Screening: Blue Sky Bones

University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies hosts a screening of Blue Sky Bones, a story about history, family, music, and politics.

A film by Cui Jian; China, 2013; 101 minutes  (Mandarin with English subtitles)

Cui Jian, one of China’s first rock stars, makes his feature debut with a story about history, family, music and politics.

“The hero of the tale is Zhong Hua (played by Yin Fang), an underground rocker who makes a living creating computer viruses and then selling anti-viruses to neutralize them. When an impresario asks him to launch the career of his girlfriend Meng Meng (Huang Huan), Zhong Hua reluctantly agrees to do a live web show, illegally hooking into a satellite dish for the needed bandwidth. It’s a criminal infraction of the law that echoes the crime his mother Shi Yanping (TV actress and model Ni Hongjie) committed in the seventies, leading to her exile in the country during the Cultural Revolution.

The song 'Lost Season', sung in various ways and rearranged as 'Blue Sky Bones' later in the film, is a clear reference to the "lost ten years" of the Cultural Revolution. Written by Cui Jian (who, it should be noted, opened for the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple in their Beijing concerts), it makes poignant contact with the writer-director's own troubles with the authorities, who have often banned his music in China.”  Review by Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter.