Grandpa Jing and His Old Customers (2003), The Empty Cage (2002), Abing in 1950 (2001) & Who’s Listening To My Song (2003)

Grandpa Jing and His Old Customers (2003), The Empty Cage (2002), Abing in 1950 (2001) & Who's Listening To My Song (2003)

Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Auditorium (Room 101), Henry R. Luce Hall See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 6511

Free and open to the public. All films have English subtitles.

Grandpa Jing and His Old Customers
Directed by Shi Runjiu, 2003 (55 min)

Grandpa Jing is about to celebrate his 87th birthday. He is the most constant man. For his entire life, he has lived in the Shishahai District - the heart of the old Beijing - where he has been a barber for 70 years. Before 1949, Grandpa Jing owned a small barber shop on the commercial street of Di’anmen. Today, in spite of his old age, he continues to cut hair and shave beards. Instead of working his scissors in the barber shop, he now offers in-house service for his customers.

The Empty Cage
Directed by Jiang Zhi, 2002 (25 min)

This film depicts the story of two ordinary days in Shenzhen, one day in which a peculiar little girl wanders in the city and the other in which the director tries to find her.

Abing in 1950
Directed by Qian Hengqing, 2001 (35 min)

Abing (1893-1950) was a famous blind Chinese folk musician. Three months before his death in 1950, he had 6 pieces of his music recorded with a steel-wired recorder. The music was played by Abing himself, and the recording was achieved with the help of musician friends from his youth. Such a simple and short recording became a very important event in the musical history of China. One of the recorded pieces, The Two Springs Mirror the Moon, is now considered a classic. Created during the composer’s dozens of years of vagrant life, this work is regarded as the portraiture of Abing. In addition, this work is now performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra and the Lyons Symphony Orchestra. When the great conductor Seiji Ozawa listened to the piece performed on the erhu, he couldn’t help but burst into tears and kneel down on the ground. In this documentary film, reappearance is adopted as a creative means to tell this hardly-known story from over fifty years ago of the only known recording taken during Abing’s lifetime.

Who’s Listening To My Song
Directed by Mao Jie, 2003 (25 min)

The rock-and-roll band “Stone” comes from Xinjiang, a distant province in western China. They came to Beijing in 1997 to try their luck in the music scene and have established themselves as one of the most vigorous and creative bands in China. They live a hard life by performing in Beijing’s underground bars. No matter how hard it turns out to be, they live an independent life.

China Documentary Film Series – Showcasing films from REC Foundation’s REEL CHINA Documentary Festival 2004

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