Cinema is dream-making that rebuilds my life and saves me from dull reality.
Yudan Yang
Yudan Yang, poet and writer graduated from the Communication University of Zhejiang and then finished her master's studies at the university of Edinburgh. Now she is studying film directing at FAMU in the Czech Republic.
The Back-flow Rain, Narrative, 29 mins, Jun 2021 (Director/ Scriptwriter)
// 2021 Rhode Island International Film Festival – Semi-finalist
// Winner of "Best Student Film" at Edinburgh Independent Film Festival Awards
// Winner of "Best Film" & "Best Director" at the 2021 St Andrews Film Festival
// Winner of "Silver Medal" at the 2021 United Kingdom Student Film Festival
Being both a poet and a writer, how was the process to craft The Black-flow Rain as poetry in film?
The poetic atmosphere in my film is actually inspirited by a Chinese feminist poet Xiao Hong. I quoted her poems as a clue to the mother’s disappearance. And the elements in my film are similar to those in my poems, such as the rain, neon lights, and the mother-daughter relationship.
How do you believe a child wrestles with the hope his/her parents would love him/her more only to be met with their eternal inability to do so?
The film is my semi-bioautography, so it’s actually from my own experience. And I feel asking parents for love but getting no answer is a quite common thing for generation Z in China. I used to wonder why my parents gave birth to me and didn’t love me until I did a documentary about a 3yo child who lives with grandparents in a construction site in Hangzhou, and I finally found out that parents don’t pay attention to their children not because they don’t love me, but because they were too far behind in society and were completely unprepared to build a family.
You stated that The Back-flow Rain is semi-autobiographical. How did it feel once you saw it outlined on the screen? Do you believe filmmaking can be healing to any extent?
For me, film is a language helping me to say the unspoken word. My father was at my premiere at my university. And there was a film fest at the uni, and when we were announced as the best film, he sat with students and cheered and applauded with my whole crew. Those few days with him are so unforgettable and it helps us to build a really strong relationship. But my mothe knows what the film is about, and both of us are too shy to sit together to watch it. But we already agreed to have a screening after I go back to China. Film, for me, is a medicine healing to the extent not by forgetting but by memorizing and forgiving.
