View source for Jingfeng proposal for a project that may or may not be made 8 May 2024

'''What is it?'''
I’m planning to make a film showing a plot about Chinese (East Asian) common memory of contemporary history, with a dreamy atmosphere and European environment. First, I need to build a character, some key plots and motivations by texts (script).

'''Why make it?'''
Recently I’m very obsessed with Southeastern films, specifically by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, as well as Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, by Phạm Thiên Ân. The emotions and connections under Eastern (Southeastern) Asian society, even the suburban and near-jungle environment in their films are super relating for me. I found it a preferred way for me to express my thoughts and emotions on my social background, and their methodologies of filmmaking, which largely using dreams, fairytales and oral histories, are also more suitable for my situation of living far away from the objects I want to visualize.

'''Workflow'''
I will need to build a character first, then construct some plots for them, by scripts. Maybe I can visit some people here (Katendrecht), and interview them for some stories of their families.
Prepare to shoot the film itself, this part may need a lot of energy since I don’t have much resources here.
Final shooting and editing. This part will be actually another creating period.

'''Timetable'''
I want to make this one as my graduation project. The shooting part will mainly happen in the end of this year and the next year. But I really want to generate some texts and scripts for the characters before summer vacation.

'''Rapid Prototypes'''

Main Character Profile
1.Time: Now
A Chinese young woman at her 30s, she moved to Europe with parents in decades years ago and grew up here. One day, she received a radio signal from a Chinese ship named “Wan Chun”, which said they are going to arrive the port. She went to the port, doesn’t see the already disappeared ship, but met a guy saying he was landed from the ship.

(On November 13, 1972 the Chinese merchantman Wan Chun ran ashore on the beach of Heemskerk/Castricum, Holland. On November 6, 1973 the ship fell over. On April 7, 1974 the ship burned out totaly and was further dismantled.)

'''Previous practice (feel free to use material from your text on practice)'''
Quote from Text on Practice:
	When I started to dive into the EYE project, I was faced with the basic question again: What to visualize? I thought if it’s difficult to find connection with outside world, maybe I can try digging something out from my own origin, my family, my country, just like I asked my dad to take videos for me. When I was at China, I didn’t have much feeling about being Asian, since all of the people there were the same as me, the concept of race and culture difference didn’t function at that situation. But after I came here, the difference became a significant issue, by which I was almost reminded everyday that I am an Asian person in Europe. This “new” identity impacted me, and I decided to embrace the changes, to discover how I can benefit from it. So I turned to some Asian artists who were basically in similar creation context with me, to find if there is any method I can learn from. During that time I was deeply inspired by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s works. The form of a private letter from A Letter To Uncle Boonmee(2009), and the family talking scenes in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives(2010), helped me to build the structure of my work. From Blue(2018) and Memoria(2021), I absorbed the method of how to blend the sound and images together, make them working in a parallel gesture. A.K.A. Serial Killer(1975) by Masao Adachi, which was screened to us by Cihad also gave me a brand new knowledge, it impacted the way I see landscapes.
	Under this research and reflecting on Asian films and landscape theories, I encountered a book named At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators(2022), by Jean Ma, which introduced many practical scenes of how filmmakers and artists use sleep and dream as materials to make works and how audience interact with them. It encouraged me to use dream as an entrance of my work, and since I had collected some stories from my dad about his childhood, which was mainly overlapped with the Culture Revolution period, I decided to pick one of the stories as original material, edited it into a format of letter about my dream. The story was used as a slice of window, to demonstrate one small aspect my father had encountered at that specific period. For visualization, I planned to add scenes of me talking with my dad by video call, and take my abstract shadow on the streets here, as a ghost figure. A person is limited, but a ghost can roam through times and spaces. And, to show my lonely isolated condition in a unfamiliar place.
	The outcome is Copper Dream, in which I wrote a letter to my dad to talk about my dream of him finding a room full of copper bullet cases at his 10 years old. The sound of metal impact were notes of the nature of that room and bullets, as well as a metaphor of conflicts at that time. The snoring is more like a background sound outside of this layer of reality, to subtly remind an outer world and exit(or illusion) of the dream.

	Have been gained much new understanding on landscapes, I found it interesting when visiting zoos. Normally our attention was on the animals, but when the animals were absent, what kind of landscape does the zoo become? Do those special designs gain a new context? What will we experience in that new landscapes? This time I focus my sight on the scenes in zoos without animals, and got some photographs, they assembled as a series named Zoo.
	This is another practice for going deeper on landscape theories. When I was taking the photos, I felt something new growing from the scenes, this is not only a sympathy on animals in the zoos, but also a reflecting on ourselves, to revalue our condition as human beings who live in man-made buildings(zoos of human) everyday in modern life, and how do we understand the others’ requirement of life. I continued to develop my shooting method further after Rotterdam Syndrome, more nontheatrically, but with deeper context hidden.

'''Relation to a wider context'''
Surrealism, sci-fi, dream, and ghost figures were now largely used by some Southeastern Asian artists in their films and art works, for example, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, from Thailand. The non-liner narrative methods combined with political and cultural impact background could be a useful way to reveal the stories which are not easy to be reproduced directly, and the methods kind of parallel with the conditions of marginalized groups (Global South) of nationalities, cultures and even their life styles, they are on the opposite side of nowadays mainstream capitalism narratives. There is a strong desire of them to complete themselves out of existed social structures, and to reveal their own stories.