Mist Shrouds the Bashan Mountains, Wild Fruits Mirror Nostalgia:
Documentary Poetics and the Representation of Nostalgia
in Ballad of Wild Fruits
PAN Tianning
(Pan Tianning Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China)
Abstract: The large-scale and accelerated process of urbanization has triggered an exodus ofrural populations, producing latent social tensions manifested in the fragmentation of ruralcommunities and the erosion of interpersonal relationships, Migrants who leave their hometownsare often caught between their places of origin and urban destinations, experiencing a conditionof spatial and existential displacement marked by an ongoing crisis of identity. In recent years,the phenomenon of "returning home" among young and middle-aged groups has attractedsustained social attention and generated a wave of cinematic productions centered onhomecoming narratives.Situated in the Daba Mountains, The Ballad of Wild Fruits, directed bythe young filmmaker Li Binbin, constructs a reflective visual narrative in which displaced youthnegotiate identity reconstruction amid homeland nostalgia and intergenerational transformation.Through an analysis of the film's audiovisual language, narrative space, and ensemblecharacterization, this paper examines how contemporary Chinese cinema mobilizes poeticstrategies to articulate a renewed form of nostalgia under the conditions of modern visual cultureand cinematic aesthetics.
Key words:Domestic "homecoming" movies; nostalgia; Narrative space; Identity
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