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Zhang Yu presents cinematic ode to brocade

Senior actress Zhang Yu, one half of the first big-screen kissing scene in China after 1949, presents her second directorial work A Thousand Years' Love to theaters on Wednesday.

The film is a romantic story about the refined traditional brocade called yunjin, or cloud brocade.

Zhang works with yunjin master Guo Jun, who created a giant piece of cloud brocade on ancient women's lives for the film.

Zhang's breakout kissing scene was in Romance on Lushan Mountain, a 1980 film.

Zhang's first directorial work was a 2010 sequel to Romance on Lushan Mountain.

Director shoots five microfilms about kids

Online video sharing site 56.com and Shandong Education TV have jointly formed a public-service microfilm program on Aug 15 in Beijing.

After searching for more than two months, director Zhang Yuan decided to make five microfilms about poor children, children of migrant workers, left-behind children, children with rare diseases and children of those serving sentences, to call attention to them. The movies will be finished in October.

"It's my first attempt to direct microfilms and I am confident of meeting the challenge. People can shoot what they see in life with mobile phones or cameras and upload them, to do a good deed via the power of communication," he says.

Guo Moruo's life and works are celebrated

A series of cultural events are to be held in Leshan, Sichuan province, in November, to celebrate the 120th birth anniversary of the late poet, dramatist, historian, paleographer and social activist Guo Moruo (1892-1978).

Moruo Museum is scheduled to open on Nov 16, Guo's birthday, and will celebrate his life and achievements. More than 100 scholars and experts will gather on the day for an international seminar on the versatile cultural giant.

Born into a landlord's family in the Shawan district of Leshan, Guo went to Japan to study medicine in his youth. His first poetry anthology, The Goddesses, laid the foundation for New China-style poetry. After the founding of New China in 1949, he held a number of high-level governmental posts, including vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Calligraphy master presents artworks

The nationwide exhibition tour of calligraphy by Cao Yue, an artist and scholar of the classics at Renmin University of China, got underway on Monday at the Auditorium of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing.

The exhibition presents more than 400 works Cao has written in caoshu (cursive script), lishu (clerical script) and zhuanshu (seal script).

The contents of the works are mostly texts of ancient Chinese Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist classics, such as I Ching and Tao Te Ching.

"The exhibition is a summary of my decades-long pursuit of traditional Chinese art," says Cao at the launch ceremony.

After its Beijing debut, the exhibition will move to Shanghai, Xi'an, Guangzhou, Jinan and Hangzhou in the coming months.

Bronze culture revealed in Xi'an

Admiring visitors to the Terracotta Warriors at Qinshihuang Mausoleum Museum in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, will also have the chance to see a large-scale exhibition of bronze culture in northern China.

"The exhibition started on Aug 8 and will continue to Feb 8, 2013. It is the first time that such a large-scale bronze culture exhibition is being held in China," museum curator Cao Wei says.

Co-sponsored by the cultural heritage bureaus of Shaanxi province, the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions, and Gansu province, and undertaken by the Qinshihuang Mausoleum Museum, the exhibition includes 450 pieces of bronze ware. "The exhibits include weapons, tools, daily necessities, decorations and carriages showcasing the extraordinary wisdom of people in northern China and the splendid civilization they created more than 2,000 years ago," Cao says.

China Daily

(China Daily 08/23/2012 page20)