THE PRIVATE LIFE OF FENFEN
USA / 2013 / TRT 28:15 / HD video / 5.1 sound / Mandarin w/ English subtitles
Fenfen's video diaries are mysteriously broadcast on televisions across China.
SYNOPSIS
The Private Life of Fenfen is a documentary film experiment that tells its tragic love story as a video installation. In 2007, the filmmaker gave Fenfen—a feisty young migrant worker in southern China—a video camera with which to start filming her epic video diary. In the film, however, fragments of Fenfen's video life—constructed out of over 100 hours of footage—are broadcast "live" on TV in various migrant worker locations across China. Inside cheap restaurants, hole-in-the-wall cigarette shops, and alley hair salons, everyone is watching Fenfen and consuming her real life as would-be entertainment.
SCREENINGS
2013 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)
2014 The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA's Documentary Fortnight
2014 CAAMFest
2014 Sydney Film Festival
2014 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival
2014 Przemiany Festival, Poland
2014 Montreal International Documentary Film Festival (RIDM)
2014 San Diego Asian Film Festival
2014 Kasseler Dokfest, Germany
2014 China Onscreen Biennial
2015 Images Festival, Canada
2015 International Women's Festival Dortmund | Cologne, Germany
2015 TIDF Taiwan Tour
2015 Arkipel International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival, Indonesia
2016 Brussels International Women’s Film Festival “Elles Tournent”
2016 The Wattis Institute, “Wang Bing: Three Portraits”
AWARDS
On Screen Award for Best Film, Images Festival 2015
Golden Key Award for Best Film by Emerging Filmmaker, Kasseler Dokfest 2014
National Finalist, 41st Student Academy Awards 2014
PRESS
Mubi Notebook, Images Festival, April 2015
J.B. Spins, Doc Fortnight ’14: The Private Life of Fenfen, February 2014
China Daily, Chinese Students Finalists in Student Academy Awards, May 2014
Programmers’ Picks: our favorite short films from SDAFF 2014, November 2014
Exhibition Formats
DCP, .mov, Blu-ray
