PENG Zuqiang
United States of America, Cuba
English
Inauguration
成立之时
2020
Asian Premiere 亚洲首映
Inauguration looks at the fragmented history of the Young China Association (少年学社). Interweaving temporal connections with faint chances of synchronous events between two disparate events at the margins of Chinese revolutionary history: a failed assassination and an impossible trip. The film narrates a forecast of the past, wherein it renders visible the processes of erasure, remembrance, and archival anchors of the early overseas Chinese revolutionary politics and its aftermaths. Movements, geographies, and events do not follow a linear arch but rather are scattered across memories and places, only to be treated as residues, witnesses or simply discards of the history. What happens when the premise of the story is, in fact, the assurance of its erasure?
成立于旧金山的少年学社,是美国最早的华人革命组织,他们举办了诸多支持推翻清王朝的革命活动。其中就包括一次对1910年访美的清皇室载询的刺杀。而在另一段古巴华人史的记载里,1910年的古巴华人社区,准备派遣两名青年前往得克萨斯州,参与少年学社1911年的成立大会。 是先有成立大会还是先有革命活动?在两段时间互有出入的记载打开的是刺客邝佐治的一段私人史:他刺杀失败后的隐姓埋名, 刑满出狱后对政治的失望, 还有少年学社对这段刺杀史的只字不提。作品在古巴、旧金山与得克萨斯州三个时空之间穿梭,想要在虚实之间思考,能去寻找的究竟是一段历史,还是它的消亡?