Flowing Into The Whispering River – Hanxuan Jiang – Chunlin Men – China

The river is in an open and flowing state, which is an ideal metaphor. Living in a fragmented world, our hearts increasingly wander restlessly. In the postmodern era, people are destined to be decentralized and fragmented and thus continue to “flow”. I have tried to come to some understanding of the distance, positioning, reality and illusion of human things by using a fluid approach.

I shuttle between London, China and Los Angeles. The scenes are organized by the main line of my thinking, resulting in a potential narrative. The body wrapped in protective clothing, the isolation in the air: everything is cutting people’s intimate contact. People have started an escape journey. Escape has also become the beginning of thinking. My consciousness wanders between the daily life of the past, the great social changes of the present, and the situation of humanity in the future. Flashbacks to the past make me dizzy. All this is like a deep, turbulent river that cannot be grasped by the hand. When the pendulum of order suddenly stops, people escape and wait in terror. Can we define absence and presence in the gloom of life and the digging of graves? This vertigo floods my life, my thinking and my shooting.

The film does not follow chronological time, but interleaves the past, the present and the implied imagination of the future. 8mm film, as a medium, brings a chaotic sense of time to contemporary scenes. People cannot accurately identify whether these scenes are memories or present-day occurrences.

Director’s brief biography:

Hanxuan Jiang is a visual artist who is currently based in Oxford, United Kingdom as a Master student in Fine Art with Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford (will graduate in June, 2021). She graduated from Royal College of Art (Contemporary Art Practice) as her first Master. In 2019, She was announced by Art News of China as one of the most excellent young artists in China (100 in total). Her moving image works were selected in 2020 European Short Film Festival, 2020 London Independent film Festival, 2020 Manchester Experimental Film Festival, 2019 Coventry Biennial, etc. Her artworks were collected by 2019 Florence Contemporary art Biennale, National Art Museum of China and Beijing Biennial. She held two solo exhibitions separately in Royal College of Art Dyson Gallery and Three shadows Xiamen Photography Art Center.

Flowing Into The Whispering River was selected in 2020 European Short Film Festival, 2020 Southampton Film Festival. This film was awarded by 2020 ALTFF Alternative Film Festival as ‘Best Experimental International’ category (Award Winner).

She can be reached at  hanxuan.jiang@network.rca.ac.uk 

Poet brief biography:

Chunlin Men is a PhD student in English at Queen Mary, University of London. His research interests include nineteenth century Anglo-American fiction, narrative theory, Henry James, affect theory and media studies. His articles have appeared on American journal Henry James Review and Chinese journals Fiction World and World Literature Review. He can be reached at c.men@qmul.ac.uk.