CIFA (the Chinese Independent Film Archive) has recently helped restore The Crack, a low-budget independent film made on 35mm, which has been screened only four times to a small circle in China since its completion in 2000. This semi-autobiographical film, set during the Cultural Revolution, provides the missing link between the roots-seeking and scar literature and art of the 1980s and the performance art of the 1990s and 2000s. It grounds many of the embodied extremes of China’s famous performance art in the persistent psychosexual fetishes and neuroses produced by the extreme denial of individual desire under “mass line” socialism.

七十年代末的一个叫向阳的青年，利用工作之便钻烂自己的左手，借着休工伤假的机会练习绘画，一心想考入美术学院。
一次他到朋友所在的美术学院写生，一个女模特勾起了他对往日的回忆。轰轰烈烈的文化大革命运动把正常的男妇关系列为严肃的阶级关系，女人不能穿花衣、裙子、高跟鞋，不能留长发，卷发；除了红像章和红袖标，男人只能穿灰色调的衣服，否则犯忌的男女会被当作流氓和破鞋批倒斗臭瑞踏上一万脚！
在自然天性支配下亿万人民和向阳一样宁可少吃饭也要挤出钱一遍又一遍地看无产阶级革命的外国电影《列宁在1918》，因为电影里有一分钟的芭蕾舞《天鹅湖》。15岁的向阳受到了美的启蒙。当他得知人也同兔子一样是一公一母配出来的之后，他觉得人太丢人了，太流氓了。因此，一点也不流氓的“破鞋”成了他生命中的永恒之谜。