OPEN SPACE

………………………………. "Only dull and powerless artists defend their art by reference to sincerity" —Kazimir Malevich……………………………………..

Just a quick reminder that tonight’s screening of Huang Shuqin’s Woman Demon Human will be on beautiful 35mm sans subtitles! Which seems like a lot of fun, and kind of a don’t-miss opportunity, whether you understand the language or you don’t.  Considered China’s “only genuine feminist film”,  Woman Demon Human stages an unorthodox biopic of famed Beijing Opera star Pei Yanling, whose career was noted for her portrayal of male roles, especially the male underworld god, Zhong Kui.

For a quick gloss on both the narrative and the why of a screening sans subtitles, see Gina Basso’s post of last week.

Rediscovering the Fourth Generation: Woman Demon Human
Huang Shuqin, 1987, 106 min.
35mm, screened in Mandarin
7:00 p.m., Phyllis Wattis Theater
$5 general; free for SFMOMA members or with museum admission
(requires a free ticket, which can be picked up in the Haas Atrium).

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• Film

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Rediscovering the Fourth Generation, Woman Demon Human

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Greetings readers, this is Gina Basso, Public Programs Associate and semi-regular OPEN SPACE contributor. I’m about to delve right in to my first ever post….here I go…

You may have read Megan Brian’s post last week about the print traffic woes getting films from the China Film Archive for the films scheduled in the Rediscovering the 4th Generation series currently underway. And the saga continues: one of the films arrived sans subtitles (Mandarin, anyone?). Despite the myriad ways to handle such a predicament, we decided the print would have to be replaced with a subtitled DVD (thanks Facets Multimedia the print didn’t come all this way for nothing and we’re showing it anyway, on October 30, in Mandarin, NO subtitles! Once you know the story, just relish in the opportunity to see a visually stunning work that captures the vivid colors of the costumes and the make-up, and the performative elements of Chinese opera.

Woman Demon Human is the only film in this series to be directed by a woman, Huang Shuqin. It’s an imaginative bio-pic of famed Beijing Opera actor, Pei Yanling, who was best known for her portrayal of male roles and who stars in the film, playing a fictional version of herself, Qiu Yun. (Didn’t Richard Pryor do that in Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling?) With the opera as its backdrop, the film follows the rise of the young opera star as she experiences love, loss, tragedy, and the trappings of gender conventions. In fact, the real drama lies backstage where tears flow, tempers flair, and performers share gossip with hushes, whispers, and knowing looks. The backstage scenes convey the frenetic energy of the opera’s inner-workings, from the laborious process of applying make-up and getting into costume to the “limbering up” (stretching and contorting)— painful reminders of the physical lengths the performers must endure for their art.

Qiu/Pei’s defiance of traditional roles in the face of public ridicule is at the heart of the story, and  the catalyst that allows her to sink more deeply into her art. Cutting her hair short – “she looks more boy than boy” remarks a character – she raises suspicions from those who gasp at her will to no longer play female roles and to be “nobody’s bride.” Cross-dressing in Chinese opera is age-old (Yuan Dynasty), but it’s more common for men to adopt female roles (dan). This female-to-male reversal illuminates Pei Yanling’s real-life controversy as an opera performer. In the film, her onstage performances as the mythical Zhang Kui, the underworld god and vanquisher of ghosts and demons, act as a meta-text for her life off-stage, mirroring her desire to chase the ghosts haunting her life and challenging traditional customs in modern opera. Director Shuqin also uses the literal mirror, not only as a way to suggest the character’s identity formation, its fragmentation and merging of multiple selves into one, but also as a device to move the story along. Woman Demon Human spans Pei Yanling’s career from the late 1950s to the 1980s and each chapter in her life is signaled by her pondering her reflection in the mirror and seeing two selves – in costume as Zhang Kui and without. As she gazes into the mirror you’re whizzed off into the next dramatic epoch.

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cross-dressing Chinese-opera stars, Huang Shuqin, Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling, Musée Mechanique, Pei Yanling, Rediscovering the Fourth Generation, Woman Demon Human, Yuan Dynasty, Zhang Kui

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[Hi. I'm Megan. I work in the education department and thought I'd introduce myself as I'll be a semi-regular contributor. I was interviewed here when I co-curated the staff art show, and have already written a little for the blog. It's a pleasure to meet you.]

We have a new film series on this month, Rediscovering the Fourth Generation, which includes four films from the post-Mao era in China. Gina Basso, our public programs associate, has been coordinating this series since July, working closely with a distributor in China to make sure the films got here on time. So when the prints still weren’t here a week before the first screening, and Gina couldn’t get her Chinese contact on the phone, everyone started to worry. As it turns out, it was Golden Week in China, EVERYONE was on holiday, and we had no way of knowing if the films would turn up.

After a few frantic days on the phone, we located the prints at SFO and had them rushed over, however by this time it was only one day before the first screening. Paul Clipson, our projectionist extraordinaire, generally has a week to look through the films, checking the prints to make sure they’re in good condition and learning each film’s personality. Last week he just had a day. To add panic to panic, the four films arrived in SIX boxes, sealed with thick metal wire, which Paul had to cut open with wire cutters. Those six boxes revealed over forty short reels, meaning that each film was divided up into at least ten sections which, of course, were all labeled in Mandarin. Paul spent the day matching Mandarin characters to each other in order to put each film together.

When I got a chance to see the prints and shipping materials I was fascinated by their personality and how tactile they were. Growing up in the digital age, I haven’t had much opportunity to see real film, especially real film in real canisters that have just traveled across the globe. The steel boxes and canisters are a reminder of the tangible and human aspect of film.

On Saturday Rick Danielson and Brecht Andersch, our projectionists for the day, arrived. I felt a wave of relief as the first scene began. The saga of putting together this film series reminds me that, as Paul put it, “Art isn’t convenient. The impracticality is part of its magic.”

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• Film

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Rediscovering the Fourth Generation

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