Once Upon a Time in Dongmen
Since November 2023, Dongmen (East Gate) street in Shenzhen has become a live-streaming centre where Chinese online celebrities dwell. Countless influencers gather to realise their fantasies of celebrity. Their exaggerated vernacular performances, far from mainstream aesthetics, achieved both popularity as well as negative comments and controversy. When they were imagining a brighter live-streaming future, a yellow line appeared on the square overnight intensified their anxiety and uncertainty, forcing them to find a new way out.
2024 (60 mins)
Director/filmmaker: Yu Pei, Xuelai Ni
Producer/production company: The Chinese
University of Hong Kong
Country of production: China
Country/location of film: China
Screening: 17:30 Thurs 9th Oct at the Museum of Macedonia
Yu Pei grew up in Shanghai and studied anthropology and sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include migration, diaspora, gender, and youth subcultures, focusing on East Asian societies and post-socialist contexts. She observes from the perspective of everyday life and personal history, combining fieldwork with ethnographic documentary filmmaking and documentary photography. She aims to present memory and emotion through multiple visual media, exploring their intersections with space, gender, power, and socio-political economic structures.
Xuelai Ni grew up between Shanghai and Guangzhou, currently studying at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her practice includes documentary, sound, performance, and digital art. Approaching from an anthropological perspective, she explores the complexities of nonverbal media and their potential to engage with communities. Her research interests include memory and emotion, spiritual experiences and ecstasy, and mechanical bodies and synthetic life, aiming to perceive the boundaries between human and nonhuman life within a posthuman context and imagine new ecosystems.
NAFA 2025 