Workshop
Li Ning
Release year: 2021
Run time: 100 mins
Film type: Experimental Film
Synopsis
But all these are reconstructed and combined into psychedelic psychoanalytic landscapes; from one person's dream to another's, language is used to dream, not to elaborate...
In the game of time-space switching and identity, various images and symbols are finally systemized into three parallel worlds:
1. "Workshop" is the dream or consciousness of "Boss Yan".
2. "Inspection", "business negotiation", "lover and child" are the dreams or imagination of "San Er", a patient who is lost in thought, paralyzed in bed, in need of a mother's care, and who even needs breast-feeding to extend his life;
3. All of the above is a dream or movie seen by "Yan Sanyuan", a social man who took a nap in a barber shop.
The characters and symbols in these chapters interact with each other, reflect each other, separate and link together to form a super workshop.
Director biography
He graduated from the Fine Arts Education Department of Shandong Art Academy, specializing in sculpture. In 1997, he founded The Physical Guerrillas, a group engaged in the creation of physical theatre and live performance art, performed at home and abroad.
As an artist, he has created a large number of theatre and film works, many of which have become classics of contemporary Chinese physical theatre and video art, and he is also recognized as a representative of these two fields.
He was invited to perform, or to exhibit, exchange and to create, at the Julidans Art Festival in Amsterdam and the Culturescapes Festival in Switzerland. Since 2010, he has also been invited to participate in the creation of the French Limitrophe Company, a situational drama group, which has toured the Festival d’Aurillac, the Ghent Art Festival in Belgium, the Stoke Art Festival in the UK, and the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, among others.
As an experimental film director, his famous works Tape and Untitled-3 have been collected by dozens of university libraries, art galleries, and museums in the United States. Li Ning has received funding from various national foundations many times to complete his theatre and film works, such as the Dutch Done Foundation (which supported Li Ning and The Physical Guerrillas for 3 years, in 2006, 2007, 2008), and the EU cultural project Chin-A-Moves, as well as the China Independent Film Fund Indie Cinema Fund and so on.
As a curator, he presided over and participated in the operation of the Jinan Fangyu Art Festival, the Weifang Village Theatre Festival, the International Factory Theatre Festival Laiwu, and other platforms to improve China's ecology of art and literary.
Director's statement
“Life springs from sorrow; death comes in ease and pleasure”. This film is dedicated to the post-70’s generation.