Video, 4:3, 9:15, Sound
Contact is one of a series of videos made up of shots from more than 60 films from the Chinese Cultural Revolution period. These videos are not only reexaminations of the cinema of that period but also reflections of history as represented through cinema. Contact examines the emotional climax in these films when the ordinary people rise up to become the sublime subjects of Ideology by means of corporeal touch like shaking hands and hugging. I kept every shot at its original length because the shot is the minimal unit of the cinema. When we work on such a critical subject, keeping the integrity of the shot is the least we can do, in a moral way.