Prairie Requiem

Official selection

Over twenty years, the director follows an old villager and the folk organisation he belongs to, the Qujiaying music association. Taking an intimate, grassroots path, the film portrays the association's struggle to survive and the singular efforts of the old man, Lin Zhongshu, to protect it. Guided by the Confucian mean and a worldly philosophy of loyalty and filial piety, he handles conflicts and thinks problems through, doing everything he can to preserve an inherited musical culture and a precious folk organisation. The association is always short of money; for decades he keeps looking for funds, often winning support from every level of government and, of course, often obstructed and short-changed by a few local authorities. Through endless negotiation he trains young musicians, raises money to build a village road, spends fifteen years building a village music hall, and even mobilises every resource to take the Qujiaying music association, which had never left the village, to perform in Taiwan. Then an unexpected windfall traps him in a predicament he cannot escape...

Translated from English by IFFDAY, not yet reviewed.