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Self-Portrait: At 47 KM

Zhang Mengqi

Release year: 2011

Run time: 77 mins

Film type: Documentary

Synopsis

After my first documentary Self-portrait with Three Women, my second self-portrait was painted in a village named 47 KM. This village, located 47 kilometres from Suizhou, Hubei Province, is where my father was born. He left the village when he was 20, but his father, my grandfather, still lives there. In the summer and winter of 2010, through my participation in the Folk Memory Project, I went back to the village, which seems disconnected from my current life, and re-discovered and came to better understand my grandfather, the old villagers who underwent the disaster of the famine 50 years ago, as well as the village, which always perplexed and embarrassed me. What does 47 KM really mean to me? It seems to be like a mirror, I see myself in front of it.

 

Director biography

Zhang Mengqi was born in 1987. She graduated from the Dance Academy of China’s Minorities University in 2008. Since 2009, she has been a resident artist at CCD Workstation. She makes documentary films: Self-portrait with Three Women (2010), Self-Portrait: At 47 KM (2011), Self-portrait: Dancing at 47 KM (2012), Self-portrait: Dreaming at 47 km (2013), Self-portrait: Bridging at 47 KM (2014), Self-portrait: Dying at 47 KM (2015), Self-portrait: Born in 47 KM (2016), and Self-portrait: Sphinx in 47 KM (2017), her “Self-Portrait” series.