Toronto. Fengming, A Chinese Memoir.

"All of Fengming, A Chinese Memoir is summed up in the opening minutes of the first interview," writes Darren Hughes. "He Fengming takes her seat in front of the camera, where she will remain for nearly all of the next 180 minutes, and begins to tell the story of how her life was forever changed in 1949, when at the age of 17 she left the university to join the staff of a newspaper. 'And that," she laughs, 'was the start of my revolutionary career.'" This is "one of my favorite films of the fest."

Updated through 9/23.

"This film engaged me from its first shot to its final dissolve and on occasion was so moving that I had difficulty maintaining my composure," writes MS Smith. "Wang [Bing] uses the gestures of everyday life to edit and order his film, to shape Fengming's story. His approach might be the purest form of narrative.... Fengming: A Chinese Memoir gravitates beyond sheer personal history. It is the history of thousands of people, even millions, who lived in Mao's China or in Nazi Europe or in Stalin's Russia."

Earlier: Robert Koehler in Variety.

Update, 9/23: "Fengming's resilience, humor, sadness, and descriptive powers are in ample evidence from the start, and the film is an emotionally immersive document on par with the most confessional Holocaust accounts or similar recordings of personal histories caught up in major world events," writes Doug Cummings. "Not to be missed."

Posted by dwhudson at September 18, 2007 10:08 AM