Set in North China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the film tells the story of eight criminals and a wrongly accused officer being held as prisoners by the Communist Eighth Route Army.
[2] Although it was the first film production of Guangxi Studios, predating the internationally acclaimed Yellow Earth (1984), the release of One and Eight was stalled for three years by "official objections to portions of the storyline and consequent re-shooting and re-editing.
[1] In 1989, after something of a dry spell, Zhan Junzhao reappeared on the Chinese film scene with The Shining Arc (弧光; hú guāng).
[1] Zhang Junzhao and his fellow Fifth Generation filmmakers "were famous for their participation...in making experimental art films that challenged the socialist realist tradition.
Justifying his actions, he "suggested finding a middle ground between the elite and the popular taste, calling, somewhat naively, for compromise and harmony between audiences and artists.
"[7] Still, Zhang also took into account what he believed to be political necessity when it came to the content and structure of his films, claiming that his conservative and conventional work was necessary to survive in the face of China's censorship policies: "Horse Thief and On the Hunting Ground lost tens of thousands of yuan between them, and no one went to them,” he said in one interview, talking about fellow director and Beijing Film Academy graduate Tian Zhuangzhuang.