Zhan Tai

Platform, named after a Chinese hit from the 1980s, is set against the background of the enormous changes that took place in China at that time, when the Maoist system was slowly exchanged for a popular culture imported from Taiwan and Hong Kong. The adventures, loves and choices of the players in a theatre group are used by Jia Zhangke, a teenager at the time, to show us in a moving, detailed and very controlled way the earthquakes caused by Deng Xiaoping’s ‘open-door policy’. Jia also provides an insight into the present much more rapid changes. Comparisons with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films from the eighties and Edgar Reitz’ Heimat are not unfounded.1979. In Fenyang, a small village in the remote province of Shanxi, the theatre company of Minliang and his friends sing the praises of Mao Zedong. In the next ten years, they see the introduction of cigarettes, electricity, Western pop music and break dancing. Progress does not seem to have any negative connotations for the group, until the late 1980s when the government decides to stop providing a grant to the theatre company. Suddenly they are again conscious of the grey reality of their everyday existence.In Nantes, Platform won the prize for the best director and best film. The screening in Rotterdam is the world première of the final cut.