The eleventh installment in Zhang Mengqi's self-portrait series patiently details the minutiae of daily life in the filmmaker's ancestral village during 2020.
Over the past thirteen years, Zhang has documented her father’s village in Hubei, China, as a repository of ancestral memory. The title of her ongoing series, “Self-Portrait,” suggests the degree of Zhang’s awareness of filmmaking as an act that always implies a vital and intersubjective relation between the artist and the world to which she is connected. This tenth film, 47 KM 2020, carries that recognition to its logical endpoint, as Zhang opted to install herself permanently in the village after the outbreak of COVID-19. Filmed between early January and late December 2020, and divided into chapters corresponding to the Chinese lunisolar calendars’ 24 solar terms, this vivid account of a year in the life of a stoic community, far removed from an urban-centered pandemic, unfolds with the simultaneous vastness and fine detail of a classical Chinese handscroll painting. Featuring some of the most authentic pastoral scenes in any film, as well as some of the most delightful dialogues with children, Zhang’s film is an immense accomplishment. Award of Excellence, 2023 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. (Museum of Moving Image)
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