|
|
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 4.1 - April 1999
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square
film review by Maureen Furniss
If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can download a QuickTime clip of Sunrise Over Tianamen Square. 1.1 MB.
 |
| If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view a clip from Shui-Bo Wang's Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square. © National Film Board of Canada. |
Kinesthetic animation can be tedious to watch because pans and zooms tend to tire the viewer after a short while. But this Oscar-nominated film (Documentary Short Subject), directed by Shui-Bo Wang at the National Film Board of Canada, is so much more than its technique. I found its 29 minutes of footage very compelling, both because of the topic and the way in which images -- both photos and illustrations, some of which are animated -- are captured on film.
One Family's Story
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square is an autobiographical account of its director's life in China, from his birth in 1960 to his departure from the country in 1989. Actually, the story begins long before that, reaching back as far as the Opium Wars of the mid-1800s, used to illustrate a significant historical moment in China's relationship with 'the West.' Even more emphasis is given to the life of Shui-Bo's grandfather, who joined the Communist Party, divorcing his first wife to marry a government worker who shared his political views.
There are two reasons why this documentary is so fascinating to me. One is my brief direct contact with Chinese culture, when I visited the country in 1988, a year before the Tiananmen Square massacre, and was so impressed by the many students I met and spoke to about American life. This encounter was continued to some extent in graduate school, when a friend told me of her life during the Cultural Revolution in China, being sent to a work farm, as well as the way in which the government followed her actions as a student revolutionary and daughter of Chinese intellectuals. Hearing Shui-Bo's account of his experience made these memories return to me quite vividly.
 |
| Director Shui-Bo Wang. Photo: Jean-Pierre Joly. |
But, on a general level, this film is fascinating for the way it talks about
political ideology, dreams, and realities in a such a candid way. Shui-Bo
explains the reasons why he was attracted to the Communist Party as a child,
which was due in part to government propaganda that told of little children
in the West freezing in the streets and starving due to poverty. But, at the
same time as he reveals his ardent desire to be a member of the Red Guard
Army and fight against Democratic (American) oppressors, he also reveals the
oppressive and cruel nature of his own government. He mentions that his parents
gave away his pet goldfish because it was considered bourgeois to own a pet,
and the massacre of thousands of people, including members of his family.
Shui-Bo seems to make all of his remarks with about the same emphasis and
without any particular condemnation of the Party or its leaders, relying on
a combination of drawn illustrations and photographs to tell his story.
A Change of Heart
Through this film, the viewer can see the deity-like status that Chairman
Mao attained not only within the country as a whole, but within the mind of
a small child like Shui-Bo, who says he felt closer to Mao than his own parents.
Even here, though, he suggests his disappointment (or perhaps enlightenment)
when he visited Tiananmen Square to view Mao after his death and did not see
the glorious man that had been depicted in government propaganda. In this
sequence, a drawing of an elderly, weathered-looking Mao in his coffin is
analyzed through a series of detail shots, emphasizing his wrinkles and facial
mole.
 |
| © National Film Board of Canada. |
Shui-Bo explains the emergence of Western influence during the years after
Mao's death without changing his tone of voice, but altering the style of
his images to reflect the new cultural influences: pop art Coke bottles and
Renaissance icons replace more traditional images of Chinese illustration
used earlier in the film. Even the recounting of the incidents of Tiananmen
Square in 1989 are related in a way that is fairly evenhanded. Certainly,
through his commentary, visuals, and score, Shui-Bo builds tension and makes
clear that he was horrified by the fact that the Communist Party he had believed
in so deeply (he had resigned from the Party a few weeks before) was now killing
its own people -- "its future." However, I find it telling that,
moments later, Shui-Bo ends the film by explaining that he soon left China
for North America, where he "hoped to find no violence, no hatred, and
no homelessness." Though the story ends there, the viewer knows, of course,
that Shui-Bo undoubtedly found all these things, and more, in his new home.
Finally, the viewer gets the sense that what Shui-Bo longs for is a place
where one can live in peace among one's family and work toward a better world.
Never denouncing the principles of Communism that influenced him so strongly
as a young man, he nonetheless acknowledges that the Party of his grandfather's
era no longer exists -- and, perhaps, that the world he hopes for exists only
in ideology.
Shui-Bo Wang worked as an assistant to animator Frédéric
Back. He has taught illustration and done illustrations for The New York
Times and designed the animation for the NFB/NHK co-production Another
Earth. This video, distributed in North America by the National Film Board
of Canada (order number C9198 030), is accompanied by a brief guide to developments
in Chinese history. For more information, contact the National Film Board
of Canada, PO Box 6100, Station Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3H5. Tel:
(Canada) 1-800-267-7710, (USA) 1-800-542-2164.
Maureen Furniss, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor and Program Director of Film
Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California. She is the Founding Editor
of Animation Journal and the author of Art
in Motion: Animation Aesthetics (John Libbey, 1998).
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.