Dam Street

China 2004, 93 min., English subtitles

The year: 1983. A pregnant 16-year-old schoolgirl, Xiao-Yun, attends a school in a town in the province of Sichuan in southwest China. Afraid of being disgraced, Yun offers her child, which she has conceived with a fellow pupil, up for adoption. However, rumours continue to circulate and people around her still encounter her with contempt ten years later, as well as with their own feelings of guilt. Although she has had singing lessons at the Chinese Opera, she works as a singer for a rather unconvincing song-and-dance band and is continually the victim of insults and sexual advances. It is only when Yun makes friends with one of her mother’s 10-year-old pupils that she finds new hope and events take a surprising turn …

Awarded the Standard audience prize at the Vienna Film Festival.

Brave New World

Two films look at the upheavals China is currently experiencing: from the rigid morals of the 1980s to the total breakdown of security in the present. They both show how difficult it is to go through life holding one’s head up high in defiance of social and economic pressures.