Let me explain a few things

It has been 50 years since Joris Ivens made Before Spring with young Chinese filmmakers. The master filmmaker had visited China before and did so later, making documentaries during those sojourns, too. But the 1958 masterpiece, which at first was called Snow, is arguably the most poetic and lyrical of his creations in China.

Before Spring belongs to a genre of cinema (documentary and feature both) that seems to be panting for breath in today's mechanized, materialist world. Only a handful of directors today have the power to keep breathing life into it.

The moving picture of Chinese life Before Spring portrays in relation to the land and the seasons can still move the stoniest of hearts. Unlike his earlier or later films made in China, this one, dare we say, is apolitical. It begins its lilting journey from the winter in Inner Mongolia, and moves further inland to the awakening of spring and Spring Festival, which thankfully is still the most important occasion in Chinese people's lives. The people depicted in the film (as was the reality then) work on the land and are close to the changes brought about by the seasons.