In Its Infancy
2020–2023
4K video/ single channel / color / stereo sound
A female artist stifled by creativity crisis crosses paths with a provincial girl who’s struggling with self-liberation. A story unfolds two adventures in searching for the lightness and weight of beings.
The idea of making a film together came from a similar experience that when Mei and I returned to our homeland China after years of practice and research abroad, we see the world through a different intellectual lens. Much as reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, we hope to answer some questions but not forming immediate answers. Thus this film is made to explore different situations in life and existential ponderings for everyone.
This short is a preliminary testimony of the feature film In Its Infancy, an ongoing collaborative project with Mei Liu as co-director and screenwriter. It follows “feminine writing,” a concept first brought up by Hélène Cixous, and aims to dissolve the dichotomy between documentary and fiction. It was shot in a village near my grandparents’ town, where mythological nature and Daoist spirit co-exist with stereotypes about a woman’s destiny. It “is made with people who are not actors, who are very close to the things they represent.”
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2020–2023
4K video/ single channel / color / stereo sound
A female artist stifled by creativity crisis crosses paths with a provincial girl who’s struggling with self-liberation. A story unfolds two adventures in searching for the lightness and weight of beings.
The idea of making a film together came from a similar experience that when Mei and I returned to our homeland China after years of practice and research abroad, we see the world through a different intellectual lens. Much as reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, we hope to answer some questions but not forming immediate answers. Thus this film is made to explore different situations in life and existential ponderings for everyone.
This short is a preliminary testimony of the feature film In Its Infancy, an ongoing collaborative project with Mei Liu as co-director and screenwriter. It follows “feminine writing,” a concept first brought up by Hélène Cixous, and aims to dissolve the dichotomy between documentary and fiction. It was shot in a village near my grandparents’ town, where mythological nature and Daoist spirit co-exist with stereotypes about a woman’s destiny. It “is made with people who are not actors, who are very close to the things they represent.”
