Date of Submission

Spring 2020

Academic Program

Film and Electronic Arts

Project Advisor 1

Jacqueline Goss

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Synopsis:

Graduated from an top art college in the U.S. and just returns to China, young artist Miao decids to apply for O1 artist visa in order to go after her artist dream in the U.S.. During the waiting time she lives in a small rental house in Beijing with her college friend Bai, who is applying for O1 as well. While earning a living as an art tutor, she dedicates all her time to an exhibition coming off in a week that is key to the visa. As an elite artist in others’ eyes, she seems to be very clear about what she wants, yet she herself is in anxiety: though exhausting, everything seems to be achievable, under control, and on track... Until some shocking news from home made her aware that life is not as peaceful as it seems on the surface, which was so fragile that all it took to blow up was just a tiny trigger.

The inspiration came from a very brief narrative from a friend: a great artist falling into strong self doubt when her father had a heart attack, and she found that there’s very few things she could do to help. As I went in further, through interviews with the artist and conversations with friends, I was shocked that a majority of friends around me had been through similar cases— especially the self doubt part. Among them, Studying Abroad, Art, Females became their eternal

common ground. Actually, these are my closest friend zone: as an art major international students studying in the U.S., it’s so hard for me to not get to know females.

Combing the three keys together, I found them building strong connections with each other, and formed the sharpest questions of the era: Within the accelerated Technological and Economical boost, especially in my hometown China, the generation gap had been unprecedentedly widening hence constituted radical different value systems in a family unit. Their different attitudes towards the west; the “ism”s of equality vs individuality; the approaches towards the border of gender... The huge wave of history is happening in every small corner of normal households.

If I were to fit myself into a filmmaker category, I would have check the “realistic” box without hesitation: I like to make stories happening around me into my work, and try hard to reproduce the feelings that touched me hard, or the questions that have been bothering me for years —definitely, in this film as well. Beyond the screen, I wish I can either magnify the interesting voice that caught my attention, or get answers for something I, or lot of other people, had been long thinking about, more than the answer that “there’s no answer to this.”

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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