1) Relate what was discussed in class or the text to the screening.
n the 1990s, primary education reform had become one of the top priorities in the People's Republic of China. About 160 million Chinese people had missed all or part of their education because of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s and in 1986 the National People's Congress enacted a law calling for nine years of compulsory education. By 1993, it was clear that much of the country was making little progress on implementing nine-year compulsory education, so the 1993–2000 seven-year plan focused on this goal. One of the major challenges educators faced was the large number of rural schoolchildren dropping out to pursue work. Another issue was a large urban–rural divide: funding and teacher quality were far better in urban schools than rural, and urban students stayed in school longer.
2) Find a related article and summarize the content.
"Not One Less" is not only about the poor in China's remote rural areas, but could be dedicated to them; we sense that Zhang Yimou, the director of such sophisticated films as "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Shanghai Triad," is returning here to memories of the years from 1968 to 1978, when he worked as a rural laborer under the Cultural Revolution. His story is simple, unadorned, direct. The actors are not professionals, but local people playing characters with their own names. Wei Minzhi, a red-cheeked 13-year-old who usually looks very intent, stars as Wei, a substitute teacher, also very intent. The village's schoolmaster has been called away to his mother's deathbed, and Wei's assignment is to teach the grade school class.These early scenes are interesting in the way they don't exploit the obvious angles of the story. This isn't a pumped-up melodrama or an inspirational tearjerker, but a matter-of-fact look at a poor rural area where necessity is the mother of invention and everything else. When one of her students, Zhang (Zhang Huike), runs away to look for work in the big city, Wei determines to follow him and bring him back. This is not an easy task. It involves raising the money to buy a bus ticket. Wei puts the whole class to work shifting bricks for a local factory to earn the funds. She eventually does get to the city, Jiangjiakou, and her encounters with bureaucracy there are a child's shadow of the heroine's problems in Zhang Yimou's. For Chinese viewers, this film will play as a human drama (end titles mention how many children drop out of school in China every year). For Western viewers, there's almost equal interest at the edges of the screen, in the background, in the locations and incidental details that show daily life in today's China. One of the buried messages is the class divide that exists even today in the People's Republic, where TV bureaucrats live in a different world than 13-year-old rural schoolgirls. Zhang Yimou, whose films have sometimes landed him in trouble with the authorities, seems to have made a safe one this time. But in the margins he may be making comments of his own.
3) Apply the article to the film screened in class.
The film illustrates the growing urban–rural divide in China. When Wei reaches Zhangjiakou, the film creates a clear contrast between urban and rural life, and the two locations are physically separated by a dark tunnel. The city is not portrayed as idyllic; rather, Zhang shows that rural people are faced with difficulties and discrimination in the cities. While Wei's first view of the city exposes her to well-dressed people and modern buildings, the living quarters she goes to while searching for Zhang Huike are cramped and squalid. Likewise, the iron gate where Wei waits all day for the TV station director reflects the barriers poor people face to survival in the city, and the necessity of connections to avoid becoming an "outsider" in the city. Frequent cuts show Wei and Zhang wandering aimlessly in the streets, Zhang begging for food, and Wei sleeping on the sidewalk; when an enthusiastic TV host later asks Zhang what part of the city left the biggest impression, Zhang replies that the one thing he will never forget is having to beg for food.
4) Write a critical analysis of the film, including your personal opinion, formed as a result of the screening, class discussions, text material and the article.
With Not One Less, Zhang Yimou has fashioned what feels like an uncannily accurate portrait of a culture where Communist ideology has vanished like a brief dream, as traditional community values clash with the burgeoning cult of money.As charming as it is important, Not One Less has all the elements of a great drama: inspiring performances, the ability to make one laugh and cry and a subject matter worthy of further contemplation.
Plagiarism Checklist
CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM
1) (x ) I have not handed in this assignment for any other class.
2) ( x) If I reused any information from other papers I have written for other classes, I clearly explain that in the paper.
3) (x ) If I used any passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used indentation and citation within the text.
4) ( x) I have not padded the bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the bibliography in the text of the paper.
5) ( x) I have cited in the bibliography only the pages I personally read.
6) ( x) I have used direct quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in another way. I cited the source within the paper and in the bibliography.
7) ( x) I did not so over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or originality.
8) ( x) I checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully transparent about the research and ideas used in my paper.
Name : __Carleen Oliver_________ Date: ___May 3, 2018_________
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