Images from Warp's first feature shot in China
She, A Chinese is directed by Xialolu Guo and tells the story of, a young Chinese woman, Mei, who leaves her monotonous village life behind to travel from East to West.
In her director’s statement Xialolu describes ‘When Mei leaves her village and goes on her journey, it is like a baby leaving the womb. The world outside is the foreign country, whether she is in China or in the West. For me, it is not important to show where Mei ends up exactly at the end of the film. But it is crucial to show the process of leaving. I think it is more about the inner journey she is going through, about a person taking risks, discovering herself and at the same time paying a high price for her adventures. It is a film about an immature person starting to see herself and to gradually feel her own desires.
There is a punkrock and roll energy in the soundtrack. The open ending of the film which Mei walks by the seaside presents an unknown future of new China – risky, mysterious, and provocative.
As a filmmaker who was born in a little village in rural China, who later came all the way to Beijing and then studied in the West, I feel that any journey is a mind journey, colliding with a person's destiny and the accidental choices of life, creating a completely unexpected present and an enigmatic future. That!s how we feel we are alive, and this aliveness carries us to the future.’
Listen to Xialolu Guo discuss the film in more detail in the Guardian's Film Weekly podcast.
24th August 09
She, A Chinese News
