That day, on the river
Official competition                   

That day, on the river

Lei Lei

In That Day, on the River, newspaper clippings, historical photographs and a film about a female basketball player serve as the source material for an exploration of the director’s father’s childhood in provincial China. The filmmaker says: “In 2016, my father and I traveled to Ningdu by bus to do preliminary research for my animated feature film SILVER BIRD AND RAINBOW FISH. We did the field recording and looked for the house where he lived as a boy and the bridge he walked onto the school. During the trip, we talked about his childhood memories and things he wasn’t good at.”

Information

Country

China

Year

2023

Length

37'

Category

Documentary, Experimental

Origin of archival materials

Forever Young (1957) Central Newsreel and documentary film studio. An inch of time, an inch of gold (1959) Central Newsreel and documentary film studio. The Girl From Shanghai (1958) Beijing Film Studio Woman Basketball Player No.5 (1958) Beijing Film Studio Asian Film Week (1957) Central Newsreel and documentary film studio.

Screenplay

Lei Lei

Editing

Lei Lei

Music

Lei Lei

Director’s biography

Born in 1985 in China, LEI Lei is an independent animator and an artist, graduated from Tsinghua University with a Master’s degree in Animation.

In 2014 he was the winner of the 2014 Asian Cultural Council Grant.

In 2017 LEI Lei’s short film HAND COLORED NO. 2 opened in competition at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

He also had solo exhibitions in Beijing and Austria, and was part of group exhibitions among other in Singapore, Netherlands, Canada, and China.

Since 2018, has been teaching animation at CalArts.