Remember: Free Admission BUT on a first-come, first-served basis.
Arrive early because the tickets are given thirty minutes before every film screening.
Kindly refer to the image for the schedule.
This event is a project of the Ateneo de Manila
University’s Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies, the Cultural Section of
the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, Confucius Institute, Film
Development Council of the Philippines, and Credit Suisse, and the cooperation
of Ateneo Celadon and Shangri-La Plaza.
Synopsis of the Movies
COMING HOME
Running Time: 1:49
Running Time: 1:49
Acclaimed director Zhang Yimou is back once again with
“Coming Home”. This drama stars Gong Li and Chen Daoming. Zhang Lu Yanshi (Chen
Daoming) and Feng Wanyu (Gong Li) were a devoted couple forced to separate when
Lu was arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner, while his
wife got injured in an accident. Released during the last days of the Cultural
Revolution, he finally returned home only to find that his beloved wife had
amnesia and barely remembered her past. Unable to recognize Lu, she patiently
waited for her husband’s return. A stranger alone in the heart of his broken
family, Lu Yanshi was determined to recover their past life together and also
his wife’s memory.
ANGEL VERA
Running Time: 1:25
Running Time: 1:25
This film is adapted from the real experience of Liu
Jiada (Vera), an 8-year-old Italian girl who becomes addicted to Beijing opera
after visiting China with her mother. She later makes friends with female
martial arts actress YuRemove featured image Xiaoqi and students from an arts
school, including Koko (Guogou), Kubi, and others. With the encouragement of
her friends, this determined young girl braves many difficulties, and gains
entrance to the school, finally realizing her dream, and also helping her friends
and her teachers to attain their dreams. In her performance, Vera stages a
great opera performance as a normal student from the school and becomes a
Beijing opera performer.
QIU XI
Running time: 1:42
Running time: 1:42
The story takes place in wartime Guangzhou before the
country’s liberation by the Communist Party of China in 1949. A young woman
named Qiu Xi is a “boat person”, or Tanka, living in the coastal area of
Guangdong Province. Qiu Xi, played by actress Jiang Yiyan (Nanking, Nanking),
becomes a servant to Yan Haiqing, played by actor Guo Xiaodong (Summer Palace,
An Empress And The Warriors). She finds herself falling for the undercover
communist agent who works with the Kuomintang regime that ruled China until
1949. The story unfolds as the two fall for each other but are kept at distance
because of the wartime situation.
WILD HORSE FROM SHANGRI LA
Running Time: 1:18
Running Time: 1:18
Geza runs like the wind. In his village on the Tibetan
Plateau, friends and family call him “Wild Horse”. But Geza’s little sister was
born with a congenital heart disease, and the doctor says that she will die
without an operation. Unfortunately, the medical expenses are astronomical for
Wild Horse’s poor family. By chance, Wild Horse learns that a marathon is being
organized in the province’s capital city. The champion will win a prize that
could help save his sister’s life. The competition will take place in four
days, but the village where Wild Horse lives is almost 800 kilometers away from
the capital city. For the sake his sister, Wild Horse decides to run to the
city. On his way, he encounters great dangers, but he also encounters kind
people who help and encourage him. After many twists and turns, Wild Horse
finally runs in the competition. Although he fails to win the championship, his
wish comes from true.
EAST WIND RAIN
Running Time: 1:50
Running Time: 1:50
This film stars international star, Fan Bingbing. This
period drama is set in Shanghai during the 1940s. Communist spy An Ming (Liu
Yunlong), learns through his Japanese source, Nakanishi Masahiro (Miura
Kenichi), a fellow communist, that Japan is to attack Pearl Harbor. However,
following the assassination of two members of his unit, An Ming has no way of
transmitting the unbelievable information to his superiors. Nakanishi
subsequently receives confirmation of the attack in a coded weather broadcast
on Japanese radio (“East wind, rain”) and also hears that a roll of film
containing major information is secretly on its way to him from a fellow
high-level sympathizer, Ozaki Hidemi (Dong Cheng), in Tokyo. On the night of 7
December, Nakanishi is arrested, the roll of film goes missing, and the
Japanese declare war on the U.S., next day taking over the whole city. In the
subsequent weeks, a battle of wits ensues between Japanese intelligence head
Fujiki Yoshio (Takemoto Takayuki) and An Ming and his colleague Hao Birou (Li
Xiaoran), a teacher at a refugee hostel, as both sides try to trace the roll of
film. An Ming also comes under pressure from his new liaison officer, Fang
Qianmo (Yu Rongguang), and from his girlfriend, nightclub singer Huanyan (Fan
Bingbing), to leave Shanghai, but he refuses until his job is done.
