Black Tide Coast

Language：Mandarin, with English subtitles

在黑潮汹涌的海岸/在黑潮洶湧的海岸

UK Premiere

Synopsis Feng Qin and Ren Wu had known each other online for many years, but they had never met in real life. In the summer of 2015, they made an appointment to meet in the Mountain of Yantai in Shandong province. So Qin went there alone, waiting for Wu all night in vain. It turned out that Wu disappeared mysteriously. Qin was so absent-minded that she fell into the sea. Luckily, she was rescued by someone. Several years later, Qin commenced a tour from Dandong, Liaoning province, to the south along the coast, suffering from the tide and waves, but she kept thinking of Wu all the time.It was the summer in 2019, when Qin arrived in Bo’ao Town, on Hainan Island. She accidentally found a coastal café, named “Old House “, where every afternoon some old movies would be played. She was surprised to find that these films seem to be connected with Wu. At the same time, Qin noticed Lei Chen, the coffee shop waitress, because Chen was the one who formulated the screening program and had some seemingly strange relations with Wu. While they became familiar with each other in the process of sounding out, a drama crew emerged in the “Old House “. Qin happened to be the actor by chance in a repertoire, which would remind her of the innermost secrets …

Director’s Statement From my perspective, films are unique in that they “see the unseen; know the unknown”. In other words, they can employ images to depict something beyond words in our life. Hence, we are bound to explore the deep sea of consciousness, and to capture the most precious parts in human nature. A complete story is always favored, but the evident facts and truth are not what directors wanted. In the movie world, I prefer to focus on the flows of emotions, thoughts and feelings, and the inexplicit conditions behind the story and the pictures… Only in this way and only in the movies, can we step out of reality and think abstractly through the concrete images. I hadn’t finished the script or drawn a blueprint when shooting “Black Tide Coast”. Instead, I threw myself into live-action scenes, touched by nature, and then I mixed the thoughts and feelings with the movie. Many scenes are shot because of passing observations, something we call “fate”,are heaven-sent scenery. As for this story, you yourself have to piece together the panorama with fragments. There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Films can be dreams; filmmaking is like building dreams. Once you get into it, you are on a journey that has no end. While I try it, I stick to it.

Curators’ Notes This film takes a poetic approach to presentits images in an aesthetically interesting way. The director is committed to emotions, ideas, feelings and an ambiguous state of being that flows behind the images and beyond the story. As an individual’s life experience varies greatly, so does the picture that the viewer puts together when watching a film.

Festival & Awards

2020 Hainan New Wave Young Artists’ Image Exhibition

2021 Singapore World Film Carnival , Special mention for Best Feature