The Days (film)

The Days
Directed by	Wang Xiaoshuai
Produced by	Zhang Hongtao Wang Xiaoshuai
Written by	Wang Xiaoshuai
Starring	Liu Xiaodong Yu Hong
Music by	Liang Heping
Cinematography	Wu Di Liu Jie
Edited by	Qingping
Distributed by	Fortissimo Films
Release date	1993
Running time	80 min.
Country	China
Language	Mandarin Chinese
Budget	US$10,000 (approximate)

The Days (Chinese: 冬春的日子; pinyin: Dōng chūn de rìzǐ) is filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai's 1993 directorial debut. Filmed entirely in black-and-white, The Days follows the life of Dong (played by actor and artist Liu Xiaodong), and Chun (Yu Hong), married artists who have recently graduated from the Beijing Art Institute. Living meagerly in the hope of making enough money off their works, it soon becomes obvious to everyone but themselves that the marriage has begun to die.

Wang's first film on his own after graduating from the Beijing Film Academy in 1989, The Days was shot on a meager budget of less than $10,000 (U.S.), with filming on the weekends with Wang's friends playing the lead roles.

Made outside of the state film system, The Days was blacklisted upon its release by the Chinese Film Bureau. On the international front, however, the film was seen in a different light. Riding the high that Chinese cinema was enjoying abroad at the time (notably by older directors such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige), Wang Xiaoshuai's small independent film was an early indication that a new movement was beginning to supplant the old one.

Wang has stated that inspiration for The Days came from a variety of sources. One of those was, of course, the harsh reality of his situation. Wang realized that a large-budget film would be impossible and therefore became interested in the small-scale, independent features. Beyond pragmatics, with The Days, Wang Xiaoshuai was consciously rebelling against the films of the period. In particular, the early 1990s was a high point for many "Fifth Generation" directors, whose lavish period films, like Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern or Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine received critical accolades on the international circuit. Wang, however, found them "unnatural and pretentious." As such, he set out to create a film that spoke to the contemporary Chinese generation. As Wang himself has said, "there may not be an obvious story line in The Days, but at least it presents the truth about the lives of people from my generation in the wake of the Tiananmen Square tragedy."

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