I Have Graduated (1992)

• 69%
• 1992
• Documentary
• Wang Guangli
• Shi Jian

Wang Guangli, a former professor and now a self-taught filmmaker, interviews Chinese university graduates of 1992 in Beijing. Shot over six days, I Graduated explores the feelings and thoughts of young men and women about their lives as students since the Tiananmen Square protest on June 4, 1989. A conflict that turned violent and deadly, it was led primarily by students and intellectuals. The graduates in the film were just freshmen then. Their candid conversations with the filmmaker focus mainly on changes in university life since the protests, their future within the Communist party as they graduate, political thinking, some philosophy, and frank talk about sex on campus. The film opens on a busy courtyard where graduates are preparing their packed belongings for departing Beijing. We then go with Wang and his cadre of filmmakers as they secretly interview graduates for this film. Intercut with the interviews are love ballads sung about their lives and their sentiments about leaving the university to meet their future. The film offers an inside look at the lives of these Chinese students as political liberalization and a leap towards a market economy were taking place in Communist China.