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Four hundred volunteers, many of them fresh recruits still in their teens come to a training camp for eight months of intensive drilling. The film focuses on four of the young squaddies and two of the officers, looking at the ways they bond and split apart, but also at their most intimate feelings: their sense of physical inadequacy, for instance, or their hypocrisy in presenting an exterior they know to be false. It’s surprisingly humane and moving. There are images here whose power and grace burn themselves into the mind. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
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How to watch
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
324136
Language
Chinese
Audience classification
PG
Subject categories
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Foreign language films
Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → China - Social life and customs
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → China - Social conditions
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
VHS; Access Print (Section 1)