Experimental film in 25mins | 2024 | Second-hand photos, Super 8, Lomokino camera
Logline (or short synopsis)
"If I gave it up, the industry would really be gone." A woman recalls her youthful memories of engraving.
Director's note
For a long time, in the traditional craft of Yangzhou engraving and printing, women workers have contributed a lot of repetitive manual labor, while their stories are invisible.
In the film, the artist captures the dynamic movements and intricate patterns of light in the city and among the trees through the gaps of the lomokino camera lens.
Subsequently, at Mr. Meiqi's print studio, the artist reproduces the woodcut images on photographic negatives.
The blurry visuals and text in the film serve as a linguistic representation of personal memories and dreams.
The fragile materialities of Yangzhou wood engraving and analog film converge in Lei Lei’s fractal portrait of labor and craft. Exploring techniques of light and poetry, wood and celluloid, re-engraved montages demonstrations of expertise with a cacophonous electronic soundtrack and the personal histories of the women whose labor sustains these traditions.
—New York Film Festival 2024