Cinema Critique--
Our Shining Days
The shots with a girl carrying out a guzheng and playing it are really skillful and interesting. It is sunny outside and the girl is wearing the school uniform. The camera moves along the strings, follows the movements of the girl’s hands. Details on the fingers and a ring ( it represents the identity of this girl). Different cuts and angles from the guzheng to the girl’s face and the detailed lens on girl’s facial expression presents the morale and the excitement of the battle. Obviously, the music is from a guzheng song which the girl plays.
The scene I picked is from a Chinese movie called “ Our Shining Days”. This scene talked about an instrumental battle of East and West in a music school.
The talking between the teachers makes this part more amusing. The battle begins when another girl comes out with her harp. After a door click, students all come out. The music are “Debussy number one arabesque”, “Flight of the Bumble Bee” and “birds paying
homage to the phoenix”. The interesting thing is each music switches from Eastern music dominant to Western music dominant in order to show the characteristic and tones of every instrument. The frequent camera switching between each sides of instrument and student makes the whole scene incredible amazing.
The full film
Documentary Review
A Bite of China
“A Bite of China” is one of the most popular documentary series in China. For every documentary in the series, there is a certain topic. Around the topic, different featured food in China within related Chinese values and traditions will be told in the form of short stories. This time, The central idea is about Domestic Trivia. "Home is where life begins. One's whole life is on the way home. Chinese life and ethics are loaded into bowls. People grow, love, leave and reunion... " With the video highlights showing with the voiceover, the stories begin... The first category is about cooked wheaten food. It is the fertile season in the mid-east region of China, the whole family of Mr. Zhao is busy in the kitchen preparing for the celebration of the harvest of corns. People from Shanxi are all genius at making wheaten food. Grind corns into flour, pan-fried corn paste with fragrant-flowered garlic; press paste into strips and directly being put into the pot; make the paste into different shapes... Streaky pork, dumplings, pickles, watermelon jam and great cat-tail( a kind of vegetable) are also described in the documentary. The girl who goes away home for better education, the traveler who is not home all the time, the pregnant woman who is welcoming a new arrival... They are all ordinary people in the world but they have things in common-- they all have homes that they care about; they all have the taste of home that they miss; they all have the temperament and morality that they believe in. Food teaches people, food brings people together, food nourishes one land and human.
In this documentary, a mass of close shots and details are used. Especially when it comes to the process of food making. The shots are so elaborate and detailed that you can see how each of the leaves rolls in a pan. Believe that you can be a cook as good as the people who are in the video. Small cuts of the food from different angles and positions make the whole doc fun to watch. The careful description of people's hand when making dumplings, the movement of porks fall into the pot and being stir-fried. the expression on people's faces whether it is happy, worried or complex. There are just so many great shots in the documentary that illustrate the stories together as a whole. The Interpenetration and combination of the stories are another interesting design. It seems that these stories drift away from the topic but actually, they help to build the connections. The sound is insane. Stories and scenes come with their original sound and being combined with a voice of the speaker. The music is really pretty and enjoyable.
I firmly recommend this series of documentaries not for anything else, just for food. It is so satisfied to just watch how Chinese food are made and how magical it is to have that many different types of cooking. The food is all wonderful, you can definitely learn how to cook from the video. If you are interested in what Chinese people believe in eating; what are some of the eating habits or rules they have while eating, you should definitely check it out. I can even learn a lot from it even though I'm Chinese because Chinese culture and traditions are too diverse and colorful. The skills of shooting and editing are awesome. Using the content from the document to end my sharing: "No matter where you are, Chinese will always reunion around the dining table, rejoice for the hardworking and feel the confluence of blood kinship. "
