腊月三十日到来 The Day of Reckoning 徐星 Xu Xing (2018) (English subtitles)

(English follows.) 《腊月三十日到来》以中国政治环境的变动为背景，讲述了一个跨越60年的凄美爱情故事。故事发生在浙江桐乡濮院，通过主人公沈雪华的叙述展开，从1949年其与丈夫蔡大可的相遇相恋讲到2009年丈夫去世。这期间两人面临重重波折：婚后13个月，蔡大可被诬陷为反革命，关押两年后被送往青海服刑，二人从此天各一方；此后，沈雪华被迫改嫁，曾误得蔡大可死讯，后又获知蔡大可尚在人世，二人开始长达20年的书信往来。1984年，沈雪华离婚重返被平反的蔡大可身边……导演通过这对夫妇的悲欢离合展现了国家历史对个人命运的影响。 创作者简介： 徐星（1956— ），作家，纪录片导演、制片人。作为作家，他凭借1985年发表于《人民文学》的作品《无主题变奏》成为 20 世纪 80 年代先锋作家代表，获得国内外赞誉和奖项。此后，徐星陆续发表一些短篇小说，唯一一部长篇《剩下的都属于你》取材于真实经历，用流浪汉的视角对当下社会进行批判，常被视为中国版的《在路上》(On the Road)。1995年，徐星被法国《新观察家》(Le Nouvel Observateur) 评选为全世界240位杰出小说家之一。2000年左右，徐星开始拍摄纪录片。 徐星的作品大多关注中国共产党当政以来，中国普通百姓在历次政治运动中所经历的故事：如《我的文革编年史》（2007，以“我”（徐星）的文革经历为叙述线索，再现了当时红卫兵武斗的血腥暴行）、《罪行摘要》（2014，记录了文革期间浙江一群被打成“反革命”的农民的故事），《腊月三十日到来》（2018，讲述了五十年代“镇反”期间，遭受冲击的一对“反革命夫妻”沈雪华和蔡大可的故事）等。在2018年的一次采访中，徐星表示他手头还有三部相关的纪录片正在后期制作中：1950年代高级知识分子被严密监视的《告密者》、反映1966-1967年间抄家故事的《抄家》和表现1949年之前中国农民生活状况的《长工》。徐星的纪录片无论是拍摄还是放映，在国内都困难重重，只能偶尔在私人场所放映，但他的作品曾在美国多所大学以及多地展映。 Day of Reckoning tells a poignant love story spanning 60 years against the backdrop of China's political events. The story unfolds in Puyuan, Tongxiang, Zhejiang, narrated by one of the protagonists, Shen Xuehua (Snow Shen). It begins in 1949 with her meeting and falling in love with her husband, Cai Dake, and continues through to 2009 when Cai passed away, with many trials and tribulations in between. Thirteen months after their marriage, Cai Dake was falsely accused of being a counter-revolutionary, imprisoned for two years, and then sent to serve his sentence in Qinghai, leading to their separation. Following this, Shen was forced to remarry and received the false news of Cai’s death. Upon discovering that Cai was still alive, she began a twenty-year exchange of letters with him. In 1984, she divorced her second husband and reunited with the rehabilitated Cai. The director uses the vicissitudes of this couple's life to illustrate how national history affects individual destinies. About the Creator: Xu Xing (1956- ), a Chinese writer, documentary filmmaker, and producer, emerged as a defining figure of the 1980s with his 1985 work Variations Without a Theme, published in People's Literature. This work captured the emotions of young people in China during that era and earned praise at the Peking University Arts Festival. Xu Xing received international acclaim and awards, including the Tucholsky Prize for Foreign Literature (PEN International) and the Chevalier of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture for his translated works. Later, Xu Xing published several short stories, and his only full-length novel, All That is Left is Yours, drew from his real-life experiences, offering a critical view of contemporary society from a homeless person’s perspective. The novel is often regarded as China's version of On the Road. In 1995, Le Nouvel Observateur named Xu Xing one of the 240 most outstanding novelists in the world. Around 2000, Xu Xing began producing documentaries. To date, he has completed and released three documentaries, all focusing on the stories of ordinary Chinese people under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party and the political movements they endured: A Chronicle of My Cultural Revolution (2007) uses Xu Xing's own experiences as the narrative thread to depict the bloody violence of the Red Guards; Summary of Crimes (2014) tells the story of a group of farmers in Zhejiang province labeled as "counter-revolutionaries" during the Cultural Revolution; and Day of Reckoning (2018) narrates the story of a "counter-revolutionary" couple, Shen Xuehua and Cai Dake, who suffered during the 1950s "Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries" campaign. In a 2018 interview, Xu Xing said he had three other related documentaries currently in post-production: The Informer, about senior intellectuals under strict surveillance in the 1950s; House Raids, reflecting on the events of house raids from 1966 to 1967; and The Long-Term Laborer, which portrays the lives of Chinese farmers before 1949. Xu Xing faces significant challenges in filming and screening his documentaries within China, where they can only occasionally be shown in private settings. However, his works have been widely exhibited at prestigious institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University, and Columbia University in the United States, as well as in European cities like Berlin, Rome, and Aix-en-Provence.