The First Shot Directed by Federico Francioni, Cheng Yan
The First Shot
Directed by Federico Francioni, Cheng Yan
Starring: Peng Haitao, Liu Yixing, You Yiyi
Country: China, Italy
Year: 2017
Review by Roberto Matteucci
In May 1988, the Chinese government liberalized the price of consumer goods, blocked two years earlier. The effect was not positive, causing a serious economic crisis, products in the shops increased of up to 50 percent. Companies increased their wages, but without a corresponding increase in productivity. The fear of further escalations produced the intensification in consumption, and a further rise in prices.
A social malaise spread throughout the country and there was a rebellion of students repressed with the massacre in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. The dying were about two hundred: "We could not understand why, to disperse the protesters, it was necessary to use tanks, and not just public security." (1)
Or perhaps the motives are in line with centuries of Chinese history, a showdown inside the Chinese Communist Party to eliminate some opponents.
International grievances on the massacre did not stop the economic development outlined, and perhaps accelerated it. The following years were amazing, an explosion of growth: in 1993 the GDP increased by 13.7 percent, foreign investment amounted to 700 percent. (2) It was the beginning of a series of important increases. Despite some serious international crises, China always dodged the worst damage, different what happened in other countries. "After the events of Tianjin, many commentators were convinced that Chinese modernization would not have had a future ... The crisis, however, has been overcome and the reform process has accelerated and a further acceleration that produced a series of great successes at the beginning of the new millennium." (3)
The events of 1989 are a milestone in the Chinese cultural process, a historic date that delimits a before and an after.
This is the criterion followed by directors Federico Francioni and Cheng Yan with the film The First Shot, winners of the 53rd Pesaro International Festival of New Cinema. The two young authors were both born after 1989, they only heard of the riots in Tiananmen Square.
Actually, the film starts from afar. It is October 10, 1911, when in Wuchang began the revolt for the Emperor's removal. The title is a reminder to that shot.
The documentary tells the passion, the dreams, the weaknesses, the fears of three boys born after 1989. No one directly lived the time of Tiananmen Square, but they suffer the inevitable problems behind of exaggerated economic growth. They face a world, a society that runs beyond the speed of light, and as often happens, young people are the most fragile victims.
The movie begins with a group of guys in the car while singing The Internationale. It is an emblematic start because we must not forget that China is led by a communist party. Communism has been utopia dream of so many generations, of so many young people, in all countries of the world. But when the story becomes reality, utopia disappears and appears an indispensable realism.
The first protagonist is an artist, a blogger, an ambitious guy. He lives in a large open space in Beijing. Economic and social development is mainly manifested in building manipulation. Around old neighborhoods and centenarian houses are being destroyed, and in their place, buildings are built to contain the millions of people who are transferred to the city. Around his home, the guy looks at this change; in the ruins many people are looking for something still usable.
The blogger's home is very simple with few objects and different cats. It also uses it as a study for its activities. It's a tough job, we watch from his mobile a censored blog. The relationship with censorship is indeed a problem.
The other boy lived in Canada but returned to China. Yet he shows a disillusion about the world. Others houses enter in the film, an architectural loneliness because the filmmakers always show him in front of a window or balcony. From the rifts of his own house he sees the world, also in his area there are many building revolutions. We see the smog, many constructions built with little imagination; we can see many windows from which we can imagine the lives inside.
The boy has a continuous complaint, persistent dissatisfaction, he does not like change: "details are lost."
Last one is a girl, lives in England. She came back perhaps solicited by the same authors.
While the two guys show a lonely feeling, the girl has a family, friends, she meets them with joy, nostalgia, as when she and her father revive the parent's youth by simply make a fire.
It is the girl who launches the most controversial phrase of the documentary: "I have not any past in my future." For a traditionalist country, with a rich culture, a gorgeous philosophy, the negation of girl is a serious provocation. It would be to understand the reasons: does she really believe it? Is it a decadent thought derived from living in the dissolute London? Or is it a triggered phrase to see the reactions?
We are astonished because it does not coincide with the docile and sensible personality shown of its fragment.
The film is homework, a test for their school and funded with five thousand euros. The result is positive; the documentary was shot with alternative devices, 50 percent with IPhone as stated in the credits.
The two young directors have a sought vision after studying characters, and the stances reflect the tales of the boys. The shots are beautiful, like the mirror images to expose the personality or angular shots in the depths of the rooms.
The massive use of so many scenes in or out of a window is a metaphor for a generation born at a historical moment. The guys are followed the stances of the directors, with an important black and white search.
The loneliness is marked thought the presence of grids on the windows, as a partition with that distorted world. The filmmakers also use non-diegetic image, such as a butcher who skillfully cuts meat, or a girl with a white tutu and red shoes. Images without a link but represent the Chinese world.
The directors add electronic scenes such as the final electronic window, from the physical frames to the electronics ones.
The authors edit a symbolic scene: a naked boy walks at dawn on the Great Wall of China. The history of China represented by its most famous monument is marked by the disturbing presence of a naked boy, it is another symbolic scene. A country of immense culture like their Great Wall of China is tarnished by a lonely and provocative young man.
Director Cheng Yan was interviewed at the end of the presentation at the 53rd Pesaro International Festival of New Cinema: "... we live in a time when everything is transforming that I personally do not understand, the logic of this direction." (4)
A beautiful story about the fear of growing, changing, facing a vast society with millions, even billions of problems. A human feeling but here is a difficult realism that does not allow sentimentality, China need to go ahead, to feed, find a job, a house to 1,373,541,278 of people. (5)
A person feels isolated scared in front an oceanic mass of people.
It is a film about generational contrast. These three guys will one day succeed, have a great job, become famous and remember the years of their teen’s age with nostalgia rather than with anger.
Mario Sabattini, Paolo Santangelo, Storia della Cina, Laterza, Bari, Quinta edizione, 2008
Mario Sabattini, Paolo Santangelo, Storia della Cina, Laterza, Bari, Quinta edizione, 2008
Mario Sabattini, Paolo Santangelo, Storia della Cina, Laterza, Bari, Quinta edizione, 2008
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html