Some minorities are bigger than others. For instance there are 80 million Chinese Christians. Many of the themes that Gan Xiao’er documents in a visual and very personal way in his first film The Only Sons can also be recognised in Raised from Dust. It all comes down to the difficult life of the poor rural population, in which the position of the Christian faith – that plays an increasingly important role in China – is of great importance. ‘Aunt’ Lam is in the church choir in one of the many small villages on the plains of China. She is rehearsing for a wedding. Her husband is lying in hospital with pneumosilicosis, the most common occupational disease in China, caused by breathing brickdust. An oxygen supply keeps him alive. Their child, the nine-year-old girl Sheng-yue, has to leave school because she can’t afford tuition fees. That is the way life is, without any prospect of improvement. Interwoven with this we see how Chen Shun-jun builds a house on the spot where he hopes the railway will be built. Raised from Dust presents Aunt Lam’s problems, as common as insolvable, not as a great existential struggle, but with biblical minimalism, as it were. In the words of the maker: ‘like the River Nu Jiang in southwest China – tranquil on the surface, but churning underneath’. (GT)
