Minjing gushi (On the beat)

A typical police station situated in an old area of 1994’s Beijing: one day a rabid dog bites a drunkard and coincidentally, in a periodical clean-up, the Police Headquarters decide to remove all the domestic dogs in the city (dog ownership was not allowed inside the urban area at the time). The unusual task adds up a heavy load to the routine duties of the policemen and the stress level rises to a breaking point…

My aspiration as a filmmaker has been to preserve the memory of an era and a lifestyle that were rapidly transforming. This led me to shoot the three films of the “Beijing Trilogy” over the course of nearly ten years: Zhaole (1992), Minjing Gushi (1995), and Xiari Nuan Yangyang (2001). While the first film of the trilogy depicted daily life in China through the microcosm of an amateur Beijing Opera club, with Minjing Gushi and Xiari Nuan Yangyang the scope widens to represent a more complex cross- section of our society. Because of this, the “Beijing Trilogy” has remained one of the very few visual records of 1990s China prior to its accession to the WTO.

PRODUCTION:
China Film Archive
No.3 Wenhuiyuan Rd
100082 Beijing, China
Tel: +86 82296258
E-mail: jshiyang@cfa.org.cn

PRODUCTION AT THE TIME OF FILMING: 
​Beijing Film Studio

CO-PRODUCTION AT THE TIME OF FILMING:
Eurasia Communications Ltd.