The Red Detachment of Women

Inspired by real events, The Red Detachment of Women charts the journey of a former slave who enlists in a women-only faction of the Red Army in order to combat reactionary forces. A fierce feminist ballad of the revolution.

Hainan Island, 1930. A feisty maidservant held captive by the callous landlord Nan Batian, Qionghua finds freedom thanks to Changqing, a Communist Party Representative who rescues her disguised as a foreign businessman. With Changqing’s help, Qionghua joins the first all-women troop of the Red Army, where she goes from strength to strength, transforming from a wronged slave seeking personal vengeance to a committed soldier for the Communist cause.

A monument of Chinese revolutionary cinema, Xie Jin’s The Red Detachment of Women draws from real historical events to memorialise women’s contribution to the proletarian movement. Tracing Qionghua’s awakening class consciousness as a landless woman, Xie’s film illustrates how private resentments must find solidarity in broader structural struggles in order to attain their complete meaning. 

Xie’s widely beloved film has enjoyed a fabled afterlife through the years, having been remade numerous times in various media, most notably as a ballet (1964) that went on to become one of the eight “model plays” of the Cultural Revolution. The film’s potent marriage of radical pedagogy and emotional pull – including the seminal battle song of the Red Detachment – makes it a political work of enduring appeal. 

– Srikanth Srinivasan

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