The Series
In 2014, Time Out polled an auspicious 88 film experts from across the world to determine the 100 best Mainland Chinese films of all time, from 1930s silent classics, blockbuster wuxia epics and independent documentaries. Now we’re teaming up with M on the Bund to give you the chance to see these films for free, with a screening every second Sunday of the month at Glam, kicking off on Sunday 10 April with In the Heat of the Sun, number four on our Best Films list.
The Film
Actor Jiang Wen’s first feature as a director is an archetypal rites-of-passage film about a group of boys entering puberty one hot summer in 1970s Beijing: fooling around, showing off and bonding, spying on girls, clashing with other gangs, dealing with pesky erections. Jiang’s alter ego ‘Monkey’ is infatuated by the elusive local beauty Mi Lan, and there is room for romance even during political upheaval.
Two things distinguish the film. One is Jiang’s own wry voice-over: ‘Change has wiped out my memories, I can’t tell what’s imagined from what’s real’, runs the prologue. He admits that these are romanticised and sometimes wished-for episodes from his own childhood, and like other Chinese directors of the 1990s he is preoccupied with temporality and the fallibility of memory.
The other is the setting. It is the dog days of the Cultural Revolution, and the boys occupy a Beijing in which adults, presumably in the throes of Maoist frenzy elsewhere, are scarce. Still, the film’s politics lingers at the fringes.
The Venue
We’ll be screening the films in the casual, comfortable and top class surrounds of Glam, a venue we gave five stars to when it opened last year. There’ll be free popcorn, special drinks deals on offer, plus a tailored post-screening food menu for those who want to linger a little longer, featuring four Glam dishes plus a glass of wine for 228RMB per person (plus 10 percent service charge).
Entry is free, but you’ll need to RSVP. Send the message ‘Film’ to our official WeChat account (QR code below) to reserve a spot.
For more info from Glam, follow them on WeChat at MGlam魅蓝.