>> Catalog 2003

Daughter from Yan’an

JAPAN / 2002 / Mandarin, Shaanxi Dialect / Color / 35mm (1:1.85) / 120 min

Director: Ikeya Kaoru
Photography: Fukui Masaharu
Editing: Yoshioka Masaharu Music: San-Bao
Executive Producers: Kitagawa Satoshi, Nakanishi Toshio
Producer: Kwong Yang-ja
Production Company: NHK
Co-production Companies: Ren Universe, NHK Enterprises 21
Source: Ren Universe
World Sales: Media International Corporation (MICO)
NR Bldg., 5-5 Kamiyama-cho, Shibuya-kuTokyo 150-0047 JAPAN
Phone: 81-3-3468-6984 Fax: 81-3-3481-1453
E-mail: kiriyama@micojapan.com

A village girl reunites with her birth father after thirty years. Her parents were cadets sent to live in the countryside during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Winner of the Best Documentary Film award at Karlovy Vary, this film has been acclaimed at Berlin, Montreal, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other international film festivals.

[Director’s Statement] In order to shoot Daughter from Yan’an, I spent two years with the former Red Guards, the subjects of this film. Their unflinching desire to avoid having their existence “buried in the darkness of history” brought this film to completion. If the film resonates strongly in viewers’ hearts and minds, this can only be due to the subjects’ bravery in confronting their abhorrent past on camera.

Ikeya Kaoru Born in Tokyo in 1958. Shocked by the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, has focused intensely on filming in China ever since. Primary works include NHK Specials Little Lonely Girl, Westward Dreams of Gold, and Time of the Golden Earth. Daughter from Yan’an is his first feature documentary film.