Shen Ruilan

Every Meeting seems a Parting

The film documents a trip that the filmmaker took with her parents. Both in their sixties, they had lived their lives in rural areas and never seen the sea. Thanks to the film, she had the opportunity to take her parents to the seaside. She found the island closest to home, Weizhou Island, and asked a photographer to film this trip. Different layers of reality — her parent’s fear of modern society, the daughter’s doubt about her own motivations, and the photographer’s change from an impartial documentarian to an emotional participant — emerged together. In the course of this short trip, the filmmaker started to reflect on art, family, and self, all through the recorded images.