Closing film “Flowers in the Mirror” and Award Ceremony
July 18 — If we could go back in time to watch the audience at the screening of a winning film, and talk with them a bit, what would we find? Fortunately, this reporter has recorded events for posterity. Our screening of Flowers in the Mirror at the third Shen Zhou International Film Festival begins in Tokyo, with audience members watching as, in a theater filled with elegant Chinese classical music, an ancient scroll flying in from Heavens to reveal opening titles of one of the festival’s main offerings, Flowers in the Mirror [Meng Xiang, 梦乡 (夢鄉), The Dreamland]. With such storybook simplicity, Director Jinwei Wang’s adaptation of the classical Chinese novel Flowers in the Mirror begins. It is the tale of an immortal, the Hundred Flowers Fairy Maiden. Once a god, she descends to earth. Her memory lost, she must rely on her conscience and the will she has retained to complete her divine mission amidst pitfalls. She never gives up, and is assimilated back to the heavens when, at a lively celebration party, she completely disappears. The arc of the story begins in the heavens and is realized in a dreamlike narrative that reaches to earth and back to the heavens again. read more
