Classmates
2009/Color/203min/DVD/Chinese+English
Synopsis
Twenty plus classmates look back on their previous 30 years. They feel that life is uncertain, but sth is like seasons, never change. Those classmates graduated from Tongchuan Coal Mine Middle School in Sha’anxi 1978, they are descendants of mineworkers. They experienced success, failure, compromise and struggle in Chinese reforms and opening up. Lin Xin and his classmates get together in 30 years, try to record their different experiences and situations, the ease in life, the loneliness in success, the helplessness in poverty, etc. All of these become images of people in small to middle-sized cities.
STAFF
Director……Lin Xin
Script……Lin Xin
Cinematography……Lin Xin
Editor……Lin Xin
Producer……Lin Xin
Assistant……Hu Jufang、Zhu Sifan
Director
Lin Xin
Lin Xin is an painter and independent documentary maker, he was born in Tongchuan 1960, a city in Sha’anxi province. His ancestral home is Taicang, in Jiangsu Province. Lin Xin has held several solo exhibition shows in Beijing Chinese National Museum of Fine Arts in Beijing, Xi’an, etc. His album <21st Century Accomplished Artists Picture Album----Linxin> and anthology <Oh, My Father - My Black Memories> have been published. In 2005, his documentary film <Cheng Lu> was selected to participate in “The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival”, “The International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film” and “The Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival”. In 2007, his documentary film <San Li Dong> won the prize of “ Independent Spirit Award” at “The 4th China Documentary Festival”, and was chosen as one of the ten best films at “The 4th China Independent Film Festival”. In 2009, he finished his new documentary film <Classmates>.
Director’s Introduction:
As as a 1978 grade student at the Sanlitong Coal Mine Middle School of Tongchuan, I struggled between the twofold consuming conflict of making a living and artistic creativity. Most of my old classmates still live in that same city, each living their spells of good and bad fortune and their different destinies. The imprints of the era congeal into individual trajectories, and the vicissitudes of life come to put a veil on their once young faces… I once again come to meet with each of them. My expectations are constantly rectified by reality during the filming, many things exceeding my imagination. I come to accept the manipulation of fate. Whether fortuitously or inevitably, I’ve come to meet them again and record their life experiences and their situations, perceiving through this the frailty and tenaciousness of life. Their happiness and sorrows, hopes and despair, all continually deepen my understanding of life, as well as my knowledge of this generation.
