The China-Greece co-production documentary Splendid Land, directed by Eleni Vlassi & Jin Huaqing, entering the festival circuit won the Best International Short Documentary Award and the Audience Award, in the International Documentary Festival of Ierapetra & Awards and the International Film Festival of Crete, which took place in Crete from 7 till 21 August 2021. This film presents the wonderful land of Xinjiang, China and its ancient customs through a musician pursuing the Mukam music and the spectacular landscape.
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FILM REVIEWS
The China-Greece co-production documentary Splendid Land, directed by Eleni Vlassi & Jin Huaqing, won the Best International Short Documentary Award and the Audience Award, in the International Documentary Festival of Ierapetra & Awards and the International Film Festival of Crete, which took place in Crete from 7 till 21 August 2021. This film presents the wonderful land of Xinjiang, China and its ancient customs through a musician pursuing the Mukam music and the spectacular lan...
Splendid Land, Huaqing Jin and Eleni Vlassi By Moira Sullivan The pandemic has caused restlessness for travelers especially for those who have been to memorable places such as Xinjiang, China venerated in Splendid Land by award winning documentary filmmaker and teacher Huaqing Jin. It is a trip to a stunning area little known in the west. There are numerous examples of why it is a magnificent area with a capital city that embraces modernity, and grasslands, desert and plateaus that embo...
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 Lite...
Review by Siraj Syed The China-Greece co-production documentary, Splendid Land, directed by Eleni Vlassi and Jin Huaqing, presents the wonderful land of Xinjiang, China and its ancient customs, through a musician pursuing the Mukam music and the spectacular landscape. Seldom has so much splendour been captured in such a short span. The film is only twenty minutes long, but it flows along seamlessly, and when it ends, you are left craving for more. Xinjiang (pronounced Xinjang),...
Splendid Land review By Claus Mueller Reflecting the experience of English visitors to that Chinese region interested in the arts, this production is a superb brief but comprehensive visual presentation of China’s landlocked Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region in northwestern China. Bracketing the discussion of human rights issues, it focuses instead on the lifestyle, festivals, rituals, and art forms from music to dance, of some of the 47 ethnic gr...
By Quendrith Johnson In the short film SPLENDID LAND, an ethnomusicologist muses on Tajik, Khazak, India-influenced Mukam musicians, and Uyghur song and dance culture in a Marcel Proust-like reminiscence of Northwestern China, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. During the Pandemic as a bookend for the film, a kaleidoscope of multicultural sights and wonders light up a rolling vast swath of grasslands to the Gobi desert, as recalled from a UK home base. Th...
