Sacrificed Youth [青春祭]

Released: 1985 Viewed: 2016

This is one of the earliest films about sent-down youths during the Cultural Revolution.  It is based on a (presumably autobiographical)  novel by Zhang Manling.

Seventeen year old Li Chun [Li Gengxu]  is sent to a remote Dai village in rural Yunnan. Her father and (later) her mother are in (unspecified) trouble with the authorities and have also been exiled.

She stays in the home of Dadie [Song Tao], head of the village co-operative and his ageing mother Ya. At first, Li Chun finds it difficult to fit in with the local girls who are much more casual in their approach to life than she is used to. She notes that she is awarded only six work points while all the other girls get eight (and Yibo [Yu Da], the prettiest girl in the village, gets 10). Gradually, however, she begins to fit in and starts to wear Dai clothing. But she always remains aware of her (implicitly superior) Han ethnicity.

The Dai are a patriarchal society and women get to do lots of heavy work including carrying water (a  shame for men to do), working in the rice paddies, and clearing bamboo. But the tone of the film overall is quite positive (despite the 100 rainy days per year).

The film is an affectionate and largely ethnographic account of a young urban woman’s sojourn in a rural village. The emphasis is very much on Li Chun’s maturation as she comes to terms with the dramatically different life, the cycle of life and death and her own budding sexuality. She flirts subtly (unlike Dai girls, Han women cannot flirt openly) with fellow sent-down youth Renjia [Feng Yuanzheng]. But Dadie’s son, Dage [Guo Jianguo] is in love with her and clashes with Renjia. Warned by Yibo, Li Chun leaves the village and moves to a different area.

The story if always engaging and the film must (in its original format) have looked striking: all fogs and flickering firelight.

But one weakness is that the story is always seen from the perspective of the outsider. We know nothing at all about how the Dai villagers saw this process. The film makes little comment on the sending-down policy (perhaps unnecessary for the audience of the time) but it also says little about broader power inequalities such as the relationship between the Han majority and minorities such as Dai (the film does include some (untranslated) Dai dialogue) or the patriarchal nature of Dai society.

Director Zhang Nuanxin was one of the few female Fourth Generation directors (indeed, one of the few Chinese women directors in any period).  She graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1962 but her career was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution and she directed her first film only in 1981. Tragically she died early (of cancer) in 1995 having made only a handful of movies.