From cosmopolitan pictures to musical tourism advertisements, the Tianshan Film Studio once galvanized filmmaking in Xinjiang, but now struggles to regain its way
Bridges across deep valleys, highways snaking through passes, frontier fortifications guarding a vast landscape—drone shots take viewers over the border county of Taxkorgan on the westernmost edge of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in the 2022 film Why Are the Flowers So Red?
The name of the film is taken from a song adapted from a Tajik folk tune, and the answer to the titular question is revealed a few lines down in the song: “Because they were watered with the blood of youth.” The film’s hero is Laqini Bayika, a real-life Tajik border guard from a family that has protected the border high in the Pamir Mountains for three generations, who died saving a child who had fallen through a frozen lake.
If these clues don’t give it away, the logo in the opening credits, featuring majestic mountains, signifies the film as none other than a proud production of Tianshan Film Studio, Xinjiang’s state-owned film production powerhouse which has seen more than six decades of ups and downs as epic as some of the stories it has brought to the screen.
Dylan Levi King is a writer and translator. His most recent translations are Cai Chongda’s “Vessel” (HarperCollins) and Jia Pingwa’s “The Shaanxi Opera” (AmazonCrossing).
