MSPIFF Spotlight on China: “Dragonfly Eyes”

The 2018 Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, April 12–28, presents this special film screening to highlight Mia’s special exhibition “Power and Beauty in China’s Last Dynasty: Concept and Design by Robert Wilson.”

Dragonfly Eyes

Each of us is captured by surveillance cameras 300 times a day on average. To create this film, Chinese artist and director Xu Bing and his team downloaded hundreds of hours of publicly accessible surveillance videos online, many from Chinese livestreaming sites. The edited storyline follows the thread of an encounter between a young woman named Qing Ting (whose name means “Dragonfly”) and Ke Fan, the man who falls in love with her. The resulting film—the first full-length cinematic feature by Xu—is a searing commentary on privacy and violence. (2017, 81 min., in Mandarin with English dialogue)