More than One Is Unhappy
CHINA / 2000 / Chinese / Color / Video / 45 min
Director, Script, Photography, Editing, Sound, Producer, Source: Wang Fen
Room 302, Gate 2, Building 3, Huang Tingzi,
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The filmmaker’s father is a small-time railway bureaucrat who’s had many extramarital affairs in his day. Her mother claims not to have a single good memory of her married life with him. Funny how a 30-year-marriage can sound so different when described by separate parties in separate interviews. His is a series of romances, hers a flood of tears in candid confessions to the camera, but their daughter is a cut above. She recaptures her parents’ broken marriage with a carefree, humorous yet somehow critical hand, on the tunes of pop music from the old generation. In China too, we are seeing the emergence of a digital video generation that discovers the family as a subject for personal expression.
[Director’s Statement] It’s been 22 years since I met my mother and father, and indeed myself. But since that thought occured to me, it didn’t even take 15 days to complete this short film. Those days making the film... the several days spent shooting. After I returned to my home town in Jin Xian from Beijing, it was very rough on my body because the ghost of the camera that I was using had taken over part of me and two different temperatures were attacking each other inside my body.
Wang Fen
Born in Jin Xian, Jiang Xi Province in 1978. Started school at age four. Graduated from two art schools, Shanghai Xie Jin Ming Xing School and Shandong Art Institute, where she majored in film, television and acting. From 18 to 22, worked as a film and TV actress and as a model for commercials and magazines. In 1999, won second place at the “China Star” Shanghai International Film Festival national film and television acting competition. In November 2000, made her first short film More than One Is Unhappy. Has made two more short films, Ah Ah Ah and The Will, in 2001. |