Please Vote for Me is a documentary that followed a group of eight-year pupils as they run for the class monitor position in an elementary school in Wuhan, Hubei. Perhaps surprising to most Americans, in China, democratic election processes at elementary school level are quite common. It was so dating back at least 25-30 years ago when I was in elementary school. Not every name can end up on the ballot. You have to indicate an interest to run. Teachers do tend to flush out potential candidates who fail to embody desirable qualities such as good academic standing, willingness to help the elderly and fellow classmates and decent athletic capability. In most elementary schools, each class (the entering class of 2015 for example) is divided into several sub-groups with each occupying one classroom. Students do not travel from classroom to classroom. Instead, teachers go to different classrooms to instruct. Each sub-group elects its own class monitor. In the past, fellow pupils used to vote mostly based on the speech each candidate delivers, plus the personal assessment of course. With increasing commercialism, the voting process as evidenced in this documentary has become much more competitive and sometimes downright chilling. There seems to be less merit-based screening up front. Competition occasionally digresses into the arena of talent show and popularity contest. In order to achieve their goals, third-graders quickly learn to canvass, bribe, barnstorm and slander, leaving not much in imagination. With English subtitles and dialogue in Mandarin. Enjoy the documentary.
This blog post is dedicated to the memory of Leslie Cheung, who left us this month twelve years ago. The English title "Farewell My Concubine" is a literal translation that can't possibly capture the beautiful tragedy in history known to everyone in China as "霸王别姬". The movie follows the poignant lives of two young trainees as they go through brutal Peking opera schooling that included unimaginable physical as well as psychological torture; enjoy fleeting moments of fame during warring years and suffer endless humiliations in various ideological purging that culminated into the horrific Cultural Revolution. The Cultural revolution, homosexuality and prostitution remain heavy subjects in mainland movies. Farewell blatantly and relentlessly touched all three. This movie won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1993, becoming the first Chinese film to win the award and remains the only Chinese-language film to have won the award. Farewell also won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film as well as being nominated for two Academy Awards.Director Chen Kaige (陈凯歌) remains a leading figure in Asian cinema today. In an amazing twist of fate, this much acclaimed film was snubbed by the award scenes of mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan at the time but has become an well-accepted classic with devoted cult audience. Leslie Cheung's portrayal of the gender-bending protagonist Chen Dieyi (程蝶衣) is simply unsurpassable and without whom the movie wouldn't have existed in the first place. From a teen idol to Hong Kong's favorite entertainer, Leslie had by early 90s grown into a well-crafted and meticulously detail-oriented actor. This movie should be available even in your local library.
