BURIAL SHROUD

USA & China / 2011 / MiniDV / 30 min / Mandarin w/ English subtitles

My grandmother left China on the eve of the Communist Liberation in 1949. She was 25 years old. In 2009, my 85 year-old grandmother returned to mainland China, this time accompanied by her three overseas Chinese daughters — Old Mother Goose with her middle-aged goslings. Together, they bear the burden of one mission: to buy Grandma the best traditional Chinese burial shroud China has to offer. But this gaggle of geese with their tourist visors and uppity air do not know what New China has in store for them, and their mission goes terribly awry.

"...It's very funny... very 'just' and very poignant. It’s about the relationship between these women, but also about the difficult, fraught history between Chinese of the diaspora... and the mainland... A drama of epic proportion, which [Leslie Tai has] the intelligence of dealing with in a gentle sarcastic tone."

-Bérénice Reynaud, Film Critic/Historian and Film/Video Curator

This film screened at Caochangdi Workstation's May Festival 2011: Keep Remembering, Beijing, China.