Electric Shadows

Beijing, present. Mao Dabing (‘Great Soldier’ Mao) has a job delivering bottled water but lives for his nights at the movies. One sunny evening after work he’s racing to the movie theatre on his bike when he crashes into a pile of bricks in an alleyway. As he’s picking himself up, a young woman who saw the incident picks up a brick and hits him on the head...

He awakens in the hospital with his head bandaged. The police tell him that he’s lost his job, and that his ex-boss expects him to pay for the wrecked bicycle. By chance he sees the young woman who hit him and angrily remonstrates with her. But she seems not to hear him, and hands him her apartment keys and a note asking him to feed her fish.

Dabing is amazed to discover that the woman’s room is a virtual shrine to the movies, crammed with posters, stills and memorabilia. Amongst it he finds a diary, and begins reading.

Ningxia, c. 1971. Jiang Xuehua is an attractive young woman who has dreams of performing on the stage. She loves the movies and particularly reveres the pre-war chanteuse Zhou Xuan. She has a job broadcasting public service announcements and news over the civic public-address system and joins a local cultural troupe to pursue her ambition to act. Then she finds herself pregnant.

When her lover abandons her, Xuehua considers going away to have her child in secret and then give it up for adoption. She also considers suicide. On what she intends to be the last night of her life, she goes to see a rare foreign film playing at the town’s open-air theatre – and goes into labour during the show, helped by Pan Daren, the projectionist. Her child is a daughter, named Ling Ling – the author of the diary in which this story is recorded.

Xuehua is criticised in ‘struggle sessions’ for refusing to name the father of her child, and she loses her job. But after Chairman Mao’s death and the fall of the ‘Gang of Four’, life quickly returns to normal and both mother and daughter are accepted in the community. Ling Ling inherits her mother’s love for the movies, and the two are frequent visitors to Uncle Pan’s open-air theatre, the Big Movie World.

The bane of Ling Ling’s life is her new classmate Xiaobing (‘Little Soldier’), a troublesome boy newly transferred from another school and in need of remedial teaching. After several misadventures, though, the two become firm friends. Xiaobing even stays in Xuehua’s home for a few nights after running away from his abusive father. But then Xiaobing is sent away to live with his grandfather in distant Anhui. His parting gift to Ling Ling is his pair of ‘magic’ binoculars, through which – he says – he can see imaginary movies.

Ling Ling is horrified when her mother suddenly marries Uncle Pan, and even more horrified when they have a baby a year later – a son named Bing Bing. The doting parents spoil their new son, and Ling Ling grows more and more jealous and resentful. When both kids are offered places in the Youth Training School for budding performers, and Uncle Pan and Xuehua can afford to pay the fees for only one of them, it’s Bing Bing they choose.

The rise of television pushes the movies into decline, and the Big Movie World faces closure. On the evening of its final show, Xuehua tells Ling Ling to stay home to study and locks her in when she protests. But Bing Bing sneaks home with the keys to let her out. They climb to the top of a water tower to watch the show, but Bing Bing falls to his death in an accident. Uncle Pan furiously hits Ling Ling on the head, causing permanent damage to her hearing...

Beijing, present. Ling Ling’s diary leaves Mao Dabing stunned. He is the former Xiaobing, and Ling Ling is the girl he befriended during his childhood year in Ningxia. The police tell him that Ling Ling is now in psychiatric care, and reveal why she struck him in the alley: his collision with the pile of bricks crushed and killed her pet dog. On the balcony outside Ling Ling’s room, Mao Dabing finds the binoculars he gave her, permanently trained on a house in the alleys nearby. And through the binoculars he sees two very familiar faces...

Director
Jiang Xiao ( 小江 )

Cast
Xiaotong Guan
Yihong Jiang
Haibin Li
Yu Xia ( 夏雨 )
Yijing Zhang( 張懿靖 )

Distributor: Golden Scene Company Limited

Release date: 26th Jan, 2006

Category: TBC

Duration: TBC

Cinemas: TBC