The Little Stream

Language: Chinese, with English subtitles

小溪流

Synopsis The film is adapted from the song “Song of The Little Stream” by Yan Wenjing. In the story, there is a lovely little girl, Little Stream, whose blue dress waves in the wind when she dances and turns into water. Little Stream flows through the golden rice fields with her vigorous energy in the spring sunshine, and keeps going. However, the withered tree and dry grass tell her that she shouldn’t tire herself out, and the raven also tries to discourage her with its words. The stone tries to stop her, and the sand tries to hold her back. They all want her to stay. Yet, Little Stream chooses not to listen to any of them. She runs to the river and to the sea; she turns the wheel of the mill and sends away the raft, helps the ship in the river, and brings light to the hydroelectric generator; she keeps going and never stops.

Curators’ Notes Listen to a girl’s sweet voice in the woods, “I’m a little stream, running forward forever…”. She chants incessantly everywhere she goes. Nothing could deter her from racing beyond, not even the hospitable crops, the sneering crow, or the daunting rock in the road. A delightful journey she comes from afar, an unending voyage she carries on. Ingeniously adapted from a fairy tale, also as a poem impersonating a brook flowing from mountains into the sea, the animated short film is an endearing “never give up” story meanwhile an inscription of the time when socialism was everything upbeat about pioneering and progressing in this country.