Down There

Like many, throughout 2020 Chinese-born, US-based filmmaker Zhengfan Yang (Where Are You Going, IFFR 2016) looked closer at his immediate surroundings. From his apartment complex in Chicago, the filmmaker records ostensibly quotidian scenes: people walking, window cleaners, street sweepers; life viewed from inside a bubble.

Hong Kong as seen through a cab window. Inhabitants discuss their lives, problems and dreams as they are driven to their destination through the chaotic streets of Hong Kong.

Weaving together footage filmed and broadcast by little-known Chinese live-streaming anchors, who struggle with real-life face-to-face social interaction because of their identity, disability and social-economic status, this cinematic collage explores how individuals satisfy their cravings for human connection through virtual togetherness, and how these virtual relationships challenge standard definitions of companionship.

Thirteen dinners of a Chinese migrant worker's family over the course of fourteen months. The film portrays a series of random occurrences. Joys, frustrations and the struggle for survival. The meals unfold in real-time through thirteen static, long takes. Each take captures with vivid detail the reality of the relationships between the different family members. As the seasons unfold, so does time and the echoes for better working conditions penetrate the frame. Issues such as the one-child-policy and the possibilities for better wages weigh heavily on the minds of the three-generation family.

There are the images of before, the images of after and the letters. The images of after come first, they stem from the same surveillance camera in Wuhan, empty streets that only throng with people again on April 4th, 2020.

September 24th, 2016, North Avenue Beach, Chicago. It was a sunny day. According to the weather report, the temperature was 75°F, with the barometer reading 30 inches high and the wind speed of 13 miles per hour. The time was 2:27 pm, I was standing by the Michigan Lake. In my hand there was a waterproof camera that weighs 2.6 ounces. I pressed the record button on the camera and threw it into the lake. The camera sank into the lake immediately and embarked on a mysterious journey. During the journey, it was elevated, pressed, panned, rotated, and spun by the water. The camera explored the space like a disembodied consciousness, and the moving image it captured was turned into an abstract painting improvised by Mother Nature. Eleven minutes later, the wave delivered the camera back onto the beach with one single long take. This eleven minutes long take later became Liquid Image.

The hotel room as a place where everyone is a stranger. A place that is yours for just a moment. A temporarily intimate space entered by a maid in order to clean it while, if possible, not leaving a trace of her visit. Each episode of Stranger is set in such a place, and each is captured in one long take. Weaving together a series of episodic stories – some humorous and absurd, some poignant and mysterious – that all unfold within a seemingly confined space, Stranger explores the idea of home while being away from it, and sheds light on the distinctive yet universal experiences of isolation and loneliness.

A man encounters, encountered, or will encounter a woman in an elevator of an office building. They are destined to meet each other again, yet both are thrown into the maze constructed by time and space through images and sounds that might be different from one’s daily experience in reality. Possibilities have been created, yet further and further away from reality.

In a society obsessed with economic development, the old and the young are often ignored. A young man from a rural area is hired to take care of an old man living on a farm. The old man stands firmly on keeping his home, while the young man works hard to make a life for him and his girlfriend. However, the two are met with the harshness of a society that's leaving them behind. In the end, they become victims to a fate they did not choose.