Sunday, March 9th, 4PM
Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle St.
Cambridge MA

Lost and Found
Lei Lei

Boston, MA — RPM Festival and The Brattle Theater are proud to co-present LEI LEI: Lost and Found , a comprehensive screening of seven remarkable films spanning from 2013 to 2025. Born in 1985, Lei Lei has garnered global acclaim for his unique method of collage and filmmaking, which fuses science-fiction & comic books and arcade games to create or recreate handmade, hand-colored universes. His compelling visual style often draws from a vast archive of found and ready-made images, including abandoned visuals, oral histories, fragmented online videos, commercial product catalogs, and folklore. By re-contextualizing these diverse sources, Lei Lei weaves together visual poetry and prose, turning everyday, historical artifacts and discarded materials into transformative cinematic experiences.

This program offers a rare chance to experience the evolution of his artistic vision over a decade. Known for his mastery of animation, film and video installation, Lei Lei’s works have been exhibited at prominent international venues, such as the UCCA in Beijing, Shanghai’s OCAT Art Museum, Tokyo’s TOP Museum, and the Rencontres d'Arles International Photography Festival in France. His video installations have been widely celebrated, with his works also collected by esteemed institutions and galleries across the globe.

Lei Lei’s films have been selected for prestigious festivals, earning recognition at the Berlinale, IFFR Rotterdam, New York MoMA’s New Films/New Directors series, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival, among others. His films often blur the line between documentary and fiction, stillness and movements, using humor, parody, and a deep understanding of visual culture to craft family oral history that are both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant.

Intro & Post-screening discussion:
Lei Lei & Zhuoyi Wang

Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Hamilton College

Zhuoyi Wang’s research and teaching focus on Chinese film, culture, language, and Hollywood cinema. He is the author of Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951-1979 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), co-editor of Maoist Laughter (Hong Kong University Press, 2019; awarded Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title in 2020), and co-editor of Teaching Film from the People’s Republic of China (Modern Language Association of America, 2024). He has published over 30 articles in English- and Chinese-language scholarly journals, edited volumes, magazines, and new media outlets. He has delivered more than 150 invited talks at institutions and organizations across the US, the UK, Canada, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

This is not a time to lie
Video | Color | Year: 2014 | 3min 40s | 30fps | 16:9 | Stereo

Missing one player
Video | Color | Year: 2015 | 4min 32s | 30fps | 16:9 | Stereo

Recycled (Lei Lei + Thomas Sauvin)
Film to Digital | 2013 | Second-hand photos| 5min 45s | 16:9 | Stereo

Hand-colored (Lei Lei + Thomas Sauvin)
Film to Digital | 2015 | Watercolor, photographic collage | 4min 51s | 16:9 | Stereo

Books on books
Film to Digital | 2016 | Paper collage, vintage books | 11min 11s | 16:9 | Stereo

Break no.1 & Break no.2
Film to digital | 2024 | photographic collage, Found Footage | 17min 36s | 16:9 | Stereo

Re-engraved
Film to digital | 2024 | Laser Cut, Found Footage | 25mins | 16:9 | Stereo

Total: 74 mins

This is not a time to lie
Video | Color | Year: 2014 | 3min 40s | 30fps | 16:9 | Stereo

I’m scared, I don’t dare look ahead
This isn’t a time to lie
(Mountains and water, characters and objects in the film are all made with old book cover)

Missing one player
Video | Color | Year: 2015 | 4min 32s | 30fps | 16:9 | Stereo

During a Majong game, a bad situation arises. Everyone is waiting for the last player.
The three have no choice but to wait, and they sit silently in tears.
However, they believe that the fourth player will come.
They look up to the sky and wait for this miracle to happen.

Recycled (Lei Lei + Thomas Sauvin)
Film to Digital | 2013 | Second-hand photos| 5min 45s | 16:9 | Stereo

all images were sourced over the years from a recycling zone in the outskirts of Beijing.
This archive of more than half a million 35mm color film negatives is a photographic portrait of the capital and the life of her inhabitants over the last thirty years. Here, we selected 3000 photos to create the animation you are about to see.

Hand-colored (Lei Lei + Thomas Sauvin)
Film to Digital | 2015 | Watercolor, photographic collage | 4min 51s | 16:9 | Stereo

In 2013, we collected number of black-and-white photos from Chinese flea markets and imagined that all of them belonged to one fictional Chinese person.

Through rendering, collage, and a cyclical process of hand coloring, scanning, and printing, we created connections among the photos. We spent two years repeating this process. These 1168 hand-colored photos invoke the passage of time, injecting life into the imaginary protagonist as he ventures through time and space.

Books on books
Film to Digital | 2016 | Paper collage, vintage books | 11min 11s | 16:9 | Stereo

The cutout patterns are from my father’s book ”Book cover collection in the West“, which was published in 1988, when China's leaders launched their great Reform and Opening-up to embrace the world. Many leading concepts of book cover design were introduced in the book and this book had an eye-opening influence on the younger generation of Chinese designers since then.
Since May 2013, I have been cutting out these “foreign cover” patterns printed on Chinese books and using a collage to combine them into a series of images. I have also used stop motion animation to record the creative process. During the three years, I have collaged and produced almost 100 fictitious book covers and 100 loop animations.

Break no.1 & Break no.2
Film to digital | 2024 | photographic collage, Found Footage | 17min 36s | 16:9 | Stereo

Photographs, snowy mountains, videotapes.
Two stories of love and death.
休息一下
Episode 1: The Lost Photographs.
Episode 2: The unfound movie videotapes.

Re-engraved
Film to digital | 2024 | Wood engraving on celluloid | 25mins | 16:9 | Stereo

A fractal portrait exploring the convergence of Yangzhou wood engraving and analog film. Lei Lei demonstrates expertise through light, poetry, wood, and celluloid montages, accompanied by a cacophonous electronic soundtrack and traditions.
re-engraved (2024) was filmed in various locations Yangzhou city. Lei Lei presents the charm of handmade craftsmanship through collage and video works infused with elements of woodblock printing, reshaping related memories through his personal perspective. From bustling streets to the depths of the woods, from modern office buildings to traditional homes, light dances and folds, projecting through the crevices of the Lomokino camera lens onto photosensitive film material. These indistinct images, much like fragmented words, sketch out personal memories. Lei Lei reflects, ‘If Yangzhou woodblock printing, with its thousand-year history, carries the memories and civilisation of humanity, engraving history and culture, can photography (film) be seen as the carving of light?’