Yi Cui
Department/Office Information
ArtAs a filmmaker, I refrain from defining my work as representing a certain genre. Instead, I allow a leitmotif to develop freely, and to guide me as I look for an articulate formal expression. The search for the rhythm and poetics that are unique to the cinematic medium is a recurring theme in my practice.
I am interested in weaving this formal pursuit into works that engage with pressing cultural and social questions. In my film Of Shadows, for example, I intertwined two narrative lines to juxtapose urban spectacles with grassroots traditions, provoking viewers to encounter the profound dilemma faced by individuals situated between contemporary reality and the traditional past. Underneath the narrative structure, I worked to create a continuous rhythmic flow, which is essential for the film's emotional engagement with the viewers.
The open process of my work allows me to deploy the cinematic medium as a tool to study, to understand, and to embrace the time-space I encounter. Inspired by great filmmakers, such as Ogawa Shinsuke, I make it a principle not to impose the time-space of a preconceived structure on what surrounds me on the ground. Instead, I first immerse myself in a place and the rhythms of local life. My creative process emerges out of such experience and thus evolves intertwined with my relationship to the place and the people.
In recent years, I have been living and working in Tibetan communities to facilitate the local people in their autoethnographic filmmaking and cultural revitalization. This open-ended journey, which has challenged me to interrogate and redefine my own practice, is gradually growing into a personal film essay project that I am currently working on.