A Funeral
directed by Yi Lu
Preview Screening
China | 2021 | 10 mins
Narrative Short
Synopsis
An eccentric, stubborn veteran conducts a funeral for himself on the past battleground and confesses to his family that he is no war hero but a deserter.
Credits
Writer/Director: Yi Lu
Producer: Huihui Lou
Director of Photography: Song Zhang
Production Design: Fengyi Hu
Editor: Yi Lu
Location Sound: Qi Zhu
Music & Sound: Yiwen Hu
Colorist: Espen Gjelsten
Key Cast: Yunyi Huang, Jiliang He
Screening schedule
This film is available to watch online from October 17th—23rd 2022 (from the United States only)
Language
Chinese with English subtitles
Genre
Narrative Short
About the Director
Growing up in a little industrial town in central China, director Yi Lu spent most of his childhood with his grandpa, who was a war veteran, a retired local cinema manager, and his best friend. In their small backyard, Yi would listen to his grandpa’s stories, again and again, no matter how many times he had told them and so discovered a passion for storytelling.
Yi got involved in filmmaking and photography at the age of 12. He values empathy, sincerity, and vulnerability in both work and life. In 2022 he graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Director’s Statement
“He saw the marching, shouting crowd… the march from revolution to revolution, from struggle to struggle, ever onward.”
—— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera’s concept of The Grand March has always echoed with me, and I think it especially holds true nowadays in an era of deglobalization and rising nationalism. The distrust
towards any noble aims and guaranteed future at the expanse of individual hardship is a starting point of this film. I love thinking about the ugly and trivial sides of grand narratives, which in this film is the desertion of the old man. Lives are considered sacred but there are actions deemed to be unethical, but what if a life was realized by an unethical action? Was that life too condemnable? Condemnable to whom? Or commendable? These questions ultimately lead to my film’s open ending.
