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 & Jinying Li
Jinying Li is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She focuses her teaching and research on media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. Her essays on Asian cinema, animation, and digital media have been published in Film International, Mechademia, the International Journal of Communication, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Asiascape, Asian Cinema, and Camera Obscura. She co-edited two special issues on Chinese animation for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and a special issue on regional platforms for Asiascape: Digital Asia. Her first book, Anime's Knowledge Cultures (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), explores the connection between the anime boom and global geekdom. She is currently completing her second book, Walled Media and Mediating Walls. Jinying is also a filmmaker and has worked on animations, feature films, and documentaries. Two documentary TV series that she produced were broadcasted nationwide in China through Shanghai Media Group (SMG). She is one of the co-writers of animated feature film Big Fish and Begonia (Dayu Haitang, 2016). She also produced an experimental VR documentary 47km (2017) in collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Mengqi at Beijing Film Academy.
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.
