The Goddess (1934), with live score by Mindy Meng Wang and Burkhard Dallwitz
Celebrate Lunar New Year with The Goddess (1934), a landmark of Chinese silent cinema, brought to life with a new live score by Mindy Meng Wang and Burkhard Dallwitz.
This exciting new collaboration between Wang and Dallwitz reimagines Wu Yonggang’s classic film through a haunting soundscape for guzheng, piano, electronics, percussion, electric cello and guitar – a contemporary meditation on Chinese film history.
One of the final masterpieces of the silent era in China, The Goddess tells the story of a young mother who sacrifices everything to give her son a better life – a powerful commentary on social injustice as well as a poignant portrait of love, endurance and redemption that continues to resonate across generations.
Bring a picnic rug or relax in a deckchair, and gather your friends and family to enjoy this special free live music and cinema event – a delight for music lovers and cinephiles alike.
Presented by Fed Square with support from Insite Arts, as part of Open Air at the Square.
Mindy Meng Wang is a Chinese-Australian composer and one of the world’s leading contemporary guzheng performers. Classically trained in China and educated in composition in the UK, she is a pioneer in bringing the guzheng – the ancient Chinese harp – into contemporary genres including experimental, jazz, electronica and pop.
She has collaborated with artists such as Gorillaz, Regurgitator, Paul Grabowsky and Deborah Cheetham, and performed at major festivals and venues including the O2 Arena, Tate Modern, Asia TOPA, Dark Mofo, and the Melbourne Recital Centre, where she was the first non-Western instrumentalist in residence.
Mindy is the recipient of multiple honours including an APRA Art Music Award for Performance of the Year, a Sidney Myer Fellowship, Australian Asian Leadership Awards 2023 and the 40 Under 40: Most Influential Asian-Australian Award. As both artist and advocate, she champions cultural diversity and the exchange of music between Australia and China.
Burkhard Dallwitz is one of Australia’s leading screen composers, with a career spanning four decades across film and television in Australia, Europe and the US.
He is the recipient of numerous international and local awards, including a Golden Globe, Chicago Film Critics’ Award and ASCAP Award for The Truman Show, and an APRA Award for Best Television Theme for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. His work has also been recognised with multiple AACTA, ARIA and APRA/ AGSC nominations for productions such as Underbelly, The Secret River and Peter Weir’s The Way Back.
Other credits include Wolf Creek, The Gloaming, Pine Gap, and the award-winning SBS series Sunshine. Most recently, he contributed to the score for Robert Connolly’s feature film Magic Beach.
Dir: Wu Yonggang | 1934 | 85min | China | Classification: MA15+
The Goddess (1934), directed by Wu Yonggang, exposed the brutal social injustices of the working class in 1930s Shanghai through the moving story of a mother’s sacrifices for her child. The story follows a single mother (Ruan Lingyu) who works as a sex worker to provide for her young son. Chased by the police, she seeks protection from a gangster, who exploits her and threatens her child.
The woman begins to save money secretly to pay for her son’s education, to give him a chance for a better life. Once at school, the boy is teased about his mother’s profession, leading to an investigation, a tragedy, and the mother’s ultimate sacrifice.
Often hailed as one of the best-known films of Chinese silent cinema, the film was ranked as one of the top 100 films of all time in the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2005. The Goddess was one of the last films to feature silent film star Ruan Lingyu. Lingyu’s central performance, in both its delicacy and its emotional power, makes for a truly remarkable film.
