The Milkyway, 2009 (3'30" with sound)

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Every Chinese, even a little kid, is familiar with the beautiful and melancholic story of Weaving Maiden and Buffalo Herder. In the thousand-year-old folk tale, the celestial Weaving Maiden secretly marries to Buffalo Herder, an orphaned and poor human being. Weaving Maiden’s mother, the Heavenly Queen, finally discovers it and summons her to return to heaven. Trying to reunite his family, the Buffalo Herder, carrying their two children sneaks into heaven by draping himself in the hide of his water buffalo just after it died. The merciless Queen then drew a line in heaven allowing the heavenly river to flow deeply and treacherously between the again separated husband and wife. By heavenly decree they may reunite on the seventh night of the seventh month of each year, if the weather is good enough that the magpies can form a bridge over celestial river; if it storms they must wait another year for their brief reunion. In the sky, Altair is the Buffalo Herder and Vega the Weaving Maiden. The Milky Way is the heavenly river separating the lovers. The rain is Weaving Maiden’s tears if they can not reunite. 1

It is much more heartbreaking that this tragedy has become the reality of rural families live in today’s China. The traditional lifestyle of agricultural population has been destroyed by the economic development throughout past thirty years. To meet the most basic needs for living, hundreds of millions of rural people pour into cities as migrant worker, who can only reunite their families a few days during Spring Festival of each year. The separations have resulted not only family tragedies, but also the collapse of morality rooted in cultural traditions that had been maintained by the relationship between land and people or their families.  The moral collapse then inevitably leads to unrest threatening the entire society.

In experimental film Long, the story of Weaving Maiden and Buffalo Herder has been reinterpreted to argue the negative effects of the rapid economic development on humanity. The distorted reflection of urban landscapes of China becomes the background of the first scene in which Weaving Maiden is flying away from a world full of individual tragedies, which are corroding and shaking a society superficially prosperous. In the next scene, the Buffalo Herder finds himself standing on the field in Olympic Stadium instead of his farm. In the night sky, the glamorous fireworks of national celebration are launching the vanity by the side of Milky Way…

The video combines oil-paintings and digital animation techniques to develop new media aesthetics.

The song adapts the poem "Melody of Water," that was composed by Su Dong Po who lived in Sung Dynasty:

Bright moon, when did you appear?
Lifting my wine, I question the dark night sky.
Tonight in the palaces and halls of heaven
what year is it, I wonder?

I would like to ride the wind, make my home there,
Only I hide in a jade room of a beautiful mansion,
As I could not bear the cold of high altitudes.
So I rise and dance and play in your pure beams,
this human world — how can it compare with yours?

Circling red chambers,
low in the curtained door,
you shine on the sleepless.
Surely you bear us no ill will —
why then must you be so round at times when we humans are parted!

People have their grieves and joys, their togetherness and separation,
The moon has its dark and clear times, its waxings and wanings.
Situations are never ideal since long ago.
I only hope we two may have long long lives,
So that we may share the moon's beauty even though we are a thousand miles apart. [3]

© Lily & Honglei 2009. All rights reserved.