Who's Using Who? Zhou Hao's Hall of Mirrors

Dan Edwards at Screening China looks at two documentaries by Guangzhou-based filmmaker Zhou Hao:

In this sense, Using adds little to previous films about the culture surrounding heroin, apart from revealing its existence in present-day China. The film's emotional nexus, however, lies elsewhere, in the knotty relationship between filmmaker Zhou Hao on the one hand, and Ah Long and his girlfriend Ah Jun on the other. The on-again off-again nature of their friendship is established straight after the film's introductory sequence, when inter-titles tell us police cleared out the derelict building shortly after Zhou Hao filmed there. Ah Long disappears for six months and Zhou Hao gives up hope of ever seeing him again until Ah Long calls out of the blue and they are reunited over a meal.

Link picked by Danwei.org


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