendary Chinese actors, including Jin Yan (the “Chinese Valentino”), Zheng Junli, and Li Lili.

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  • The Spring Comes to the Withered Tree

    Zheng Junli
    China, 1961
    Sunday, November 10 1 PM

    Two rural lovers—one struck with a deadly disease—encounter both disaster and hope in Zheng’s intriguing merger of Soviet-style socialist realism with his own blossoming experiments in cinematic technique.

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  • The Spring River Flows East

    Cai Chusheng, Zheng Junli
    China, 1947

    Digital Restoration

    This screening replaces the reprise of Crows and Sparrows, which had played previously on October 6. We apologize for any inconvenience.

    Saturday, November 16 7:30 PM

    Included on the Hong Kong Film Awards list of the greatest Chinese-language films of all time, this decades-spanning epic following a couple’s separation during the Sino-Japanese War has been called China’s Gone with the Wind.

    View Details