Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi
Platform Theatre, London, England
Wednesday, June 10 • 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
My Mum has an Art Studio, by Zhang Jiaqi
MY REVIEW:
In India, the goddess of art and culture is Saraswati, a mother goddess. It is The Mother that gives inspiration and art. Similarly, this story sees the powerful figure of the mother as the instructor and enabler of creativity for a daughter that is suffering from creative fatigue.
The mother is shown as the greater voice of experience from an Asian culture which values and respects elders. She is also full of vitality, a quality that the daughter aspires to and therefore, one suspects, this is missing in her life. The mother seems to be the young one and not the daughter. The scene which clinches this impression is when the mother is encircled by a group of young dancers and dancers in the centre, entrancing all eyes with her energy. Therefore, just like the Mother Goddess, the Mother in the film is power. The power of creation. The film is the worship of The Mother, similar to Hindu religion.
The Mother’s studio was amazing, full of busts and plants, showing that she was one with nature. The daughter also describes the mother as amazingly beautiful, which invokes the Freudian idea of the desire for the mother too.
The mother’s role is set amidst a homecoming. Does the Mother represent China and its continuity of culture over thousands of years? Is there an idea that unity with the Motherland is the secret to creativity?
SUMMARY:
A daughter who hasn’t been home for years comes back exhausted and uncertain after graduation. Facing her first major life choice, she doubts if she should continue painting and struggles with reality.
At home, she notices her mother is different. The woman who always waited for her is now building her own life. In this gentle spring, they take a short but profound trip. The mother leads her to a hidden studio—a secret space she built for herself. During their time together, the daughter finally sees her mother’s persistence and growth, which helps her rethink her own path.
This is a journey of self-discovery and mutual understanding, a transformation for both mother and daughter. It is a homecoming and a rediscovery of the mother’s growth. In each other’s eyes, they show their true selves and complete a change of understanding and companionship.
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Cast:
Daughter: Junhuan Cheng
Mother: Jiahan Bu
Dancing guys: Lytia Liu, Argo, Cheryl Ding, Jingyi Yuan, Xinxin Zhang, Frank Liu, Guosheng Sun, Zeyang Li, Changxin Ma
Director and Screen Writer: Jiaqi Zhang
1st Assistant Director: Xinxin Zhang
Script Assistant: Argo
Director Assistants: Xiaoya Wang, Hanchao Yang
Production Manager: Cheryl Ding
Production Assistant: Jingyi Yuan
Production Runner: Changxin Ma
Director of Photography: Songming Cai
Focus Puller: Frank Liu
Camera Assistant: Kai Wang
Camera Technician: Jiqin Zhang
DIT: Liangyu Huang
Gaffer: Yuyang Chen
Lighting Assistants: Guosheng Sun, Changjun Zhou, Fengchun Yu
Production Designer: Sers Shi
Art Director: Runyu Li
Property Master: Hai Zhao
Art Production Assistants: Muyi Fu, Zile Wang
Sound Recorder: Zeyang Liu
Editor: Jiaqi Zhang
Colorist: Xilin Zhang
Sound Designer: Die Lai
Composer: Junwen Wu
Poster Designer: Jiaqi Zhang
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Berglas Effect, by Todd Chen
MY REVIEW:
This is an ambiguous meditation on the theme of domestic violence, which is what joins together all of the characters. Characters mirror each other in attempting to end domestic violence (against women), or attempting to revenge it. But their attempts culminate in murder itself, suggesting that there is no escape from violence (although feminist criticism might argue something very different here). In many ways, this is a comment upon human culture. There has always been an argument between peace and war, between violence and non-violence. The two are structurally connected, however much one tries to separate them. And in this sense, the film is a Derridean analysis of how much unites what is thought of as discrete. How there can be no separation.
The title refers to the sleights of hand and illusions that the film makers are creating with the script.
There were technical faults with this film which I am pointing out because these are students and therefore this is constructive criticism. One, the subtitles disappeared into the white at some points. I cannot understand (Chinese?) and therefore I missed some of the dialogue. Second, the face of the main character was blurred in a few scenes.
SUMMARY:
Berglas Effect is an attempt at a film creation in the suspense and crime genre with dark elements. This work depicts a series of consecutive tragedies triggered by domestic violence, in which three characters are drawn into the vortex due to their respective obsessions, and ultimately no one achieves true liberation.
