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“Red Sorghum” (1987) by the director Zhang Yimou, based on a novel by last year's Nobel laureate Mo Yan, is a Chinese film and the director's first work that won him the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film sparked controversy when it was first released, particularly in regards to scenes at a brewery. A man plays a prank and urinates into a brand-new liquor, which surprisingly turns into an excellent brew. The liquor industry protested, and the scenes generated debates over whether that urine brew is possible or not. Why did urine produce an excellent liquor? Let us tackle this question in the context of Chinese culture.

[Instructor]

KARIMA, Fumitoshi

Professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Culture and Representation Course), the University of Tokyo. His areas of specialty are Chinese film history and contemporary Chinese art and literature.
He finished the doctorate program at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, at the University of Tokyo in 1983. He is interested in contemporary Chinese art and literature from the 1980’s onward, and has been following new cultural state of affairs as well as being drawn to the Chinese cinema of the time of silent films. He has done subtitle translation for nearly 100 Chinese films.