AT THAT SUMMER
Running Time: 1:30
Running Time: 1:30
Tan Yan was a kind and honest young man. He lent his
house to his cousin Li Quoqiang. Li wa, an ignorant and incompetent man. He
gathered a group of people at Tan Yang’s house to gamble, making a number of
troubles. To avoid being caught by the police and the loan sharks, Li Quoqiang
ran away. Tan Yang had no choice but to look after Liu Liu, the pregnant
girlfriend of Li Guoqiang. Tan Yang and Liu Liu solve many difficult problems
with combined efforts. As time passes, they eventually fall in love with each
other.
FULL CIRCLE
Running Time: 1:45
Running Time: 1:45
This comedy-drama is about a group of rebellious senior
citizens. The setting is a town in Ningxi, Northern China. Ge (Xu Huanshan) is
a retired bus driver in his mid-70s whose son by his first marriage (Han
Tongsheng) doesn’t talk to him, and whose second wife, who died six months ago,
willed their flat to her own son. Forced to move out, Ge goes to stay with his
old friend Zhou (Wu Tianming), another retired bus driver, who shares a room
with the crazy Jin (Niu Ben) at Guanshan Nursing Home. Depressed at how his
life has ended up, Ge contemplates suicide, but is given hope by the other
elderly people of the nursing home. Zhou has recruited some of them into
performing a comic sketch he hopes to use when joins a Japanese TV competition,
which is situated in Tianjin. During their rehearsal, one of their members was
injured, and the nursing home’s head (Yan Bingyan) forbids them to go to
Tianjin. But Zhou is not dissuaded so easily, so he and Ge, along with friends,
plotted a secret plan to “escape”.
LOST IN THAILAND
Running Time: 1:45
Running Time: 1:45
Director Xu Zheng follows the success of Raymond Yip’s
Lost on Journey with this rambunctious sequel that became China’s
highest-grossing film of all time. It traces the rivalry between two ambitious
business managers in competition for a revolutionary new technology. Having
recently played a crucial role in developing a new fuel called “Supergas”,
energy-company executive Xu (Xu Zheng) seeks to patent his creation before his
crafty associate Bo (Huang Bo) beats him to the punch. But in order to do so,
Xu will first need to gain control of the stakes being held by elusive chairman
Zhou, who’s currently on vacation in Thailand. Meanwhile, Bo, too, has managed
to track down Zhou, and he’s determined to reach Thailand first. And he might
just succeed, because when overzealous cook Wang (Wang Baoqiang) becomes Xu’s
unlikely traveling companion, his obsessive quest quickly becomes an outrageous
comedy of errors.
BACK TO 1942
Running Time: 1:46
Running Time: 1:46
A North Henan landlord in China embarks on a pilgrimage
to Sha’anxi province during the 1942 famine, struggling to survive as war with
Japan looms on the horizon. His house beset by starving villagers, Landlord Fan
(Zhang Guoli) endeavors to calm the crowd by preparing a feast. But his house
is burned down in the chaos, prompting Fan, his teenage daughter Xingxing
(Fiona Wang), his servant Shuanzhu (Zhang Mo), and his tenant Huazhi (Xu Fan)
to embark on a treacherous journey south. Along the way, encounters with an
American journalist (Adrien Brody), and a priest (Zhang Hanyu) who has lost his
faith reveal the true depth of the despair that grips the country. All of these
hardships prompt Fan to make some devastating sacrifices that leave him a
broken man. Meanwhile, the Japanese government attempts to turn the Chinese
people away from their government by offering them sustenance, while the
Chinese government finds themselves forced to choose between feeding their
troops or the masses.
SAY YES
Running Time: 1:44
Running Time: 1:44
Movie setting is in Shanghai, the present day. Star
Taiwanese cellist Yeh Shun, played by supermodel Lin Chi-ling, is set up by her
best friend, bridal dress-shop owner Taozi (Qin Hailu), on a blind date with a
rich businessman, Zhao (Wang Xun). By mistake, however, she meets blue-collar
handyman Huang Da (Huang Bo), who is separately on a different blind date, to
meet a woman called Tan (Chen Ran). After they resolve their misunderstanding,
each meets their planned dates – still in the same restaurant, where it turns
out that Huang Da already knows Zhao. A person who turns out still owes him
over RMB100,000 (US$16,000) for construction work on his mansion. When Zhao’s
suspicious wife (Jiang Xiwen) suddenly turns up, Yeh Shun pretends that Huang
Da is her date. While driving him home, she learns that Huang Da was on his
99th blind date: he’s almost given up trying to find a partner. When Yeh Shun
urges him to keep trying and to believe in himself, Huang Da falls for her on
the spot. How will this odd partnership develop into something more meaningful?
For more information, call Ateneo de Manila
University Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies at 426-6001 locals 5208,
5209, 5280 and 5284. For tickets, please call Shang Cineplex at 633-2227.
