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The River of Life

Yang Pingdao

Release year: 2014

Run time: 101 mins

Film type: Documentary

Synopsis

Yang Pingdao invents something poised delicately between fiction and documentary to capture crystallized moments in his family history, to recreate in cinematic form its emotional weight and variety, woven around the life and death of his grandmother, and the birth of his child.

 

Director biography

Yang Pingdao is a writer and director based in Guangdong province. He was born in Yangchun, Guangdong, in 1980, and graduated in film directing from the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts. His documentaries have attended festivals in Beijing, Kunming, Xian, Leipzig, and London. On his incorporation of living and dead family members into his work, he says “I sensed when my grandmother was going to die… I felt powerless at that critical time, but I hope to do something this time. After a long time of deliberation, I thought the only thing I was able to do was to make a film about our family.”