WILD WOMEN
North American Premiere
2012
Director/Screenwriter/Production Designer/Editor: Yang Mingming
Producer: Yang Jing
Cinematographer: Yang Mingming, Guo Yue
Cast: Guo Yue, Yang Mingming
MPEG, color, in Mandarin w/ English s/t, 42 min.
A most exhilarating directorial debut, Female Directors joyously treads the alluring boundaries between documentary and fiction. (It’s been called a “mockumentary,” but who’s to know?) When job prospects elude them, two sassy, foul-mouthed twenty-something art school graduates (Yang Mingming and her co-conspirator Guo Yue) decide to film each other’s lives instead, passing the camera back and forth. This involves talking candidly about sex, trading “pussy” for material and emotional gain, and sleeping with the same man, nicknamed “Mr. Short” in a hilarious phone conversation. “My best toy is my small camera, not pretty boys, because it can be a gun sometimes,” said Yang. – Bérénice Reynaud
Yang Mingming, a female independent director of the Hui minority, was born in 1987 in Beijing and graduated from the Directing Department of the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts. “For Yang, Ah-Ming and Yue Yue’s dependency upon a man is inseparable from the issues of class, and the loss in Chinese society of all values but material aspiration. ‘Most women think that if you’re a waitress or a cleaner, you can’t be happy, because you don’t have any status in society. Women have other choices, but they attach themselves to men because they think it’s the best way for them to get ahead. It’s like an import-export business, the transaction occurs because it’s mutually beneficial. The responsibility to change this state of affairs,’ says Yang, ‘falls on women. It’s possible for a woman in China to support herself and to be happy. But they aren’t brave enough to do it’.” (Time Out Beijing)
Preceded by:
The Private Life of Fenfen (议论芬芬)
The VaChina Monologues (来自阴道) www.global.ucla.edu/cob
Sponsor(s): zConfucius Institute, Film and Television Archive, Part of the 2014 China Onscreen Biennial (银幕中国双年展) presented in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Hawaii. For more information, including the full program schedule, film descriptions, and ticket and venue information, please visit the website.