Chinese Shadows: The Amazing World of Shadow Puppetry in Rural Northwest China

Performances include a curing ritual for a young boy and an outdoor play in another town, for which we get to see the performers travelling with their puppets, instruments, and portable "theatre" (constructed of bamboo poles) and setting up the stage, followed by on-the-spot feedback from the audience. The music ensemble accompanying the plays-a four-stringed bowed lute (normally called sihu although I believe I hear the term xi xianzi used in an interview), transverse flute (dizi), occasional conical double reed (suona), and a percussion section featuring bangu (a lower-pitched version of the danpigu drum used in Peking opera), gongs, and cymbals-is quite attractive, and it is hard to understand why the filmmakers would opt for using Smetena, Janácek, Sibelius, and Hindemith, instead of letting us hear more of their field recordings. Some of the performers speak with heavy regional accents that become almost unintelligible at times, and it would be useful to have the exact Chinese terminology they use for some technical and aesthetic forms written out. Since the interviews were presumably transcribed, this would not be difficult to add to a future edition of the film.