Kaili Blues

Chen Sheng works at a small clinic in Kaili, in Guizhou, and has been in prison. His brother may have sold his nephew Weiwei to someone in another town. Chen sets out to find the boy and at the same time to carry a cassette to the old sweetheart of his elderly colleague. On the way he reaches a town called Dangmai, where whether the people he meets come from the past or the future is never clear. At the centre is a single take of forty-one minutes. The camera is handheld, riding pillion on a motorbike, in the back of a pickup, on a boat and through the streets without a cut. It crosses the river by ferry, comes back over the bridge and goes into shops. In the same passage Chen meets a woman who resembles his dead wife. The production's money had run out by the time that shot was finished. Bi Gan wrote and directed, his first feature. The Dangmai sections were shot in the nearby village of Ping Liang. It won best emerging director at the Locarno Film Festival, and took prizes at the Golden Horse Awards and the Three Continents Festival in Nantes. Who it is for: anyone who likes cinema that plays with time and the tradition of the long take. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a story. Who is who and when it is happening stay unresolved, the pace is very slow, and the poetry readings will be too much for some.