Xu Tianlin
Xu Tianlin is a Chinese filmmaker and media educator based in Hattingen, Germany and Hangzhou, China. She has an academic background in German studies and Journalism. After making documentaries for a decade, she directed her debut narrative short FEDERDING (THE THING WITH FEATHERS). She is also engaged in film education and is the co-founder of the Studio Klasse Story Lab in Yunnan, dedicated to running youth film workshops in China.
Director's statement
For various reasons, since 2015, more and more immigrant families have moved to the town where I live in German. The families are from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Ukraine; they were teachers, doctors, pharmacists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and mothers before becoming “refugees”. I witnessed the hardships behind their transformation of identities.
Hand works, touch, scratch, hold, lift, beat and feel. They embody power, strength, serving, healing, taking, and giving. Human hands represent identities. They show a person’s skin color and age and reveal people’s habits and occupations. Hand gestures reveal emotions and unconscious thoughts. Using the hands as symbols, I want to tell stories of people empowered by particular abilities through nature, society, and circumstance but frustratingly unable to benefit from them in their own lives.
