Ghost Town is a critically-acclaimed feature documentary that tells the story of a community living in a remote town in China's southwest Yunnan province, on the border of Tibet and Burma. Once a vibrant county seat, the town of Zhiziluo, now been abandoned to local peasants, and is a ghost town full of life . . . This is the film of which A.O. Scott wrote in 2010: "Mr. Zhao has an exquisite ability to balance words with images. The life stories and household interactions that fill out the film’s three chapters take place against a natural background that is shot beautifully, though never ostentatiously."
In Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles.
Visit the Our Films section for a complete summary and director's statement for the film.
More Details
A.O. Scott of the New York Times reviews the Lantern Films documentary Ghost Town on the eve of a full week of screenings at the Museum of Modern Art.
There are documentaries that set out to explain the world, to shape the chaos of experience into coherent stories or compelling arguments. This kind of movie — dominant just now in American nonfiction filmmaking — performs the journalistic work of advocacy, investigating problems and engaging the sympathy or the outrage of viewers. But another documentary tradition is more exploratory, less concerned with the interpretation of life than with the communication of its texture. Zhao Dayong’s “Ghost Town,” a nearly three-hour-long visit to a remote Chinese mountain village, is hardly indifferent to social issues, but it approaches them obliquely, with open-minded curiosity and inexhaustible patience.
Lantern Films is pleased to announce the New York premiere of Zhao Dayong’s award-winning film THE HIGH LIFE, which will be running for a full week this month at the Museum of Modern Art. THE HIGH LIFE is showing as part of MOMA’s ContemporAsian series (See details here). Days and times are as follows: Monday, … Continue reading
Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.com, a Beijing-based website on media and culture in China, interviews director Zhao Dayong about The High Life, Ghost Town, My Father’s House and other Lantern Films productions. Interview with Chinese film director Zhao Dayong from Danwei on Vimeo.
Slant magazine has listed Lantern Films production Ghost Town as No. 21 on its list of the top 100 films released to the screen in 2010.
Copyright 2011 Lantern Films China Company Limited
