Registration 6:45pm
Screening 7:00pm
Discussion 8:00pm
Close 8:40pm

*This program will be conducted in English, supplemented by Mandarin.

The animated documentary included in this evening program is one kind of experimental animation that provokes new experiences of past events, seeking legitimacy of personal memories for collective remembrance. Cao Shu’s Corner of the Park as well as Guo Chunning and Yan Baishen’s Ketchup, for example, both explore the authors’ forgotten memories, each in its own ways. Based on his diaries from his childhood, Cao Shu’s Corner of the Park allows us to revisit his recovered past by interweaving his dream vision, feelings and fragmented memories, which were probably suppressed by his subconscious. An exploration of death, Ketchup focuses on one of the directors’ crucial but once-forgotten past events when he was six years old. Indeed, Yan Baishen grew up without remembering: such are memories of social turmoil traceable only in the recovered diaries.

The creators of both works have taken different approaches to memory’s reality to reality; vague impressions subject to vibrant imagination result in virtual narratives where their lost memory could take on new shapes and physical forms as if past characters find their way back to life. In these works, the rhetorical style of animation integrates with the genre conventions of the documentary, a strategy to augment the power of animated pictures.

Screening list:

1. Corner of the Park / Cao Shu / 2017 / 10m32s / Color
2. One Minute Art History / Cao Shu / 2015 / 1m27s / Color
3. Perfect Conjugal Bliss / Zhong Su / 2014 / 5m26s / Color
4. Ketchup / Guo Chunning and Yan Baishen / 2012 / 6m38s / Color
5. The Garden of Forking Paths / Zhou Xiaohu / 2018 / 19m20s / Color
6. Sky City / Zhong Su / 2019 / 9m44s / Color

Cao Shu is a new media artist who lives and works in Hangzhou. His artworks are mainly in the mediums of 3D render animation and installation. In recent years, Cao Shu has created a series of works which restored the details of individual memories and fragments of his dreams through CG technology. His works have won several awards such as the New Narrative Award from the Long Week of Short Films 2015, and the Beijing International Short Film Festival Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement 2017.

Zhong Su is an artist, living in Hangzhou, focus on the production of personal images from 2011.