China, 87. The Others

Jean-Pierre Outers, Violaine de Villers / Belgium / 2017 / World Premiere / 60 min.

synopsis

We follow the film journey of director Viollaine de Villers and traveller Jean-Pierre Outers around the Chinese interior during the late 1980s. In a fragmented sequence of archival shots, vignettes of local culture gradually emerge, including everyday work, leisure time moments, and reflections of ancient myths. But it’s not just another of the countless travel documentaries or urban symphonies, but rather a suggestive video essay. The VHS camera becomes a fully-fledged historiographical medium through which foreign culture is revealed in all its myriad facets without crystallizing it into a comfortably consumable image

„Welcome to China, freed from any historical or political perspective, we are confronted with the Otherness of Chinese culture. We see in this film the opposite of the picturesque – a slice of quotidian life that may be banal, but still fascinates us.” V. de Villers

biography

Viollaine de Villers (1947) is a Belgian director and audiovisual artist. In her philosophically-tinged film work, she focuses primarily on the issue of memory, both in connection with art as well as in relation to political history. Jean-Pierre Outers (1953) is a Belgian writer, traveller, and development expert who has been living in Asia for the past twenty years. His book about his experiences in China is the basis of this film.