In 1985, fifth-generation Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou chose the luminous Gong Li, then a Beijing-based drama student, to play the female protagonist in his directorial debut Red Sorghum, thus beginning a decade of personal and professional collaboration. Although he was married when he cast her, they embarked on an affair that produced seven critically acclaimed films, four of which will screen on Tuesdays in May.

In Raise the Red Lantern (May 5), Gong plays a student forced into an arranged marriage with a polygamist businessman. She becomes the fourth wife, and inhabits a compound with her co-wives. While the script passed muster with Chinese censors, it was ultimately banned since it was read as a critique of Communism.

The Story of Qiu Ju (May 19) is Zhang’s first film set in contemporary China. The heroine is a pregnant peasant who sets out on several arduous journeys to appeal to bureaucratic authorities for recompense and an apology from a village chieftain. If Chinese censors were suspicious of Zhang’s spurious political intentions in earlier films, they wholeheartedly supported Qiu Ju’s representation of polite, helpful bureaucrats.

To Live (May 12) traces the changing fortunes of the gentry during China’s transition from Nationalism to the Cultural Revolution. The film weighs the benefits and drawbacks of socialism via Xu, a pragmatic everyman, whose political affinities are malleable and opportunistic.

The couple parted ways, both personally and professionally, shortly before the 1995 release of Shanghai Triad (May 26). Set in a city dominated by criminal gangs, it features Gong as a nightclub chanteuse and mistress to an eminent criminal boss.

–Dinah Holtzman, Assistant Film Programmer, Motion Picture Department