Presented by RIDM
Quebec premiere
Documentaries from the Edge
People's Republic of Desire
Directed by Hao Wu
Hosted by director Hao Wu
Credits
Director
Hao Wu
Writer
Hao Wu
Cast
Jiang Congyong, Man Shen, Li Xianliang
Producer
Hao Wu
Cinematographer
Hao Wu
Sound Designer
Ron Bochar
Composer
Michael Tuller
Editor
Hao Wu
Animator
Eric Jordan
contact
Tripod Media LLC
Official website
Honors
Grand Jury Award (Documentary), SXSW 2018
Grand Jury Award (International Documentary), Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 2018
21 CF Award, Best Cinematography, CAAMFest 2018
USA, China
2018 95 mins OV Chinese Subtitles : English
Official selection
SXSW 2018, Hot Docs Film Festival 2018, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 2018, Dallas, International Film Festival 2018, Seattle International Film Festival 2018, Melbourne International Film Festival 2018
"Yes, BLACK MIRROR is already here"Sam Machkovech, ARS TECHNICA
"Tragic and terrifying in equal measure"David Ehrlich, INDIEWIRE
Marginally talented Internet celebrities skyrocket to fame in PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE, where hordes of devoted fans tune in to find comfort in virtual relationships through live streaming. Director Hao Wu’s dystopian documentary follows Shen Man and Big Li, each a bastion of upward mobility and cutesy cyber quirkiness. Shen Man is an amateur singer and Big Li is a boisterous comic personality, each honing their digital fantasy worlds and crafted personas for fame and profit. Fans are encouraged to finance their idols by purchasing gifts and leaving them tips, causing many admirers to slip into debt as the pop-cultural celebs earn upward of tens of thousands per week. Their wildly popular forms of home entertainment are housed on a streaming platform called YY, which Wu narrows in on to track China’s emergent breed of off-the-rails celebrity-making obsession.
Winner of the documentary Grand Jury Prize at this year’s SXSW, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE was shot over two years against a political backdrop of rapidly changing socioeconomics in China, and with a collective shift towards cultural adaptation of digital spaces and globalized pop-cultural fads. Wu’s provocative film looks at the impact of plunging into the virtual in order to satisfy real human needs through a new consumerist system of connectivity and calculated voyeurism. Familiar enough yet counterintuitive to North American YouTube tendencies, PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF DESIRE magnifies a menacing aesthetic of over-the-top bubblegum graphics, saturated and overblown in ways unnervingly bound to the film’s messaging – equal parts unsettling, pessimistic and fascinatingly hypnotizing. – Sarah Teixeira St-Cyr