Morning Sun (Ba Jiu Dianzhong de Taiyang)

By DEREK ELLEY

As China continues to go through momentous changes, "Morning Sun" is a timely look back at the so-called Cultural Revolution (1966-'76), when the country was brought to its knees not by foreign incursions, as in the past, but by the policies of its own leaders, especially Mao Zedong. Directed by the team that wrought emotionally powerful "The Gate of Heavenly Peace" (1995), about the 1989 Tiananmen demonstration, docu is a cooler but admirably balanced production that pulls the curtain back slightly on a little-charted period of modern Chinese history. Festivals and specialist channels should line up, with educational sales on ancillary also indicated.

Because Chinese central government archives are still off-limit for the period, filmmakers had to get material on the sly, as well as spending months convincing people to talk on camera about their experiences. As "Gate" was already a notorious docu on the Mainland, filmmakers were further impeded in dealing with the authorities.

Even a quarter-century after its official end, the Cultural Revolution remains an open sore with Chinese, both personally and politically. Several well-known testimonies have appeared over the years, but the problem of analyzing a moment of national madness is almost insuperable, given the movement was spearheaded largely by the country's youth, who are now only middle-aged. This is still living, not past history.

The only Red Guard who took part in beatings and was willing to speak on-camera is Yang Rui (aka Rae Yang), and her testimonies are among the docu's more moving moments. But the filmmakers have come up with several coups, including tracing Song Binbin, the student who famously first pinned a Red Guard armband on Mao in 1966 and who here talks of her unwitting manipulation by the state media.

Also included is Wang Guangmei, widow of President Liu Shaoqi, who was publicly humiliated by students at Qinghua University as Mao turned against her husband. Docu footage of this, with Wang's present-day thoughts, is among pic's highlights.

"Sun" is especially good at explaining the origins of the Cultural Revolution, going back to the early '60s. Chinese leaders saw the country, like the Soviet Union, peacefully turning into a capitalist state with technocrats in charge. Mao started his revolution-within-a-revolution, with the term "cultural revolution" already in use by 1964 and the full unleashing starting in 1966.

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