‘Chinese Cinema’ Focuses on Fifth-Generation Artists

The UCLA Film Archive’s “New Chinese Cinema,” which runs Thursday through Feb. 26 at the Melnitz Theater, focuses on the work of the so-called Fifth Generation filmmakers, those who were the first to attend the Beijing Film Academy since its reopening in 1978 in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.

They have been more critical and outspoken about the past as well as the present than their predecessors, which has brought them chronic censorship problems, but two of their number have become internationally acclaimed, Zhang Yimou (“Red Sorghum,” “Raise the Red Lantern” and “The Story of Qiu Ju”) and Chen Kaige (“Yellow Sky,” “Farewell My Concubine”).

Opening the series Thursday at 7:30 p.m. is Tian Zhuangzhuang’s “Horse Thief” (1986), one of the most fiercely demanding and awesomely beautiful films you are ever likely to see. It takes us into Tibet in the ‘20s--it might as well be antiquity--and presents us with a young clansman, Norbu (Tseshang Rigzin, who brings to mind the Toshiro Mifune of “Rashomon”), so poor he steals horses from transients to support his wife and 5-year-old son, yet so pious he gives most of his profits to the temple.

Tian follows Norbu’s destiny with minimal dialogue and exposition, and with astounding images of natural beauty and of the elaborate, mysterious rituals of Tibetan Buddhism. As film historian Tony Rayns has observed, Tian invites us to meditate upon rather than to analyze what we’re seeing, and Tian’s images are indeed comparable to those of Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Paradjanov and Robert Bresson.

“Horse Thief” will be followed by Tian’s “On the Hunting Ground” (1985). Once past its opening sequence, the film becomes an austere, ritualistic Miklos Jancso-like depiction of life on the Mongolian grasslands, where daily conduct is still ruled by precepts set down by Genghis Khan. But be warned: The film’s first 12 minutes are given over to the shooting of sheep and deer, whose death throes are shown in protracted close-up. It has been said that the filmmaker wished to contrast the violence of the hunt with the comparative tranquillity of the Mongolian existence, but to what purpose is not clear.

Imagine “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” set down amid Chinese peasantry, and you’d have a rough idea of what Yan Xueshu’s delightful and provocative 1985 “In the Wild Mountains” (Saturday at 7:30 p.m.) is like. A rambunctious yet thoughtful comedy, it tells of two unhappy couples.

The burly, uncouth Huihui (Xin Ming) laments that his vivacious, independent wife Guilan (Yue Hong) is barren; meanwhile, Huihui’s slender, feckless brother Hehe (Du Yuan) has more or less abandoned his deceptively demure-looking wife Qiurong (Xu Shouli) and their baby. Huihui and his sister-in-law take a traditional view of marriage while Guilan is determinedly liberated and more than willing to take a chance in supporting her brother-in-law in a money-making venture (which in its modest way smacks of free enterprise).

As this very lively and likable quartet sort out their lives, the film takes on an increasingly broader perspective in which we witness the growing impact of the modern world in bringing a breath of fresh, liberating air to a farming village still pursuing a way of life so ancient that its homes have neither electricity nor even glass (a Chinese invention, after all) for windowpanes.

Playing with “In the Wild Mountains,” which took China’s Oscar, the Golden Rooster for 1986, is Peng Ziolian’s equally engaging, complementary “The Story of Country Women” (1988)--and the only one of these four films not to have been shown at UCLA previously. Warm and earthy, it takes an affirmative view of three peasant women, two of them young, the other a wife and mother, who for the first time in their lives leave their mountain village in Northern China to journey to the big city to sell their yarn.

One minute they’re descending the Great Wall and the next, they’re boarding a bus in a breathtaking leap from antiquity to the modern world, where they learn how to survive and even prevail (also by engaging in free enterprise).

“The Story of Country Women” reiterates that no matter what the setbacks of city life may be, life is always worse for women in the countryside. Peng reveals just how difficult it is for Chinese women to overthrow the ancient notion that they are inferior to men.

For full schedule and information: (310) 206-FILM.