Director
Phoenix is a film that reflects the love life of modern people. Ji Tong, Chen Lang, and Ma Wen reunite after 10 years. Their lives have changed a lot: Ji is a down-and-out literati, Chen the owner of a small leisure center, and Ma is in jail. Ma asks his former lover, Tong Fei, to come see him on the same day that Chen and Ji visit. Tong's beauty attracts both men — Tong chooses Ji. Chen then pursues a relationship with an online lover, Xia Yi, but once the relationship is consummated, he doesn't know what to do. While at first, this film seems like a typical romantic drama, Ding Jiancheng and Xu Wei - as sixth generation purveyors of the avant-garde - are up to something more here, as is gradually revealed through the relationships between the characters.
Director
The story is set in a small village in South-Eastern China, during the Cultural Revolution. A teenager is bored and spends most of his time hanging around in the street. An old man, a widower, earns his money making artistic paper shapes of people, animals, vehicles, and other things. It is an old custom to burn these pieces of paper as a sacrifice to the dead — but in the years of the Cultural Revolution, this was regarded as superstition, and banned. The old man uses dazibao, propaganda posters, and secretly makes them into figures that should be burnt on his death. One day, the teenager accompanies the old man to his house and finds out the old man's secret. A bond ensues between the two. The boy finds out that the man once had a daughter, Qingqing, who was hit in the forties by a stray bullet. Since then, he has always dreamt about the beauty of Qingqing.
