Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square

Although many Westerners associate Tiananmen Square with the horrific 1989 massacre when government troops opened fire on demonstrating students, for filmmaker Shu-Bo Wang, who was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, the huge square had stood--in earlier times--as a sterling symbol of the New China. Using animation, collage, sketches, and archival photos, this energetic and inventive Oscar-nominated short combines a spiffed-up Cliffs Notes version of Chinese history from the 19th century Opium Wars through the Tiananmen Square massacre together with Wang's personal odyssey through the political winds of change during the 1960s-1980s. The pairing of Wang's vivid imagery and his playful narration (he tells us that his mother had a beauty mole on her chin like Mao's, remembers feeling very sorry for the poor starving capitalist orphan children sleeping in the streets during the cold New York nights like the "little match girl," and admits that he had to give his goldfish away because "keeping pets was bourgeois") make for both a visually arresting and entertaining viewing experience. Although Wang was a card-carrying Communist who agreed with Mao that "a revolution is not a dinner party," his growing disillusionment with China's intolerant governing regime eventually led to his leaving China for America in 1989. An effective, imaginative autobiographical piece that also illuminates the lure of the idealistic promise of China's vision and the reality of its shortcomings. Highly recommended. [Note: Libraries in Canada can order this title directly from the National Film Board of Canada (800-267-7710) for $39.95.] Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)