Three rooms in a narrow labyrinthine apart­ment next to Mar­seille St Charles train sta­tion that belong to a Chi­nese family: Yuan, her broth­er Bin and their father. The two sib­lings work irreg­u­lar hours in Mar­seille. In the lim­it­ed rest­ing times between their stren­u­ous work, the two sib­lings con­tem­plate about stay­ing in Mar­seille and their long­ing to return to China. In the enclosed spaces of their small apart­ment, Yuan and Bin imag­ine anoth­er life through the dig­i­tal. Is “not so bad” all you can ask for as a migrant living a for­eign coun­try? 

Louis Hothothot was born as an ille­gal second child in China, his par­ents got severe­ly pun­ished and had to cope with bitter con­se­quences. After stay­ing for years abroad, the film­mak­er returns to his family and engages in lift­ing and heal­ing sup­pressed feel­ings of guilt and offens­es.  

“Wield­ing his camera with some­times intim­i­dat­ing effect, Louis forces his family to con­front their trau­mat­ic past, one that hides yet anoth­er ordeal. He probes them with sharp ques­tions and remarks to drag them out of a dis­tress­ing past. It’s painful, but nec­es­sary, because “if mem­o­ries are frozen in the past, what can dis­solve the pain?”” (idfa)  

Not just deal­ing with the past, it is also about his own iden­ti­ty between acquired West­ern cul­ture and cling­ing to his Chi­nese upbring­ing.  

Louis Hothothot (Louis Yi Liu) is a film artist, writer, graph­ic design­er. He was born and grew up in China, stud­ied graph­ic design, ani­ma­tion and video art at the China Cen­tral Acad­e­my of Fine Art in Bei­jing. He enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts pro­gram at the Dutch Art Insti­tute in 2012. In 2017, he fin­ished as Master of Film at the Nether­lands Film Acad­e­my. His long fea­ture debut FOUR JOURNEYS opened IDFA 2022. https://louishothothotart.wordpress.com/  

Direc­tor, cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Louis Hothothot
Edit­ing: Chris van Oers, Louis Hothothot, Albert Elings
Music: Harry de Wit
Pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion: Pieter van Huys­tee Films

No Eng­lish trans­la­tion available.

No Eng­lish trans­la­tion available.

No Eng­lish trans­la­tion available.

No Eng­lish trans­la­tion available.

No Eng­lish trans­la­tion available.

No Eng­lish trans­la­tion available.

Yi Sicheng’s film doc­u­ments a day in the life of Qing Baohua. The film starts in the morn­ing when Qing begins his day as a news­pa­per-seller, which in China is regard­ed as a very low pro­fes­sion with­out any social pres­tige what­so­ev­er. Con­ver­sa­tions with his lover, who accom­pa­nies him on his way through Kun­ming inform us about his social and per­son­al sit­u­a­tion. In the evening, Qing Baohua’s per­son­al­i­ty is slowly trans­formed. As soon as he per­forms local folk­songs on a stage and does some acting in Kun­ming operas, he changes into anoth­er person. The film is a visual depic­tion of the cur­rent prob­lems the urban pop­u­la­tion in China is facing. It also deals with the issue of folk cul­ture versus high (Con­fu­cian) culture.

The film is a por­trait of the vil­lage Xiang­shui­ba in Lulian county, of the Yunnan province. This is Chen Xueli’s home­town. The film doc­u­ments the main sea­son­al eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties such as mush­room col­lect­ing, fish­ing, sand col­lec­tion and trans­porta­tion. In order to give a more vivid por­trait of the sit­u­a­tion of younger women living in today’s rural coun­try­side of China, a wed­ding which took place in Chen Xueli’s family is filmed. By inter­view­ing the older women and jux­ta­pos­ing these parts with the mus­ings of the younger girls, they show how and why gender rela­tions and posi­tions slowly begin to change.