Peng Xiaolian
1953 - 2019Upon graduation from Beijing Film Academy in 1982, Peng was assigned to work in Shanghai Film Studio, where she first worked as an assistant director. Only three years later, she was given a teenage film Me and My Classmate to direct. The film was a success and snatched several top awards in China. As a reward, she was a given a chance to direct a film that she had wanted to direct: Women's Story (1988). This film made her known to the world, not only by entering festivals like The Creteil Women's International Film Festival and Hawaii International Film Festival, but also praised for its strong feminine subjectivity and its portrayal of rural Chinese women.
女人的故事
Peng Xiaolian
Wenrong Zhang, Zhang Min
Women’s Story was the first work to garner international acclaim for Peng Xiaolian. It is about three women living in China’s northern countryside and straightforwardly raises the issue of gender inequality hidden in a communist society.
Women's Story
Storm Under the Sun
Peng Xiaolian, S. Louisa Wei
Storm Under the Sun is a documentary about one of the "political storms" by Mao Zedong that fell upon the intellectuals of China in the 50's. Centered around the Hu Feng Case, the documentary traces the synergy that generated such an event, Mao's personal involvement in every step, and various victims' reaction to and realizations following the humiliation and accusations.
Storm Under the Sun
満山紅柿
Shinsuke Ogawa, Peng Xiaolian
The ostensible subject of this film is the growing, drying, peeling and packaging of persimmons in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. The inhabitants explain that it is the perfect combination of earth, wind and rain that makes their village’s persimmons superior to those grown anywhere else, including the village just a few miles away. The film’s larger subject, however, is the disappearance of Japan’s traditional culture, the end of a centuries-old way of life.
Red Persimmons
上海纪事
Peng Xiaolian
Quan Yuan, Dai Shaoan
The protagonists are mainly Huirong, Zhaobai, and Jikan, who have studied business management in the USA and have returned to their hometown, Shanghai. Huirong and Zhaobai are engaged, and although three of them are close friends, problems arise when they find out that their opinions clash on the matter of what the objective for building a new China should be and what direction it should take.
Once Upon a Time in Shanghai
美丽上海
Peng Xiaolian
Joey Wong, Feng Yuanzheng
The film follows the rise and fall of a family in Shanghai. Once wealthy and capitalist, the family unraveled during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Their home, once a French concession mansion, was converted into a multi-family dwelling.
Shanghai Story
假装没感觉
Peng Xiaolian
Lü Liping, Sun Haiying
After Women’s Story, Peng returns to the most straightforward representation of women’s issues in Shanghai Women, a film about three rural women. As the first work in Peng’s Shanghai Trilogy, Shanghai Women describes the problem that women encounter trying to secure urban (residential) space through the story of women from three generations.
Shanghai Women
请你记住我
Peng Xiaolian
Feng Wenjuan, Jia Yiping
A young actress, successful in her small hometown, seeks fame and fortune in the big city. She goes to live with a friend, who is currently making a film about Zhao Dan. They live in a building about to be destroyed. Can their differing visions of art and love come to pass, or will heartbreak put an end to their relationship, as it does to the old Shanghai?
Please Remember Me
