To Live

Director: Yimou Zhang
Writers: Wei Lu (screenplay), Hua Yu (novel)
Stars: You Ge, Li Gong, Ben Niu

Came out in 1994.


This film is by far is one of my favorite things to show in the classroom. The film follows a family through the introduction of communism in China in the 1940's, and continues all the way into the 1970's. It shows the struggles, triumphs and how life changed for pretty ordinary people. I was first introduced to this film while I was in college, I had a professor who showed it in class. I have also used in it my own classroom as well. one things I really enjoy about the film is that it is broken up into sections, like The Great Leap forwards and the Cultural revolution, which makes it very easy to use in segments in the classroom. During my student teaching I used it to help me visually represent to my students what communism looked like, I was teaching a sheltered world history class and it was very successful. I would give the students an introduction into what we were going over, typically in the form of notes, we would then do an activity of some sort. To finish a section I would show whatever portion of the movie. After the film I would either have the students answer questions or complete a pictograph explaining what a particular character was seeing, thinking, feeling,saying and doing.