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Cast: Zhang Xu, Wang Hu Lei Lei Ben Zhang
Director: Song Yan Ze & Chen Jia Cheng
Actor Assistant Director: Huang Yin Luo
Script Supervisor: Li Guan Yuan
Production Manager: Wu Si Rui
Director Of Photography: Williams Zhang
Gaffer: Zhu Yan Tao
Production Designer: Song Shao Pu
Art Director: Wan Jing Ning
Special Effects Makeup: Cheng Zhuo Ya
Recording Supervisor: Chen Yu Fan
Production Sound Mixer: Wang Tian Jiu
Editor: Zhang Peng
Sound Designer: Chen Ruo Jing Chen Yu Fan
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UPHILL, DOWNHILL, by Wenhan Qin
MY REVIEW:
This mountain is a metaphor for the uphill climb or struggle of life, and how one can get lost or disorientated within it. These youngsters climb the mountain to try and connect with the heavens, with alien life forms, with an advanced intelligence and the gods of the sky. However, they become lost. There is much pressure on them. They do not form that connection with the heavens that they so desperately want.
This is a young person’s idea of ambition. Ambition, however, should not be to connect with something greater, something that is not human. Ambition should be to connect to others, to one’s relations. In the film, the young man cannot connect with his mother. He ignores her phone calls and argues with her. It is relationships that ground us to this world, our origins that remind us who and what we are, where we are and where we are going.
Instead of asking strangers for help and thinking that they won’t just leave you to die (when that is what they will do, because you and everyone is expendable to them), and treating our nearest and our well-wishers as enemies, we have to accept that they expect things of us and we have to try our best to achieve those expectations. For our family and the ones that love us, we are not expendable. We are not just our careers. We are the ones that they love. And that should be enough. Why is it not enough? That is what you have to ask of this society.
SUMMARY:
A phone call from Xiao Xiu’s mother threatens to drag him back into a life he can no longer control. Desperate to escape, he retreats to an isolated mountain rumoured to receive mysterious signals. There, he encounters a young content creator and an obsessive inventor — each searching for a different kind of answer.
When one of them disappears, the mountain transforms from refuge into maze, filled with dead ends, unresolved choices, and a reality that keeps closing in.
UPHILL, DOWNHILL is a poetic film about young people stumbling through early adulthood — fleeing their fate, and anxiously hoping someone will show them the way.
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Cast: Xiao Jiang, Huaiyi Zeng, Duo Hu
Director: Wenhan Qin
Assistant Director: Litao Li
DoP: Luyao Liu
B-Camera Operator: Peng Zhang
Focus Puller: Yazhou Cui, Chuandong Wang
Camera Assistant: Weizheng Li, Xiao Wang, MKX
Production Designer: Junyan Jiang
Art Assistant: Xiangcheng Wang
Sound Recordist: Jia Hu
Sound Assistant: Yongwei Zhang
Script Supervisor: Shiran Xu
Production Assistant: Dakang Lu
Still Photographer: Mingyuan Liu
Editor: Wenhan Qin
Thanks: Anne Beresford, Gabi Tropia
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Last night, I dreamed I learned how to swim, by Yuyan Zhang
MY REVIEW:
Jealousy of the mother is apparent in this one, particularly the sexuality of the mother. The sexuality of the mother and modelling upon it is related to the burgeoning periods and sexuality of the teenager, suggesting that the film is possibly an examination of female role models in the construction of young girls and the firing off of mirror neurons in the brain and how these relate to vision (this is a film) and action.
The mother is also controlling. Therefore the expression of her sexuality is seen as a form of power perhaps. And this is why the young teenager is jealous and attempts to acquire that power for herself. One wonders what a feminist might make of this characterisation, that sex is power for women. Is this a stereotype? Or is the film debunking this stereotype?
The teenager is a spy and this is therefore about the construction of a scopic regime and surveillance, perhaps the idea of Foucauldian panopticism. The scene that is therefore of particular interest is when the young teenager cuts off the swimming costume that covers her whole body (like the panopticon) and exposes her body. There is the tension between exposure and revealing. The final ending has this too, when we are finally exposed to the sexual development of the daughter, although through the implicit rather than to the bodily. The aesthetic is revealing through concealing, showing through hiding, manifesting through veiling. I’m sure someone has written about this in terms of sexuality, that there is the dance between showing and telling.
SUMMARY:
Sixteen-year-old Xu Muze is forced by her mother into swimming class, anxious over her delayed first period. By chance, she sees her mother secretly dating the swimming coach and watches her become a different woman in a dance hall. Water mirrors her fear and longing. In a dream, she finally learns to swim, but can never catch up with her mother. She wakes to her first period. After seeing her mother, she truly sees herself for the first time.
