Liu Jiayin (born 20 August 1981) is a Chinese independent filmmaker and educator from Beijing. She directed two experimental features combining documentary and narrative elements,Oxhide (2005) and Oxhide II (2009),both of which received international awards.
Liu was called "one of the most exciting and unique talents to emerge from China in the 2000s" by The Hollywood Reporter,[2] with Oxhide being described in 2006 as "the most important Chinese film of the past several years".[3] She has written television dramas and currently teaches screenwriting at the Beijing Film Academy.[4][5]
Career
Liu aspired to become a filmmaker as early as high school. In 1999,she enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy,majoring in screenwriting.[1] As her graduation project for her master's degree,she completed Oxhide,her full-length feature debut. Liu used digital video and a series of long takes to stage scenes from the life of her family in their cramped Beijing apartment. Her mother and her father—a struggling skilled leather craftsman whose work material gives the film its title—perform their own parts,alongside the 23-year-old director as herself.[3]
In 2009 Liu finished her second film,Oxhide II. With a similar focus on her family,this "sequel" was seen as more simple in construction,employing only nine separate shots in a running time of over two hours. All the film's narrative occurs in the real-time process of Liu and her family preparing to make,making,cooking and eating jiaozi (Chinese dumplings). A marked contrast not only to commercial film aesthetics but also with other independent films from China,Oxhide II premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival as part of its Directors Fortnight program. At the end of the year,Oxhide II was named one of the three masterpieces of Chinese cinema in the 2000s by critic Shelly Kraicer.[7]
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