This experimental short film is inspired by the novel of Jorge Luis Borges, "The Immortal". A series of lifeless copies derive from the existence of human beings. On the one hand, living bodies own the freedom in space, while eventually they would pass away. On the other hand, the fabricated copies are untransportable, while they occupy an eternal moment in the maze of time. The 3d printed lips and hands, the water-filled plastic gloves, the masks, the plastic membrane, and the digital illustration of human beings are nested and projected and overlaid, intertwining with each other. An intricate relationship, dialogue, complement, competition as well as coexistence comes to being.
The dark room is the modern version of Plato's cave, where the floating projection is the reunion of men and memory. Immersed, the lifeless copies unconsciously grow with desire and fear. The real existence and the shadow are recorded at the same time, insensibly the physicality blurs, and the still image is captured in focus in eternity. The solidified natural scenery is a momentary awakeness, and the human beings keep regurgitating and rewriting their own memory, until the images disappear and only the sentences sustain.
Video, sound, light and text collage together, struggling to reform each other, breaking the reality into fragments. The ancient ritual of manual needlework connects the desultory entities. However, A Coat of Many Colors is a metaphor for lies. Truth and false pullulate as chaos. According to the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi in 300 BC, invisible and visible, abstract and figurative, are always the two sides appearing on the same coin simultaneously. And according to Borges, when the Immortal Rufus was restored to a dying body, he acquired eternal happiness.
Since Ulysses, we are all like migratory birds, in a world where the cosmopolitan wandering has become an eternal proposition shared by mankind. The distributed memories and perceptions are free from the physical bodies,and constantly being picked up. A Chinese poet Muxin once quoted, the autumn breeze brings back the immemorial. After all, the future is a distant past, recurring once upon a time.
Director: Anna Borou Yu Writer: Anna Borou Yu Producer: Anna Borou Yu, Jiajian Min Key Cast: Anna Borou Yu Sound Design: Tiange Zhou Cinematography: Jiajian Min, Hao Yan, Lu Ren Editorial: Jiajian Min, Anna Borou Yu
