Alliance of Women Film Journalists Selection! Read an excerpt from Susan Wloszczyna's AWFJ review: "Set during China's Cultural Revolution, female director Xiao Jiang’s 2004 feature debut, ELECTRIC SHADOWS, is akin to Italy’s 1989’s Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso as it focuses on how a makeshift outdoor theater brings together a village of cinema lovers. When we first meet film addict Mao (Xia Yu), he is footloose and fancy-free. He earns a living by toting water jugs from place to place on his bike. He especially loves action movies, as an image of a Blade Runner poster with Harrison Ford’s face materializes on screen. But by accident, he tumbles into a wall of bricks and is conked on the head with a brick by an angry woman named Ling-Ling (Qi Zhongyang). When she gets arrested, she gives Mao the keys to her apartment and tells him to feed her fish."

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Maverick female director Xiao Jiang tells the charming tale of a small-town cinema and the lifelong influence it has on a young boy and girl. Years later the two meet by chance under unusual circumstances in Beijing, an encounter that sparks both nostalgia and romance. ELECTRIC SHADOWS was praised by Time Magazine, who named it one of the Best Films of the Year and said “movie love was never so engulfing, and rarely so sweet, as in this petite, elevating heart-warmer.”

DIRECTED BY XIAO JIANG
CHINA | 2004 | MANDARIN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES