SoFTA Documentary Screening "Your Friends"

Details

• Time：19:00-21:30
• Date：29 November 2023, Wednesday
• Venue: AS 2F Cinema
• Language: Chinese (Chinese & English subtitles)
• Host: Yibin Yu
• Agenda: Documentary Screening, Q&A Session with Director Yang Bo

Film Introduction

• Title: Your Friends
• Director: Yang Bo
• Length: 82 minutes
• Language: Mandarin
• Subtitles: Bilingual (Chinese and English)
• Synopsis: Liu Xiaodong's 2020 project, "Your Friends," shares its name with a documentary. Incorporating documentary films, diaries, and other forms into his works has always been a distinctive feature of Liu Xiaodong's creative style. Through this approach, he adds a layer of "live presence" to his paintings, even evoking the visual documentation often associated with performance art. In the exhibition, a row of display cabinets showcases his handwritten diary. Inside, he transcribes the lyrics of the song "Your Friends," which also appears in the closing of the documentary: "Your city, your landscapes, your friends; the sky becomes a bit bluer, the walls a bit darker, the pillars a bit thicker, things become a bit more right." In this over 90-minute film, you can witness the story behind "Ning Dai Smiled Personally" and other works created on the terrace of Wang Xiaoshuai's studio. There, Liu Xiaodong painted a standing portrait of Yu Hong, with slender northern-characteristic branches beside her, dressed in all black, holding an unidentified tool. In the film, this scene alternates with another: a segment from the 1994 film "Days of Winter and Spring" directed by Wang Xiaoshuai, where Liu Xiaodong and Yu Hong play the roles of the painter's Winter and Spring, "performing" the interaction between the act of painting and being painted. "Time in my life is irreplicable and unsurpassable; I present over thirty years of time to everyone."

Dirrctor Introduction