Tomé Saldanha Quadros

The economic reforms in China implemented in 1978 contributed and grounded Chinese new visual culture and consequently contemporary Chinese cinema, at the turn of twenty first century. The contemporary Chinese cinema meets the manipulation of the real and the reproduction of reality, since it depicts the social struggles imposed to the country’s huge marginalized population or »weak groups« (»ruoshi qunti«).

Li Yang’s »Blind Shaft« (2003) that is based on the novel entitled »Sacred Wood« (»Shenmu«) by Lie Qingbang, centers essentially on social and cultural development and transformation, blurring the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. Li’s Blind Shaft recalls, in somehow, the film noir, and evokes the most ‘critical realism’. The narrative focuses mainly on two protagonists, itinerant mine workers, tracing a storyline essentially made of ambiguity and uncertainty towards future. In this film, the gaze is, then, no longer innocently looking at reality. Stanley Cavell contends, "(...) film is a moving image of skepticism." (1979: 188) Li’s Blind Shaft perceives the »silent majority« (»chenmo de daduoshu«) depicting the voided reality or the skeptic reality: the real of reality.

In contemporary Chinese cinema, past refers to tradition and present relates to the idea of modernity. Within this context and based on a certain way of realistic aesthetic or »realism of contingency«, Li’s Blind Shaft observes and reflects deeply the real social collective dramatic shift in modern Chinese society and unfolds its consequences today.

Tomé Quadros holds a PhD degree with summa cum laude 19/20 in Science and Technology of the Arts, specializing in the field of Cinema and Audiovisual, at the School of Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University, thesis entitled “Between Documentary and Fiction: Contemporary Chinese and Danish Cinemas”. Since 2010, Tomé Quadros is a Senior Lecturer, and since 2016 is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Creative Industries, University of Saint Joseph – Macau SAR -­‐ People’s Republic of China.