YUQI WANG | ARTIST WEBSITE
A Film Directed and Written by Yuqi Wang
ASPIRATION
Aspiration, 10 minutes, 2023
Stereo (R L) | double track | 48 kHz
4K Video | 1920*1080 | Colour and B&W
Country of Production: United Kingdom
Whoever is born arrives at death,
through time's swift passage,
the sun leaves nothing.
What is sweet
and what brings pain,
man's thoughts and verse all disappear,
and ancient lives at shadows to the sun,
smoke to the wind.
Everything arrives at death.
-Michelangelo, C.1520
SCENCE ONE
Dreamspace, the end of the world, no concept of time.
Ambience Wind, wave, rain…
A voice came from nowhere. The whisper is soft, the timbre, a rustling texture.
Misty humidity, maze-shaped, glacial climate. The ground is covered with snow. A weak boy wakes up surrounded with white. He feels numbed and confused, slowly he started crawling through the freezing snowfield.
Boy Wurrgh – ah – ah! Wurgh, wurgh.
He seems confused. He has no speech, and his movements are numb. The boy begins to remember how he got here, then gradually he begin standing up and tries to walk. His breath heavily as we can clearly see it filling the air.
Boy Where is this?
He begins to remember how he had come here.
A lonely figure as we can see. The boy gradually moves from crawling to standing, then he tries to stand up and walk slowly.
SCENCE TWO
Secret laboratory, 22nd century.
In total darkness. The sound of heartbeat could be heard, suddenly a flash of light.
The boy is injected with many tubes on various of his body part, he tries to pull the tube out.
VO BOM-BOOM…
Then another heartbeat, Then another: BOM-BOOM. BOM-BOOM…
Another blast of light. A boy who is naked and leaking blood as he tries to rip the tubes out of his veins.
Boy Help me.
The boy struggles with extreme pain. We can see from the shape of his lips that he seems to be saying: I'm in pain, please help me. No one heard his rescue.
Light: Something is blinding the boy. With each screaming, the tubes that hold he together glows a blinding white light.
It goes dark again. Now we realize what is happening: it gets light when he breathes.
As he struggles with pain through his expression. The camera pulls further and further away slowly from the boy.
SCENCE THREE
Metropolitan city in the future.
On the rooftop two cameramen are standing behind the boy, monitoring his every little movement. The boy looks down from the balcony, he could see everything a crowed city filled with people, he lifts his arm and pinched his finger. He makes a leftward movement of his finger, and the crowd moved to the left. Grabbing the crowd, releasing it, grabbing it, releasing it... He can control every movement of the crowd, as if he is God himself.
The boy turns and walk back into the room behind him as both camera heads tracking. The cameramen stand in place and move the camera heads with the direction of the boy.
SCENCE FOUR
Dreamspace, the end of the world, no concept of time.
Voice-over Moving by day; resting by night.
Glacier creek, glittering water, glittering obsidian.
each sleeping place, the dreams at each sleeping place
North sister kicking in snow-steps, wickiup plain easy walking.
An odd number of mountains; an even number of rivers.
The Earth's axis magnetic north positive, magnetic south negative.
The walk as a true path, some false (true) moves.
Let's go back here again, and this time you can be anyone who you want to be.
The door is opened. A boy runs through the snow to nowhere, we could see he is gasping for breath.
Boy Who are you?
VO The voice in your head.
The boy looks for the voice. He walks in the snow aimlessly. There is a mirror in front of him. He looks at himself in the mirror, focus on his facial expressions. At the same time, appeared a mirror man behind him. When he turns around, the scene had changed, like falling into Alice in wonderland. Oddly-shaped mirrors are scattered all over the wasteland…The (mirror) pieces are refracting as if they were in a kaleidoscope.
The mirror man strokes the boy's face like teasing a child, and then runs away quickly. The boy chases after the mirror man. He desperately wants to find the mirror man, wants to know where this is and who he is…
He sees a clock in a tree. Time is running backwards, tick-tock, tick-tock. Puzzled, he walked slowly forward. He pushes through the fog (snow, clumps of grass) and sees more strange pieces of clocks. They all have different times: some fast, some slow. The boy begins to think how he come here.
SCENCE FIVE
Secret laboratory, 22nd century.
Quiet operating room; scattered with medicines and lifelike prostheses. What is this place? It's a strange and absurd world in which everything is possible. Human beings have obtained the power of immortality from technology where any part of the human body can be replaced with a new component when it's no longer functional. Hence, 'pain' does exist in this world. However, because of the over-dependence on drugs in daily life, people are addicted to falling into illusion.
A boy sitting in the center of the whole scene. There are many empty pill boxes in front of him. he holds a variety of pills in his hands, swallowing and chewing. He seemed to be letting off steam in this way.
SCENCE SIX
Dreamspace, the end of the world, no concept of time.
With the ticking sound, the boy comes to his mind, the mirror man is looking at him.
Boy Who are you?
The mirror man does not say anything and ready to turn away.
The boy tries to stop the mirror man from leaving, longs to know the reason for everything. He grabs the mirror man with both hands.
Surprisingly, the mirror man does not throw away the boy’s hand. He is like a messenger leading the boy, slowly squat down and look at the boy’s eyes.
Mirror Man I am you.
Boy Where am I now.
Mirror Man You're safe now.
The mirror man leaves the boy alone thinking.
SCENCE SEVEN
Metropolitan city in the future.
Boy Who am I, what am I living for, where am I going.
The boy looks at the bustling metropolis in front of him and falls into a deep thought. He hates the place so much that he wanted to escape, but there was no way out. He goes into the room and looks at the photographs on the wall, a beautiful landscape...
SCENCE EIGHT
Dreamspace, the end of the world, no concept of time.
The boy with this question: what the meaning of the life is, through the spring, summer, autumn and winter. He with expectations at the beginning, feels the moment of every second of this space. Sunrise and sunset, he sits by the sea, watching the ebb and flow of the tide. Drink the spring water from the creek. However, as he thinks more deeper about the meaning of his life, he begins to get restless. Every night he would write on a stone: What is the purpose of my life? He always keeps doing this until sleeping. And so on, every day of his life.
The boy has been thinking about this question since then. The once young man turns into an old man. There are tables, chairs on the beach. They may be the family of the old man, laughing together, sad together, gathering and parting.
The camera cuts to the old man's face, his wrinkles, the emptiness of his eyes. He seems to be getting closer to the truth but seems to be getting further and further away from the original answer. At that moment, the old man let go. He decided not to obsess about the meaning of life. He chose to let go of himself.
Copyright © 2022 Yuqi Wang
All rights reserved
CREDIT LIST
Cast
The Boy Junhao Fu
The Boy Stephen Liu
The Mirror Man Kai Jiao
The Mother Yiwen Wang
The Camera Man Zheyu Zhang
The Camera Man Kinnie Hu
Director Yuqi Wang
Executive Producer Yuqi Wang
Producer Kinnie Hu
Line Producer Yiwen Wang
Line Producer Tong Li
Production Assistant Zheyu Zhang
Director of Photography Haoxuan Xu
Camera Operator Pengchao Wang
Camera Operator Zhe Wang
Assistant of Camera Anchen Li
Production Designer Yuqi Wang
Costume Designer Yuqi Wang
Art Coordinator Ching Yip
Makeup Artist Jing He
Makeup Artist Yiwen Wang
Editor Yuqi Wang
Colorist Jeman Zhou
Sound Designer Xijian Jiang
Sound Supervisor Xijian Jiang
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