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Cast: Harmonie He, Jun Liu, Xiaobao Zhao, Benben
Director: Yuyan Zhang
1st Assistant Director: Qiren Xu
Script Assistant: Xinyi Li
Production Manager: Diman Luo
1st Production Assistant: Tong Lv, Jiaying Wu
2nd Production Assistant: Yongqi Su, Zhuyue Hu
Director Of Photography: Jiacheng Chen
Camera Operator: Jeff Zhang
Focus Puller: Tuoran Li
Gaffer: Shuhao Wang
Best Boy: Tianwei Bao
DIT: Yaokun Mo
Art Director: Cong Le
Art Assistant: Ruimin Li
Stylist: Xinjue Wu
Hair and Make-up: Xiaochen Zhu, Yanping Zhang, Yixin Chen
Sound Recordist: Zhixuan Zhao
Boom Operator: Xiaoni Huang
Sound Designer: Yufan Chen
Colorist: Shiqi Sun
Editor: Yuyan Zhang
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Puann-hì, by Ding Wei
MY REVIEW:
This one appears to be gauging the contest between Western drama exemplified by Medea and Chinese traditional art forms which are interlaced throughout. It is about the idea that acting is about courage, what it means to be a woman that is not docile and weak, to be able to speak up and express oneself.
This was the most technically beautiful film for me, with its choreography and dream-like sequences.
The film investigated the theme of domestic abuse and, moreover, the man was the powerful villain because he was the landlord and held the financial power. Therefore, one might see the film as an exposure of the patriarchy and its misogyny driven by feminism.
SUMMARY:
A Minnan girl named A-ning, who studies far from home, is rehearsing for a production of *Medea*. Returning home during the holidays, she finds her homeland both familiar and isolating, uncertain where she truly belongs. The struggles of real life often make her long to become a powerful woman like Medea in the play—but in Minnan, Medea is dismissed by her grandmother as a foolish and selfish woman. She can’t help but wonder: without a dragon-drawn chariot, without myth, what kind of “revenge” do we need in the 21st century?
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Cast: Faymin, Ding Yunchen, Huang Jiale, Li Weisi, Chen Xiufeng
Director: Ding Wei
Assistant Director: Li Yihan
Producer: Li Fan
UPM: Kilin Lin
DOP: Cai Songming
Camera Assistant: Jin Xiao
Puller: Huang Jinqi
Gaffer: Peng Junjie
Lighting Assistant: Tu Erqi
Production Designer: Fang Woni, Hu Jingtong
Art Assistant: Feng Yu
Stylist: Feng Yu
Sound Designer: Tang Chenhui
Sound Assistant: Peng Haiyun
Script Supervisor: Chen Yufei
Editor: Ding Wei
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Xiang Qian Kan Qi, by Cong Le
MY REVIEW:
Castration (the Freudian losing of the teeth) figures as a major theme here, perhaps the castration of the individual by the state, since we are talking about a performance for the nationalistic Olympics here. If castration is not about power, what is it about? It is a powerlessness imposed by the powerful, the oppressors in the state that control representation. This was perhaps the essence of the body horror that we saw here, the hair cutting, the teeth being pulled out, even the contortionism of the heroine.
This was the most lavishly shot out of all the films which made me wonder how the budget was so big! The choreography made the film very beautiful.
This film seemed to be about the idea of disappearance in the body. Teeth disappearing. The body of the heroine disappearing. The lack that the state creates in the body…
SUMMARY:
Amid the Olympic fever of 2008, in a dance troupe with a strict hierarchy, the girls were compared, selected and replaced amid the undercurrents of competition. Qianqian tried hard to fit in with the rules, but the honour she eventually gained was to completely disappear from the most dazzling stage.
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Cast: Xuanyu Zhang, Xuanyushan He, Peixin Li
Director/Writer: Cong Le
1st Assistant Director: Zhiyuan Li
2nd Assistant Director: Yuyan Zhang
Script Supervisor: Yi Lu
Choreographer: Xinyi Du, Jiayi Ding
Unit Production Manager: Fujiwara Kai
1St Production Assistant: Siyu Chen, Yujing Yang
Director Of Photography: Yinghai Hu
Focus Puller: Shiyong Li
1st Assistant Camera: Yingqiang Liu
Gaffer: Jun Yuan
Best Boy: Fadong Li, Zongyang Duan, Qun Yuan
Digital Imaging Technician: Ziwei Goh
Art Director: Zifan Wang
Prop: Fei Gao, Hui Tian, Chaochao Zheng, Zhenjiang Lu, Hongling Zhao
Costume Designer: Haoying Zhang
Stylist: Zhao Chen
Hair And Make-up: Zhiyang Li, Zeyu Wang, Yixuan Zuo
Sound Designer: Yiran Ma, Zikang Wang
Sound Mixer: Zikang Wang
Boom Operator: Yehan Li
Composer: Monstar Cao, Yiran Ma
Editor: Cong Le
Colorist: Shangbai Jiang
diary of a lone man 