6,847 Miles is a film that reevaluates my old familial shifts from a different lens, one that is deeply impacted by the almost ten years I spent living in the United States. Examining twenty years of familial tensions between my aunts, the absence of my uncle, and the fading memories of my youth, the film captures my family members in different emotional states.
Narrating over landscapes filmed near my home, I present various places that have deep significance to myself and my entire family. Object and domestic spaces don't appear but are spoken about in conversations between myself and my father. Using these conversations almost as symbols, I convey the fragility of the family bonds that have shaped me. The conversations center around homes and places my family used to gather that no longer exist; they were lost during the long-lasting conflicts in the family. In the film these conversations with my father serve as a bridge to my fading memories and as evidence of the tension I experience while trying to find my place within my family scenario.
This work is not intended to expose or take advantage of the weak side of my family, but to witness and explore the realness of the kinship present. By expressing this fragility, I want to talk about the almost universal experience of family members becoming estranged from the people they love and the way this separation is exacerbated by the fast-pace of change of society in China.
