The Girl who wanted to dance = Bu Dang yan yuan de gu niang

The film tells the story about a Uyghur dancer and her estranged daughter. Amina and Nur went to Tianshan district, Xinjiang to recruit new students on behalf of the Provincial Song and Dance Ensemble. A girl with a beautiful singing voice called, Mayila caught Amina’s attention. It happened that Amina’s estranged daughter during the Cultural Revolution many years ago was also called Mayila. Amina and Nur’s recruitment work went well but Mayila’s foster father would not allow her to take the test as he hated to let her go. Amina sent Nur to talk to Mayila’s father, and the latter realized that Mayila was Amina’s daughter. He decided to allow Mayila to go and gave her a pair of beautiful dancing shoes, telling her that she should only wear them for the National Day Celebration Performance. Amina saw the shoes one night in Mayila’s dorm and knew Mayila was her daughter, because the shoes were left for Mayila by her years ago. She didn’t tell Mayila the truth so that she could concentrate on training. In the meantime, Mayila learned from her father’s letter that Amina was her biological mother. On the National Day Celebration Performance, Amina and Mayila played mother and daughter characters. Their performance was wonderful and Mayila called Amina mum on the stage.

The film was awarded Best Film by the Ministry of Culture in 1984, and won a major prize at a Turkish Film Festival in 1985. The film presents a few scenes of Uyghur dancing. Established in 1958, the film studio was originally called Xinjiang Film Studio. In 1979, the film studio changed its name to Tianshan Film Studio and has produced more than one hundred films, mostly about Chinese ethnic groups, since then. Director Guang Chunlan also made Death of a Beauty and The Mysterious Caravan. (3 stars - Yuxing Zhou; December 16, 2010)