Jiang Jie

Jiang Jie is famous throughout China the Chinese Joan of Arc in the words of director Zhang Yuan a communist heroine executed by the Kuomintang in 1949 on the eve of the revolution Zhang Yuans film a passionately engaged tribute to the 1964 revolutionary opera based on Jiang Jies life follows the original closelyThe Revolutionary melodrama plot not that different from Verdis 19th century versions has of course a completely different resonance today The Cultural Revolution 19661976 enshrined this kind of revolutionary opera based on traditional Beijing opera but with substantial stylistic and formal revisions as the epitome of Maoist propaganda art In the past ten years Chinese and Western experts have begun to reevaluate the art behind the propaganda to find creativity and even shocking beauty under the layers of kitsch and repellent politics the works have sometimes embodied Shelly Kraicer