Le cerf-volant bleu

This film is right up there in educating the masses on a bold, but chilling truth. The first time I saw this movie it not only made me cry, but it haunted me for weeks. Exposing the truth has been a difficult endeavor when it comes to China, but this is one of those films that has done it with grace and style.

This film is up there with the best of them; equal to The Horse Thief and the King of Masks , my other two favorite Chinese films. These films are generally superior to Hollywood films in every respect except bod office receipts; and that is an important exception. Movies are generally made for money, and this one did not make a lot of money. You can pretty much mark that up to massive Western ignorance of good Chinese cinema. Very few, if any, films about China illustrate the initiation of collectivism in the early days of the CCP. Then, without effort, the film glides to the elimination of private property and businesses, and then on to Hundred Flowers Campaign, which, to put it in simple terms for uninitiated Westerners, is like someone asking you for your honest opinion, and then putting you in jail after you give it. People who differed with the CCP during this period were known as rightests and counter-revolutionaries. In reality, the vast majority of people who rendered opinions, were merely rendering their opinions. For this, they were sent to work farms, prisons, and other places far away from home. This impacted on the most sacred part of Chinese tradition; the family. Unbelievably, the upheaval got worse with the Great Leap Forward, which was more like a great leap up and down without going anywhere. Needlessly killing sparrows for some obscure reason, and tryin to make steel from ordinary household items that contained only fragments of iron. It was as if an idiot was in charge of the country giving idiotic orders. After 20 years of chaos and labeling people things they were not even remotely guilty of, things actually got worse; The Cultural Revolution caused three times as many deaths as the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, yet, in the West, only one of a hundred Westerners knows anything about it. What could be worse than stating that schools and books were useless? Leaving young gangs roving the streets to commit horrendous crimes. Replacing all parts of society's leaders with inexperienced youth. Brilliant. Hospitals struggling with doctors and nurses and replacing them with clueless students, who allowed millions to die because they didnt know what to do. No education, health care or business was tolerated. Brilliant. All this ended with Deng Xiaopeng in 1978, and now you know why he ran over the students in Tiananmen Square in 1989. No more Cultural Revolutions would be tolerated in China. No more student takeovers. China had learned its lesson, but the West condemned Tiananmen Square because they were totally ignorant of Chinese History. The film shows all of these events up to 1968, and does it with the greatest of ease. Great directing and cast.

Superbly put together, this film gives an accurate portrayal of events during three revolutionary movements which make up some of the most appalling events that took place during the first thirty years of the People's Republic of China's existence.

Orocolorado's comments are tedious and naive; they betray a complete lack of understanding of what these periods of Chinese history were about, and what people living through those terrible times experienced and how they had to learn to cope with their circumstances.

It is a shame that these days we have been fed such a vast amount of exaggerated Hollywood material, that only that which is larger than life can be seen to be a true representation of anything.

According to some sort of reason, I didn't know this movie until these days. After watching it, I cannot stop thinking this might not be true, but I know it is a real story. Or I'd rather say "they are real" because this kind of story almost happened in every Chinese family.It might be fortunate that I'v got a complete family, but I can imagine what would happen if they, my parents, were not so lucky.

Everything in the story are as real as they might be. To stigmatize and to be stigmatized, to live and to die, to resist and to be resisted, to beat and to be beaten while life was still going on. Attacking the rightists, perish the four vermins, big lunge, making steel, disasters of 3 years... all these things were filled in the daily conversations of Chinese nowadays.

but I don't think we'v paid enough attention to this period of Chinese history. Especially young people do not even know it. This movie is still forbidden in China. Willing to see its public show.

" The stories in the film are real, and they are related with total sincerity. What worries me is that it is precisely a fear of reality and sincerity that has led to the ban on such stories being told." - Tian Zhuangzhuang

The Blue Kite, a beautiful and courageous 1993 film by Tian Zhuangzhuang, describes the ups and downs in the lives of a young Chinese family from the early 1950's through the Cultural Revolution of 1966. The film, which has not been seen in China, deals with the social upheavals caused by the Rectification Movement, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, three events in recent Chinese history whose effects for good or ill are still being debated. Narrated by their rambunctious young son Tietou ("Iron Horse"), this is a political film about ideological excess, but it is also about the strength of family and the love of a mother for her son. Tietou, played by three different actors (Yi Tian, Zhang Wenyao, and Chen Xiaoman), tells how the swirling tide of political events caused uncertainty and disillusionment among the villagers.

Tietou's mother, Shujuan, brilliantly portrayed by Lu Liping, is a tower of strength who must care for her son while coping with the sudden death of three husbands, indirectly due to the political turmoil. As the film begins, the drafting of citizens for manual labor is shown as part of the party's Rectification Movement, publicized through the mass media as an effort to remove "bourgeois" influences from professional workers. Shujuan's first husband, Shaolong (Pu Quanxin) falls out of favor with the Rectification Committee for his views (and because he has to go to the bathroom at an inopportune time). He is sent to a labor camp where he is accidentally killed by a falling tree. Her second husband, Uncle Li (Xuejian Li), dies of liver disease after confessing his role in reporting Shaolong and sending him to the labor camp. Shujuan then accepts marriage from a quiet intellectual named Lao Wu (Baochang Guo).

During this time (1966-69), high school students, known as the Red Guard or hong wei bing militants, were organized to promote revolutionary enthusiasm and political purity by turning against "outdated" values taught by the teachers in their schools. They soon spread from the classrooms and became roving gangs, closing shops and schools and parading errant professors through the streets. Tian depicts the excesses of the Red Guard in bullying and beating those whom they deemed to lack "political purity". For example, Lao is denounced as reactionary by the Cultural Revolution and is arrested and beaten by Red Guards. Some claim that actual physical violence never occurred during this period. What is certain, however, is that the campaign led to the emergence of factions that believed they had the right to impose their beliefs on others.

The Blue Kite is a powerful and involving film that says much about how ideological self-righteousness can undermine the things that are most precious -- a mother's love for her son, the strength and resilience of the family, and the right to speak our minds without fear of repression. The enduring values represented by the symbol of the blue kite are contrasted with the red banners and their changing political message. When the kite is caught in a tree, Tietou's father promises him, "I can make another for you"; by the end, Tietou makes a similar promise to a small child. And so it goes.