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Chinese Independent Documentary :
CIDFA041:
Mom
Director: Zou Xueping
Length: 60 minutes
Production Year: 2008
About the film:
This documentary film is about my plain and ordinary mother. My mother lives in a rural village. She works the land and raises pigs for a living, and cares for my grandmother. She has no grand ideals or lofty goals, and desires nothing more than to pass her days in calm contentment; to raise and care for her family. My mother has no education or cultivation, but she knows how to live and how to approach life. When I asked her what the meaning of life is, she answered, “To live is to eat, is it not?”
Filmmaker’s Statement :
Having lived by my mother’s side for twenty-some years, I had never carefully looked at her before. Images of what she looked like in her younger years have all but faded in my memory. Now to see her age – her white hair, wrinkled face, and callused hands -- my heart aches. When I first started shooting her, I almost couldn’t bear to continue, I felt so much pressure. But an inner impulse allowed me to carry on. To have a simple life by my mother’s side, I discovered, was exactly what I was looking for. When Grandma wasn’t around, her and I, we’d sit together on the bed and chat for hours. When the topic of Grandma was broached, she said, quite unexpectedly: “Why, how could I not take care of her? Your father and uncle are not here; they are working far away. We can’t be the laughingstock of the village!” Her simple words made me think, a lot. The let me understand a lot of things, like her sense of responsibility towards her family, and finally be able to comprehend what a simple woman from a rural village wants out of life.
Filmmaker's Bio :
Zou Xueping studied at Yangxing First Highschool in Shandong Province. Now, she is in her fourth year in the New Media Department of The China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Mom is her first feature length documentary.