Film Screening:

Self-portrait: Dying at 47 KM 

(Zhang Mengqi, 2015, 77 min, China, in Chinese w/English subtitles, Color, Digital)

-- Discussion to follow with filmmaker Zhang Mengqi!

The fifth documentary in Zhang Mengqi's Self-portrait series, Self-portrait: Dying at 47 KM, is a search for the meaning of death in the aftermath of the filmmaker's grandfather's death. Zhang Mengqi's Self-portraits are all shot in 47 KM, her ancestral village 47 kilometers from her family's home in Suizhou, Hubei province. "My grandfather has passed away, and what does the village mean to me without him?" she writes about the making of the fifth documentary in the series, and continues, "I started to search for stories about death in the village: some are of unnatural causes, some are bizarre, and some are results of hatred. In the daily life accompanied by so many deaths, how should I understand death?"

About the filmmaker:

Zhang Mengqi, was born in 1987. She graduated from the Dance Academy of China Minorities University in 2008. Since 2009, she has been a resident artist at CCD Workstation. She has created several documentary films: Self-portrait with Three Women (2010), Self-Portrait: At 47 KM (2011), Self-portrait: Dancing at 47 KM (2012), Self-portrait: Dreaming at 47 KM (2013), Self-portrait: Bridging at 47 KM (2014), and Self-portrait: Dying at 47 KM (2015), which complete her own "self-portrait series."

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: Presented by Duke University Libraries; co-sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Art (MFA|EDA), and Center for Documentary Studies (CDS).