yidff1999ogawa-proInternaional-CompWorld-special
yidff1999YanagisawaHisaoNewAsianCurrentsJapanesePanoramaJorisIvens
yidff1999VIDEOACTIVISMCaseStudyJurorstransrate-English

beforenext




Sunken National Treasure
CHINA / 1999 / Chinese / Color / Video /57 min

Director, Editing:
Duan Jinchuan
Photography: Duo Ji, Lin Bing, Wang Jia
Production Company, Source: Chuan Linyue Films. Co.
J - 1304, Hui Yuan Apartment, Beijing 100101 CHINA
Phone: 86-10-64934322 / Fax: 86-10-64992214
E-mail: duan@public3.bta.net.cn


Duan Jin - chuan

Born in 1962 in Chungdu, Sichuan. After graduating from the Beijing Broadcasting Academy in 1984, moved to Tibet to produce documentaries. Films include Highland Barley (1986), The Blue Mask Consecrations (1988), Tibet (1991), The Sacred Site of Asceticism (1992), with Wen Pulin, YIDFF ' 93 Asia Program, The Square (1994), with Zhang Yuan shown in competition at YIDFF ' 95, and No. 16, Barkhor South Street, YIDFF ' 97 New Asian Currents.

Over a hundred years has passed since the Sino - Japanese war. An ambitious project is undertaken to salvage a Chinese battleship that was sunk in the Yellow Sea in 1894 and turn it into a museum. As members of local government, the media and regular citizens get more involved in the project, it begins to snowball, taking on larger and larger significance.
The gaze of the director follows the quiet progress of the film's subject in a way that avoids depicting it through a lens of artificiality. There is no music composed especially for the film; the conversations in Chinese, the roar of the sea, and the sound of a drum - and - fife corps become the film music itself. In this work, you will find nothing of the silly manipulations of the sort found in some Japanese TV programs which superficially dazzle the viewer by fitting the track of a well - known song to a news image. The treatment of the subject matter is so adroitly quiet that it has the effect of streamlining the viewer's consciousness to the time and space of the film itself.
[Fukushima Yukio]
beforenext

COPYRIGHT:Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Organizing Committee