-
The Best Films of the 1990s
The greatest films of the 1990s, from America’s independent cinema to the rise of the digital age.
-
Not One Less (1999)
As Zhang Yimou tells the tale of a young, rural teacher searching for a runaway student in the city, he retains a disarming sincerity, dedicating Not One Less to the everyday labour of education and its responsibility to safeguard children’s futures.
-
Shanghai Triad (1995)
After adolescent Shuisheng is initiated into Shanghai Triad’s crime syndicate, it only takes seven days for him to recognise how readily control is sustained through the exploitation of the vulnerable, as Zhang Yimou frames his initiation through a restricted yet intimate perspective.
-
To Live (1994)
It is not ideology which builds legacy in To Live, but the endurance of those who bear its weight, as Zhang Yimou tracks decades of one man’s life through the tumultuous political upheavals of mid-century China.
-
The Story of Qiu Ju (1992)
The China that once seemed governed by community is swallowed up by sprawling bureaucracy in The Story of Qiu Ju, and as one peasant woman seeks legal justice against her village chief, Yimou Zhang laments the loss of its simple, unsullied dignity.
-
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Within Zhang Yimou’s political fable of four rival mistresses competing for their Master’s favour, Raise the Red Lantern conceals an insidious, patriarchal terror, casting its manor in the smouldering crimson glow of privilege and peril.
-
Ju Dou (1990)
Cycles of trauma are never fully broken in Ju Dou’s family dynamics of abusive marriages, affairs, and resentful children, each generation echoing the violence of the last, while Zhang Yimou’s visual poetry heightens such tragic, historic resonance.