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Xiaolu Guo, 2009, 110 min. To RSVP, please click here.
One hot afternoon, the life of a Chinese village woman abruptly changes when she believes that she has just witnessed a UFO flying through the sky. The village chief takes advantage of this unexpected event to boost the poverty-stricken local economy – to stimulate tourism, get government support, and even make contact with the USA. Under a scrutinizing police eye, a collective portrait unfolds ... Partly inspired by Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and Kurosawa’s Rashomon, the film portrays the lives of ordinary individuals dealing with radical political changes in a chaotic contemporary Chinese society.
This Event is co-sponsored by Columbia’s Maison Française and Institute for Ideas and Imagination (at Reid Hall in Paris) as part of the Institute at the Maison series. Other co-sponsors are the Office of the EVP for Arts and Sciences, Columbia College, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, EALAC, ICLS, Department of English and Comparative Literature, School of the Arts, and Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities.