Yiling Lu is a Chinese born emerging interdisciplinary artist, based in Chicago. Their previous projects are all centered in the topics of identity, individualism under social regulation system and the proxemics generated by culture. By experimenting in performance, photography, film/video, sound, hologram and installation, Yiling creates a provocative art world to explore the relationship between the creator and viewer’s sensory, ethnographic changes in present and past times, and the fusion of culture in the post-modernism context.
FULL PROJECT DESCRIPTION
· Original Name: 破
· English Name: PO
· Running Time: 120 minutes
· Language: Mandarin / English / Cantonese / Japanese / Korean / Chinese Dialects
· Subtitle: English / Chinese
· Genre: psychological drama / feminist suspense / experimental
· Shooting Period: Jan, 2023 – Dec, 2023
· Release Year: 2024
PO is Yiling Lu’s first feature-length film project which is semi-autobiographical. The film is constructed by three acts and the story talks about a millennial Chinese girl struggles with severe mental illness caused by childhood family abuse. After leaving home, she is forced to confront deeply buried memories and self destructive behaviors. She discovers who she really is and her relationship with the world.
PO involves topics like domestic violence, child abuse, teenage suicidal problems, Chinese and US American cultural conflict and differences, millennial generation identity issues, and Chinese contemporary history and politics under globalization. The director Yiling utilizes experimental narrative, image-making, acting, sound, and music to aim for a NEW GENRE and AESTHETIC of film. To stylistically blur film genre borders, PO shifts between black and white film noir, documentary, and found footages. By collaborating with diverse background musicians, the director is also ambitious to create a post-humanism original soundtrack album.
INCLUSIVITY AND GOAL
The majority of PO’s crew and cast identify as Chinese, Chinese American, Filipino, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Black, and Latinx. Among that team is people who represent the LGBTQ+ community. We are confident to use our own voice and to tell our own story. PO is a process of cultural criticism and theoretical reflection which demands for feminist’s political resistance, political power, and a possibility for cultural change.