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THE SWIM

By Xiangyu HE

LITTLE W PRODUCTIONS USA - as SALES All rights, World

Art - Culture - Completed 2016

The Utopia in my carefree childhood makes me feel complicated and ambiguous, which inspires me to rediscover the place and the people’s life there.

Festivals
& Awards

Solomon R Guggenheim Museum 2017

Tales of Our Time

- Year of production
- 2016
- Genres
- Art - Culture, Documentary
- Countries
- CHINA
- Languages
- MANDARIN, KOREAN
- Duration
- 96 mn
- Director(s)
- Xiangyu HE
- Writer(s)
- Xiangyu HE
- Synopsis
- Director’s Statement:
  
  On the Tomb-sweeping Day in 2015, I went back to my hometown for ancestor worship. In China, it is a day when we mourn the deceased and wish them living a happy life in the other world. My hometown is a border town where I was born and grew up. I used to know well about the neighbours and the landscape. But after leaving for years, I found the landscape that seemed familiar and everlasting before had concealed certain strange reality now. The Utopia in my carefree childhood makes me feel complicated and ambiguous, which inspires me to rediscover the place and the people’s life there.
  
  I spent more than half a year on field trips and collected a large amount of materials. The interviewees include a dozen North Korean defectors and over twenty veterans participating in the Korean War. Their narrations unveil the realistic face of my hometown. Following my childhood memory and local people’s narrations, I started my first filming in this April along the border between China and North Korea. Later, I went back twice. During the three filming trips, the experiences of the individual interviewees, their struggle in reality and their expectation for the future were so fascinating and touching. Although have gone through the geographical and spiritual departure and return, the land that used to be so familiar is still strange to me.

THE SWIM

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards