MOMA August Film: Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home

“It is an epic spectacle that tells us much about China, a country discarding traditional ways as it hurtles towards modernity and global economic dominance.”

A compelling documentary, Lixin Fan’s film entitled Last Train Home 归途列车 is this month’s film screening at MOMA Broadway Cinematheque playing every Saturday in the month of August.

The Official Selection of Sundance Film Festival 2010, it is an emotionally engaging and visually stunning debut film from maverick director Lixin Fan.  By the same creators of “Up the Yangtze” by Yung Chang, Last Train Home draws us into the story of a single migrant family caught up in the movement between city and countryside.  Like many other families in search for a better life for their children, they are caught up in the desperate annual migration for work, leaving behind their children for grueling factory jobs. After years of this annual migration, they discover that their teenage daughter has dropped out of school and likely to become a migrant worker like themselves. Desperate to change their daughter’s course and repair their ruptured family, the film follows the story of this one family in particular and sheds light on the social and psychological transformations that China is currently undergoing..

“Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday. This mass exodus is the world’s largest human migration—an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future. Intimate and candid, the film paints a human portrait of the dramatic changes sweeping China.”

At times, Last Train Home is more nightmare than dream. It depicts one New Year when snowstorms disrupted the rail network and 600,000 workers were stranded at Guangzhou station for a week.  “It was like a battlefield – military soldiers, sirens, babies crying, parents yelling ‘We’ve lost our family’. To witness that for days and days, it was so sad. It was a melting sea of humanity.”  - Lixin Fan

Read his full interview with The Telegraph here.

Mr. Fan’s documentary is informed by a melancholy humanism, and finds unexpected beauty in almost unbearably harsh circumstances. It tells the story of a family caught, and possibly crushed, between the past and the future — a story that, on its own, is moving, even heartbreaking. Multiplied by 130 million, it becomes a terrifying and sobering panorama of the present.” – The New York Times

Click here for full article by The New York Times

Last Train Home 归途列车 Film Screening Details:

Dates & Times:

• Saturday, August 6 at 14:00
• Saturday, August 13 at 16:00
• Saturday, August 20 at 14:00
• Saturday, August 27 at 16:00

• Location: MOMA Broadway Cinematheque

F3, Building T4, The North Area, Moma, 1 Xiangheyuan Road, 东直门香河园路1号当代Moma北区T4座

• Tel: 8438-8258 ext. 8008

• Film Website: http://www.last-train.com/