Raise the Red Lantern (35th Anniversary) (4K Restoration)
<div><b>The screening on </b><b>Saturday 13th November, 5:30pm</b><b> will have an introduction by Dr Sarah Artt. Dr Sarah Artt is Lecturer in English and Film at Edinburgh Napier University, where she has taught since 2007. Her work has appeared with a variety of academic presses, as well as online in The Conversation. She maintains a Substack about horror and art cinema entitled <a href="https://sjartt.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips">Visual Aroma</a>. Her book <i>Quiet Pictures: Women and Silence in Contemporary British and French Cinema</i> was published by Bloomsbury in 2024.</b></div><div><br></div><div>Nineteen-year-old Songlian, a promising student whose family has been destroyed by her father's death, is forced to abandon her studies and marry into wealth, becoming the fourth and newest concubine of the aging, unseen Master Chen. Inside his walled estate, she discovers a household ruled by a merciless ritual: each night, red lanterns are lit outside the chambers of whichever wife the master chooses to visit, granting her privilege and status 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. Determined at first to rise above the games, Songlian is gradually worn down by isolation and humiliation until she strikes back, trading secrets and favors to secure her place in Master Chen’s hierarchy. As petty cruelty turns even more dire, Songlian is forced to confront what these desperate measures will cost her soul.</div><div><br></div><div>“As visually striking as it is dramatically effective,” Zhang Yimou’s Academy Award-nominated and BAFTA-winning <i>Raise the Red Lantern</i> sumptuously captures 1920s China while “subtly exploring the politics of power and control” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times). One of international cinema’s greatest stars of the era, Gong Li is “nuanced and understated” (Chicago Reader) as the stifled young woman forced into a repressive world of concubinage. Newly restored, the film stands as one of the defining works of Fifth Generation Chinese cinema and international film of the 1990s. Few films have used colour, architecture and the human face to express their themes so well as Li and Yimou's fourth collaboration. Like so many of Zhang’s films, it is about resistance. Like so many of Gong’s, it is captivating. One of the most beautiful films ever made, it was later adapted as a ballet also directed by Zhang.</div><div><br></div><div><i>The 4K restoration of </i>Raise the Red Lantern <i>was carried out by the Udine Far East Film Festival on the occasion of its 26th edition. The original image and sound negatives were used under the supervision of Director Zhang Yimou. The vintage positive copy, presented at the 1991 Venice International Film Festival and preserved at the Venice Biennale's Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts, was used for color reference. The restoration was made in 2024 at L'Immagine Ritrovata (Hong Kong - Bologna).</i></div>DramaPT2H5M12A2026-11-13CNzhGong Li
He Saifei
Cao Cuifen
Zhang Yimou
Ni Zhen
Yau Fook-Sang
Raise the Red Lantern (35th Anniversary) (4K Restoration)"Raise the Red Lantern (35th Anniversary) (4K Restoration)"Showtimes
November 13, 5:30 pm
November 14, 5:45 pm
November 15, 12:30 pm
November 16, 2:45 pm
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