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Reality and Dreamspace

​A Film by Yuqi Wang

Reality and Dreamspace, 00:03:46, 2022

4K Video | 1920*1080 

Stereo (R L) | double track | 48 kHz

Image: Black and White 

Country of Production: China Mainland, United Kingdom, France

Yuqi Wang completed this short narrative film in 2022, paying tribute to mid-20th-century masters of surrealist cinema, such as Maya Deren. Deleuze points out in Cinema 2 that by dealing with the category of time-image, such as false relationships, false movements, irrational cuts, etc., one can indicate how thought merges with the chaos that triggers it. The film also extensively uses production techniques such as displacement and jump-cutting, linking images that are difficult to distinguish between actual and potential - the monster, the magical eye, the girl, the cup, the tea, the ruins, etc., thereby creating a surreal silence, and a dreamlike state where one is forced to shuttle back and forth between reality and 'reality', leaving one puzzled.

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The opening scene features a creature crawling out of a fountain that looks like the eye of a demon. It crawls slowly and unknowingly into the desert, where it will go next, we don't know.

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As the shot progresses, a girl appears in our view, seemingly being chased by something, running faster and faster. Immediately afterwards we see her appear in the bedroom of a flat, where she cautiously gets out of bed.

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She shuffles along, trying to pour a glass of water to drink, but in the blink of an eye the glass of water turns into a cup of tea again. Is this the girl's dream world in which we cannot see our own faces?

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After the girl looked out the window, she came back to an empty, deserted ruin. "Who is she?" A woman in a different costume stands in the centre of the scene, moving from one place to another: the witness explores the relationship between visibility and the illusion.

No reproduction accepted.

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