Shot over an eight-year period, Outcry and Whisper presents itself as a political manifesto for the resistance of women, be they workers, artists, intellectuals or militants, in Chinese and Hong Kong society. In the face of political violence, sexual harassment, online bullying, family separation, arbitrary treatment by factory management, the women recount their traumas and healings in their fight for independence. To these testimonies are added sequences of animation that extend the experiences of these women and intensify the political scope of their struggles by including them in the great account of other historical struggles. Through this collage of multiple materials—animation, interviews, archives—the filmmakers participate in the cry of a people by successfully preserving the intimacy of each protagonist. While the subject in itself would have sufficed, Outcry and Whisper deploys an impressive imagination that makes it a militant film taking a completely unexpected form.
WORLD PREMIERE
The 51 st Visions du Reel, Nyon, April 24 – May 2, 2020
https://online.visionsdureel.ch/film/outcry-and-whisper/
GERMANY PREMIERE
DEUTSCHES HISTORISCHES MUSEUM, OUTCRY AND WHISPER: REGISSEURINNEN IM
UNABHÄNGIGEN CHINESISCHEN DOKUMENTARFILM, Berlin, June 2020.
https://www.dhm.de/zeughauskino/filmreihen/outcry-and-whisper.html
And stay tuned for future screenings.
FILMMAKER BIOGRAPHIES
WEN Hai 聞海 (HUANG Wenhai)
Director, Cinematographer, Editor
WEN Hai studied at the Beijing Film Academy and has since 2001 been active as an independent
film director. Among his best known films are Floating Dust (2004), that got the Prix Georges
Beauregard at the 16th Festival International du Documentaire in Marseille in 2005, Dream Walking
(2006) that received the Grand Prize at the 2006 Cinéma du Réel, and the film We (Women) that
won the Horizons Special Mention award at the 2008 Venice International Film Festival. WEN Hai
also worked as a camera man on WANG Bing's film Three Sisters (2012). His 2016 book放逐的凝
视——见证中国独立纪录片 [The Gaze of Exile: Witnessing Chinese Independent Documentary
Films] is published in Taipei by the Tendency.
ZENG Jinyan 曾金燕
Producer, Co-director, Cinematographer, & Performing Artist
Jinyan Zeng (based in Hong Kong and Beijing, P. R. China), writer, scholar, and documentary
filmmaker, the 2017 Oak Fellow at Colby College (USA), is the 2020 Post-doc Fellow at the
University of Haifa (Israel). Zeng earned her PhD at the University of Hong Kong in 2017 in the
field of gender and sexuality, Department of Social Work and Social Administration. Her book
Feminism and Genesis of the Citizen Intelligentsia in China (CN, 276 pp) (City University of
Hong Kong Press, 2016) received a Publishing Award in the Social Science category of the 2017
Hong Kong Publishing Biennial Awards. The book presents Zeng’s researches on a group of
filmmakers, feminists, NGO practitioners, intellectuals, and activists that could not be included in
her PhD dissertation, The Genesis of Citizen Intelligentsia in Digital China: Ai Xiaoming’s
Practices of Identity and Activism, due to dissertation length limitation.
Zeng produced and co-directed the documentary film Prisoners in Freedom City with Hu Jia (2007),
wrote the script for the short animation film A Poem to Liu Xia (Trish McAdam, 2015), and
produced the feature documentary film We the Workers (Wen Hai, 2017). Zeng’s documentary films
are archived and exhibited in various universities (mainly in Europe, the USA, HK, and the South
America), museums (e.g., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and SFMOMA), and international film
festivals (e.g., International Film Festival Rotterdam and Cinema du Reel).
Zeng was selected as the Time 100 Pioneers & Heroes 2007 by the Time magazine, the 2007
Sakharov Prize’s one of four semi-finalists by the European Parliament, Women Who Shake the
World 2008 by the Daily Beast’s 150, and tens of other writing, creativity or human rights awards’
laureate.
Trish McAdam
Animation Director & Co-editor
Trish McAdam, Filmmaker and Visual Artist. Best known for Snakes and Ladders (1997),
Hoodwinked 1998), No Enemies Liu Xiaobo (2012) and Strangers of Kindness (2015). Member of
Aosdana (2017). Irish Film Institute Director in Focus 2019. Please read
http://www.trishmcadam.com/filmography.html for more on her filmography. Trish McAdam has
produced three animation shorts in supporting Chinese imprisoned/house arrested activists and their
family members.