The Love Songs of Tiedan
(Mei Jie)

In a village in north-west China near the Mongolian border, Tiedan is initiated as a child into the art of Er ren tai, a form of two-voice mini-opera: enamoured of a neighbour who performs this traditional art, in later life he becomes romantically involved with each of her three daughters. Hao Jie has his story span several decades, from the 1960s (when this song form is banned by Mao) until the 1980s-1990s when Er ren tai is beginning to wane. The filmmaker eschews the fresco, remaining faithful to the spirit of the deliberately humble form of Er ren tai. He successfully blends sung sequences into Tiedan’s love stories and takes an ethnographic look, not without humour, at his home region. The film chronicles the evolution of not only an art form but also a community’s way of life (sometimes reminiscent of Jia Zhang-ke’s Platform, with Hao Jie as the associate producer). CG