A newly restored 4K screening of the defining work of Fifth Generation Chinese cinema, exploring themes of power, hierarchy and female rivalry within a traditional household.
HOME is screening Raise the Red Lantern on Saturday 7 November, a newly restored 4K print of the 1991 film. It's one of the defining works of Fifth Generation Chinese cinema, and this particular screening marks its 35th anniversary.
The story follows Songlian, a promising student whose family is destroyed by her father's death. Left with few options, she's forced to marry into wealth as the fourth and newest concubine of the aging, unseen Master Chen. Inside his walled estate, she finds a household ruled by a merciless ritual: every night, red lanterns are lit outside the chambers of whichever wife the master chooses to visit. The woman selected gets privilege and status for the night, while the others are cast into cold irrelevance.
Songlian is drawn into the orbit of her rivals, each shaped by years of fighting for the same scraps of attention. As she's gradually worn down, she eventually strikes back, trading secrets and favours to secure her own place in Master Chen's hierarchy. It's a slow-burn study of power and rivalry within a very small, closed-in space, and the 4K restoration should do the film's visual style a lot of justice.
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If you've never seen it, it's a good place to start with Fifth Generation cinema — the filmmakers who emerged from China's Cultural Revolution and went on to gain international recognition in the 80s and 90s. Raise the Red Lantern is one of the most famous examples from that era, and seeing it restored on the big screen is a different experience from catching it on a small one. It's showing at HOME in Manchester on Saturday 7 November.
