Cine-East Film Screening Self-Portrait: Dying at 47KM

The fifth documentary in Zhang Mengqi’s Self-portrait series, “Self-portrait: Dying at 47 KM,” is a search for the meaning of death in the aftermath of the filmmaker’s grandfather’s death. Zhang Mengqi’s Self-portraits are all shot in 47 KM, her ancestral village 47 kilometers from her family’s home in Suizhou, Hubei province. “My grandfather has passed away, and what does the village mean to me without him?” she writes about the making of the fifth documentary in the series, and continues, “I started to search for stories about death in the village: some are of unnatural causes, some are bizarre, and some are results of hatred. In the daily life accompanied by so many deaths, how should I understand death?”

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About the filmmaker: Zhang Mengqi, was born in 1987. She graduated from the Dance Academy of China Minorities University in 2008. Since 2009, she has been a resident artist at CCD Workstation. Her other documentary films include: “Self-portrait with Three Women” (2010), “Self-Portrait: At 47 KM” (2011), “Self-portrait: Dancing at 47 KM” (2012), “Self-portrait: Dreaming at 47 km” (2013), “Self-portrait: Bridging at 47 KM” (2014), “Self-portrait: Dying at 47 KM” (2015), which complete her own “self-portrait series.”

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1vFnwuWd9o#t=32(link is external) / Presented by Duke University Libraries.