Not One Less is a 1999 drama film by Chinese director Zhang Yimou (pictured), adapted from Shi Xiangsheng's 1997 story "A Sun in the Sky." Set in the People's Republic of China during the 1990s, the film centers on a 13-year-old substitute teacher, Wei Minzhi, in the Chinese countryside. Called in to substitute for a village teacher for one month, Wei is told not to lose any students. When one of the boys takes off in search of work in the big city, she goes looking for him. The film addresses education reform in China, the economic gap between urban and rural populations, and the prevalence of bureaucracy and authority figures in everyday life. It is filmed in a neorealist/documentary style with a troupe of non-professional actors who play characters with the same names and occupations as the actors have in real life, blurring the boundaries between drama and reality. Internationally, the film was generally well-received, but it also attracted criticism for its ostensibly political message. When the film was excluded from the 1999 Cannes Film Festival's competition section, Zhang withdrew it and another film from the festival, and published a letter rebuking Cannes for politicization of and "discrimination" against Chinese cinema.
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_One_Less
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1737:
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy, currently the oldest active opera house in Europe, was inaugurated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_di_San_Carlo
1791:
Northwest Indian War: In the most severe defeat ever suffered by the United States at the hands of American Indians, the Western Confederacy won a major victory at the Battle of the Wabash near present-day Fort Recovery in Ohio. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Clair%27s_Defeat
1852:
Count Cavour became prime minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expanded to become the Kingdom of Italy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camillo_Benso%2C_conte_di_Cavour
1869:
Nature, one of the oldest and most reputable general purpose scientific journals, was first published. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_%28journal%29
1890:
London's City and South London Railway, the first deep-level underground railway in the world, opened, running a distance of 5.1 km (3.2 mi) between the City of London and Stockwell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_and_South_London_Railway
1995:
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was mortally wounded by Yigal Amir while at a peace rally at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
aspirate (v): 1. To remove gas by means of suction. 2. To inhale; to draw into one's lungs. 3. (linguistics) To follow a consonant with an audible puff of breath http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aspirate
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful. --Wilfred Owen http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wilfred_Owen