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Love is a Book
Lai Yuqing
Release year: 2024
Run time: 22 mins
Film type: Short fiction film
Synopsis
The film consists of two love stories, "First, Second, Third" and "Love is a Book".
The former tells the story of two male lovers who start with a sexual relationship, develop feelings, and then openly share their emotions, leading to a deep connection. The latter revolves around two female lovers, reuniting after a long separation, experiencing a surge of past emotions and the inevitable clash with present realities.
Love is a book, and while they are in different chapters of their emotional journeys, both stories share similar, ambiguous, and pure expressions of love.
Director biography
Lai Yuqing, she/they, originally from Fujian, was born in Tianjin. Yuqing has studied abroad in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto. Yuqing has participated as a director, actor and musician in the production of multiple short and feature films, with her works having been shortlisted for the Toronto International Film Festival, BFI Flare, and Sundance Ignite finalists, among others. Yuqing excels at using innovative and experimental approaches to view reality and express truth. Yuqing diverse creative and life experiences have led her to focus on themes related to women, queer identities, and emotions in her work.
Director's statement
Love is the most touching theme. I chose the two most emotionally intense moments in a relationship: the ambiguity before confirming the relationship and the reunion after the reluctant separation.
From a queer perspective, it always carries a tragic tone. What distinguishes the queer love depicted in the film from traditional heterosexual love is that in the face of clear real-world pressures, identity constraints, and an inevitable separation, they still choose to love, making the act of love more precious and noble.
Through these two states of love, I aim to strip away the temporal and spatial standards of emotions, staying in the most pure poetic moments of two people gazing at each other, gently caressing, and kissing. I believe that this is the emotional flow that everyone can feel.
