Splendid Land a brilliant evocative docu-memoir of Xinjian

By Phillip Bergson

This fascinating new short film, a kind of evocative docu-memoir, Splendid Land, a Greco-Chinese venture elegantly directed by Eleni Vlassi and Ji Huaqing, has unsurprisingly won both Best International Short Documentary and Audience Awards at the 2021 Crete Film Festival and after streaming on the Venice Film Festival's innovative platform is being invited  now to many more festivals around the circuit.

Its structure vaguely echoes the form of one of English Literature's most celebrated "memory" poems, I wander'd Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth. Here the protagonist is also a mature Englishman, but residing in the South-East of the British isles rather than in the Lake District, and  indeed  is trapped there by the contemporary pandemic. In his comfortable house, amid wintry snows, this musician and sometime painter recollects his travels of three years previously through the remoter province of Xinjian, and along part of the celebrated Silk Road.

Superb colour photography brings to life not only the spectacular landscapes of the Altay prefecture, sandy deserts, commanding mountains and sudden oases, but the nomad peoples he met along the way, Kazakh herders, Tajik musicians and dancers, and the Uyghurs. But there is nothing overtly political in the film, simply he recalls with joy   their joy at existence, the riotous colours of their clothing,the skill of their crafts and "blissfully happy life".He visits Urumqi, bustling c modern like a tiny Shanghai,and the city most distant from a sea in the world,and its ancient quarter of Kashgar, a famed stop along the Silk Route which even today lures 100,000 shoppers to its Sunday bazaars. Although all are within the borders of China, we can see the different faces and fashions (47 different ethnic groups in a population of some 26 millions), customs and foods, and clearly can understand how the Silk Road,which first promoted trade between the Roman Empire and the Orient but   declined six centuries ago with the expansion of sea-faring globally, was more than than moving market but a truly cultural crossroad. As the pandemic thaws in England, our hero hopes to return to these fascinating lands once again--- and we should gladly join him.

Film Critic, UK, member of Fipresci

Phillip Bergson contributes to many media including

filmfestivals.com

Winner of the Student Journalist of the Year competition in the UK weekly New Statesman, as a

Classics Scholar Phillip Bergson then founded the Oxford Film Festival and, on graduating, was

selected by "The Sunday Times" as a 'New Critic' and in the same week began broadcasting on film

for many BBC Radio programmes. A contributor to the "Times Literary Supplement", "TES", "Screen

International", "Film Bulletin", "Film a Doba" inter alia, he also worked for the "European Script

Fund", has scripted shorts and features (that have been produced and released) and, fluent in eightand-

a-half languages, currently programmes and advises several international film festivals. At the

National Media Museum in his native Yorkshire, he created the "Eurovisions" project, to promote

classic and contemporary European cinema.

As a Jury Member

· in 57th Berlinale 2007

· in 7th Bratislava International Film Festival 2005

· in 5th Lecce Festival of European Cinema 2004

· in 51st Berlinale - Berlin International Film Festival 2001

· in 54th Locarno International Film Festival 2001

· in 20th Haifa International Film Festival 2004

· in 34th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 1999

· in 16th Istanbul International Film Festival 1997

· in 9th Festroia International Film Festival 1993

· in 43rd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film 2000

· in 48th International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg 1999

· in 41st Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2000

· in 33rd Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival 1995

· in 41st International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg 1992

· in 37th International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg 1988

· in 39th International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg 1990

· in 39th Montreal World Film Festival 2015

· in 45th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film 2002

· in 16th Riga International Film Forum Arsenals 2002

· in 9th Cottbus Festival of East European Cinema 1999