Life Imitation

Muzi, 22, comes home to Hangzhou for Chinese New Year, where she plays her roles as a daughter, a half-sister, and a girlfriend. Roaming in this city that feels so familiar yet distant, Muzi searches for a place where she belongs.

Amidst the devastation of post-crisis Spain, mother and daughter bluff and grift to keep up the lifestyle they think they deserve, bonding over common tragedy and an impending eviction.

Late at night, the oven next to the bed ticks a countdown and a woman cries out to her brother the "future." Today is her brother's birthday; he is not there. Another woman arrives and takes out a white bone from the oven and takes it into the woods at night.

In an open space under an overpass on the edge of a city, a group of young people who don’t know each other gathered together. Like urban exiles, they held a ceremony to pass and watch the bones in front of a bonfire.

This is a film made from multiple cut-and-spliced together versions of ‘Chen Zhou’. The creations of ‘Chen Zhou’ derive from the many projections of him produced by his close friends. Using examples of actual conversations with artist friends such as Li Ming, Li Ran, Yu Honglei, they explore his daily life, a ‘Chen Zhou’ form of dialogue, which is then interpreted by two twins (two other Chen Zhous). A crazy person dressed all in white met by chance on the street carries out an improvised performance during the film – he is like the uncontrollable inside of Chen Zhou. The fictional Jack, and even Godard convey iconographic versions of Chen Zhou. All of these fragments put together a sorrowful picture of a ‘burial’. More accurately it is like a bare mirror that helps you to see both the film as well as a ‘Chen Zhou’ that could be somewhere in your heart.