More from the movie corner of Graziella: Electric Shadows
This week’s film is a fairly typical heart-warmer made in 2004 by Xiao Jiang — nom de plume of Jia Yan. Her first film after graduating from the Beijing Film Academy, Electric Shadows is a love letter to an age when cinema was the main source of mass entertainment in China and movie theaters were a social center for the whole community. The English title “Electric Shadows” is actually the literal translation of the colorful expression employed in the Chinese language to refer to cinema: dian ying. The Chinese title, “A Childhood Dreaming of Movies” is however more evocative of what this film is about. With its marvelous extracts from classic movies and its references to great stars of the past, Electric Shadows will make you forget its occasional lapses into cliché and have you thoroughly entertained.
Watch Electric Shadows on Kanopy here.
