Red Cliff set to lift quake gloom

By Liu Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-03 14:34

Director John Woo (L) and actress Zhao Wei at a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday, July 2. [Xinhua]

Films have a very important social role to play. That view will be consolidated tonight when China's most expensive blockbuster premieres at an iconic venue in Chengdu.

The country's film community has done much to help the May 12 earthquake survivors in Sichuan province. But the opening of $80-million Red Cliff (Chibi) could well be the most helpful.

Directed by Hong Kong-born veteran John Woo, Red Cliff opens tonight in Chengdu's Wu Hou Shrine - the first time such an event will be held in a top cultural heritage building.

Woo, who has worked in Hollywood too, is also the first person to organize a big public event in the capital of Sichuan province after the quake.

The shrine, built in AD 223, consists of memorial halls and mausoleums of warlord Liu Bei and his strategist Zhuge Liang - both of whose characters play leading roles in the film - and ministers and generals of the Shu kingdom, one of the three kingdoms that co-ruled China from 220 to 280.

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