Red sorghum

Set in the barren wilderness of Northern China, this is the simple story of how an offscreen narrator’s grandparents met and fell in love. A young village girl is married off to a rich and elderly leper. He is mysteriously murdered not long after the wedding and she takes on the management of his distillery with the help of the labourers. A relationship develops between herself and the sedan carrier who has saved her life. All appears to be going well until the advent of the Sino-Japanese war and the chilling appearance of the foreign invaders. In Mandarin with English subtitles.

Credits

producer/director

Zhang Yimou

Duration

01:30:00:00

Production places

China

Production dates

1987

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

300191

Language

Chinese

Audience classification

MA

Subject categories

Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Foreign language films

Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → China - Social life and customs

Armed Forces, Military, War & Weapons → World War, 1939-1945

Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → China - Social conditions

Feature films

Feature films → Feature films - China

Foreign language films

War films

Sound/audio

Sound

Colour

Holdings

VHS; Access Print (Section 1)

Please note: this archive is an ongoing body of work. Sometimes the credit information (director, year etc) isn’t available so these fields may be left blank; we are progressively filling these in with further research.

Cite this work on Wikipedia

If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/79258--red-sorghum/ |title=Red sorghum |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=25 October 2021 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}

China, 1987