JUST AN ALIEN

JUST AN ALIEN

Director: Weicheng Hua / China 2022

Genre: Documentary
Category: Human Interest, Mental Health, Author’s Film
Production: Yang Jing, Weicheng Hua: Hua’s Image Production Limited, China
Language: Chinese

Subtitles: English
Length: 71 minutes

Chinese photographer Weicheng Hua follows Zhighuo Sun, a vagabond who lives in an amusement park, outside Chongqing. Hua’s debut film is an affectionate portrait of a drug-using, possibly psychotic, sensitive, and always cheerful man.    

Weicheng Hua, Chinese photographer and Film Director, follows Zhighuo Sun, a vagabond who lives in “Foreigners’ Street”, an amusement park just outside Chongqing. Hua’s first film is an affectionate portrait of the drug-using, possibly psychotic, sensitive, and always cheerful Sun, who moves through the amusement park like a kind of shaman, holding forth about mystical concepts. The central figure seems to fit perfectly into this odd environment. The Foreigners’ Street amusement park is a surreal mishmash of peculiar structures. Hua invites us to see the world from a different perspective.

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Director's statement:

In 2015, I worked on a photography project in “Foreigners' Street”, a Chinese amusement park in Chongqing. This park is a surreal sanctuary full of strange structures, from UFOs to an Egyptian pyramid, a revolving Jesus statue and a Thai brothel. Both depressing and hopeful at the same time, the chaotic, ugly park was also a sanctuary for outsiders. On the first day there I met Zhighuo Sun, a vagabond, possibly psychotic, sensitive, and always cheerful man. Sun, moves through the amusement park like a kind of shaman, holding forth about mystical concepts such as “the principle of zero” and “understanding the self.” The main protagonist of my film seems to fit perfectly into this odd environment. “Foreigners' Street” Park was demolished after 13 years to make way for a luxury residential area. My film is therefore also about rapid urbanization in China. I invite the film viewers to see the world from a different perspective. When all the mess has been knocked down and cleared up, what space is left for the divergent?

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