With unsparing realism, The Taste of Rice Flower portrays the relentless clash between tradition and modernity in China through the story of Ye Nan, a young Dai minority mother returning to her village from bustling Shanghai to rebuild her bond with her daughter.
As elements of a coming-of-age tale emerge, the film delves into broader themes of a sense of uprootedness and shifting identities amid economic migration and societal transformation. Ye Nan belongs to an ethnic minority with deep-rooted traditions. As modernity encroaches upon the indigenous community, these traditions get intruded, and the identities are inevitably transformed and reshaped. Director Peng Fei Song skillfully integrates local rituals and folklores to depict how a left-behind community grapples with the rapid development in China.
Director Peng Fei Song will join us from China for a live online Q&A session after the screening.
This program is made possible through the support of the Chinese International Education Foundation, and generous supporters of China Institute in America.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
China Institute in America’s cultural programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
SONG, Peng Fei, born in Beijing in 1982, is a director and screenwriter in Mainland China and graduated from the Directing Department of the French International School of Image and Sound. In 2008, he served as the assistant director of the feature film "Face" by Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang. In 2013, he collaborated with Tsai again as the screenwriter of the feature film “Stray “Dogs, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 70th Venice Film Festival. In 2015, he directed the feature film "Underground Fragrance", which won the Best Film of the Film Critics Association at the 72nd Venice Film Festival and the Golden Hugo Award in the New Director Competition Unit of the Chicago Film Festival. In 2017, he directed the feature film "The Taste of Rice Flower" which was official selection of the 74th Venice Film Festival. His latest directorial work is the feature film "Seeing Nara Again”.
