The Crack 2002 ( 8)

CIFA (the Chinese Independent Film Archive) has recently helped restore The Crack, a low-budget independent film made on 35mm, which has been screened only four times to a small circle in China since its completion in 2000. This semi-autobiographical film, set during the Cultural Revolution, provides the missing link between the roots-seeking and scar literature and art of the 1980s and the performance art of the 1990s and 2000s. It grounds many of the embodied extremes of China’s famous performance art in the persistent psychosexual fetishes and neuroses produced by the extreme denial of individual desire under “mass line” socialism.

Da xue sheng yi shi 1987 ( 8)

Mysterious Buddha 1980 ( 7)

The film tells the story of a group of patriots, represented by Master Hai Neng, Mengjie, and Situ Jun, protecting Buddhist treasures in Leshan on the eve of liberation.