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The Empress Dowager
Part of the series Power Moves: The Empress Dowager Onscreen
Where
![](https://china.usc.edu/sites/default/files/styles/event_node_featured/public/events/featured-image/EmpressDowager-pic_0.jpg?itok=8Ac5LnRH)
Lisa Lu, actress
This film by Li Hanxiang, the first of five he directed on the Empress Dowager, shaped popular perception of the woman who outlived three emperors and whose reign marked the end of imperial rule in China. Palace melodrama meets the star power and spectacle of the legendary Shaw Bros. studio, starring a pitch-perfect Lisa Lu (The Last Emperor, The Joy Luck Club) in the title role. When her sixtieth-birthday celebration is marred by China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese war of 1895, the aftermath pits the Dowager, with her old-guard convictions and tactical wiles, against the hapless young emperor, who supported the war out of nationalistic fervor.
Lu, who has played the Empress Dowager many times on stage and screen, visits the Freer to introduce the film and host a discussion afterward. Description by Cheng-sim Lim.
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