Lion, Lies and Love, Mid-length Documentary, 33:39 minutes, color and sound with subtitles, 2022

Director and Cinematography: Yuyue He
Editor: Jingyi Wang

Screening
Slade Interim Show, London, October 2022
LIE DOWN, London, October 2022


The video begins with a question, "If I had nothing, would you still love me?" This constant questioning is also an unspoken expression of love. The film explores the confusion and pressure under the collectivist society, the love, expectations, fears, and redemption of the Chinese family from the perspective of the transition and proliferation of this generation of Chinese young people from social relations to intimate relations. In this particular context, the question seems simple and absurd. Whether one has nothing and love can be equated, and why they are correlated here, whether the meaning of love extends to different dimensions in different situations and counterparts, whether love and pain can be resolved in the presence of faith and dissipated in the presence of death. Have you also Googled this question? Meanwhile, almost all the dialogue in this film is in dialect, and the film also carries many details of traditional culture fragments. One of them is the burning paper on Tomb-sweeping Day, a tradition that continues today in China and is used to perpetuate the concept of life after death. In the way of documentary, this film presented local Chinese life, as well as the traditional ideas it contains.