Raise the Red Lantern

Director: Yimou Zhang

1991 / 125min / 35mm

Arguably the film that, more than any other, established China’s Fifth Generation on the international stage, Zhang’s adaptation of Su Tong’s novella of the same name, set in the Warlord Era of the 1920s, stars Gong Li as Songlian, a 19-year-old who, upon becoming the fourth wife of a powerful feudal lord, finds herself in a vicious struggle for power with her husband’s other three spouses. To merely call Raise the Red Lantern a “period piece” doesn’t begin to do justice to its total, immersive evocation of a lost world: its hidebound, stifling moral codes, its decadent luxury, its brittle beauty, and the sadistic power games those living under its immaculate order are forced to play.

35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive

Distributor: Era International

One screening only!

Part of Empress Li