LITTLE POTATO

This is a portrait of my grandmother Shou Ai Xia who suffers from dementia. She worked for the Chinese Communist Party for over forty years. The documentary captures two intertwined worlds that she inhabits in a poetic way. One is a fading ordinary world. In this space, she forgets people, places, and the way to go home. The second world is hallucinate resulting from Lewy body dementia. In this world, she demonstrates her gratitude and ideological commitment. She continues to identify as a former communist cadre, strongly believing in her past role in promoting policies like the One-Child Policy. The documentary considers both the revolutionary passion of her youth and the drawing of life into a quiet, gradual close. This poetic consideration provides insights into the ways that we might move beyond the pure representation of ‘the tragic discourse of dementia’ as trope in conventional filmmaking.

CHEN CHEN

Chen Chen is a lecturer in design at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. Her short films have been selected in competition at over 40 international film festivals, as well as the New Zealand International Film Festival. She has taught across a number of disciplines, including independent film making, Chinese philosophy and aesthetics, curatorial practice and studio practice in visual effects, animation and gaming. Chen finished her practice-led, artistic PhD. journey at AUT, where she received the Dean’s award for best doctoral thesis in 2018.

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