Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers

Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers

1990 · 135 min · ★ 7.6 · Documentary

A documentary following five young artists from around China, who travelled to Beijing in the 1980s to work as freelancers, exploring their lives, careers, and what aspirations they may have for the future.

Directed by Wu Wenguang

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3h 36m together

Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers

Cutie and the Boxer

A close match in mood and era.

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1966, My Time in the Red Guards1966, My Time in the Red Guards · 1993
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More preoccupied with "history" than Wu's other works, My Time in the Red Guards is a record of his fascination with the missed moment, Mao's Cultural Revolution. In 1966, the Red Guards ironically represented the official avant-garde, a movement carried forward by youth determined to become heroes of the Revolution. Wu interviews people who had joined the Red Guards as high schoolers, most now successful professionals, some Party members. The miscalculations and cruelties of this extreme cultural campaign are spread out before us, detailed by personal recollection and further illustrated by old agit-prop newsreels. Misgivings and fond remembrance vie for position as the interviewees seem to confuse the nostalgia of youthful action with the excesses of historical fact.
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This documentary shows how different young people try to realize their dreams to become famous through the film industry.
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A year after he made Bumming in Beijing, Wu Wenguang visited his main figures in Austria, France, Italy and the USA. The desire to escape everything, which was the most compelling feeling while they were still living in Beijing, has meanwhile faded and they are now confronted with the dynamics of emigration. Wu asks what it means to feels deserted by one's own country and how it is when one reacts by deserting it in turn.
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This film is the second segment of my “Autobiography Series.” From the moment when my mother disclosed a long kept secret, my birth was accompanied by many struggles for my mother. Those “struggles” include: during pregnancy, “should this child be kept,” to the painful struggles in the delivery process. Struggles have also accompanied since I was born, becoming part of my life.
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