Blind Mountain
| Blind Mountain | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Li Yang |
| Produced by | Li Yang |
| Written by | Li Yang |
| Starring | Huang Lu |
| Cinematography | Jong Lin |
| Edited by | Li Yang Mary Stephen |
| Distributed by |
StudioCanal Tang Splendour Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
| Country | China |
| Language |
Shaanxi Chinese Dialect Sichuan Dialect |
| Budget | €600,000 ($809,000) |
Blind Mountain (Chinese: 盲山; pinyin: Máng shān) is a 2007 Chinese film directed by Li Yang and is Li's first feature film since his 2003 debut Blind Shaft. It is also known as Road Home.
Like Li's previous film, Blind Shaft, which dealt with the notoriously dangerous mining industry, Blind Mountain turns a sharply critical eye towards another one of China's continuing social problems, this time selling women for marriage in modern-day China.
Blind Mountain follows a young woman, Bai Xuemei, in the early 1990s who recently graduated from college and attempts to find work to help pay for her brother's education. In the process, she is drugged, kidnapped and sold as a bride to a villager in the Qin Mountains of China's Shaanxi province. Trapped in the fiercely traditional town, the young woman finds that her avenues of escape are all blocked. As she searches for allies, including a young boy, a school teacher and a mailman, she suffers from being raped by her "husband" and continued beatings at the hands of the villagers, her husband, and her husbands' parents.
The film was primarily funded by private, overseas Chinese donors. The cast was primarily non-professional actors with the notable exception of the lead, Huang Lu, who was cast from the Beijing Film Academy before she had even graduated.
Prior to its release, Blind Mountain suffered from nearly 20 state-imposed cuts. This was done in order for the film to be allowed into the Un certain regard competition at Cannes by Chinese officials, as several of the cuts were of scenes that were critical of certain aspects of Chinese society. The Chinese Film Bureau policy also led to Li filming several alternate versions of the film's ending including a more upbeat one specifically for a possible video or DVD release in China.
Along with Diao Yi'nan's Night Train, Blind Mountain was one of only two Chinese films in competition in the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, both for the Prix un certain regard. A third Chinese film, Fengming, a Chinese Memoir by Wang Bing was a documentary and was a "Special Screening" not in competition. Blind Mountain ultimately failed to win anything at Cannes, with the Prix un certain regard going instead to Cristian Nemescu's California Dreamin'.
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