Run! Dorothy! Run!

Run! Dorothy! Run!

SHEN Jinghao • 2023

Duration: 00:37:12
Language: Mandarin,Sichuan dialect
Subtitles: Chinese, English
Country/Region: Mainland China

The film is based on the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland. It tells the story of the brave pursuit of love by Dorothy in Sichuan who sings folk songs.

AWARDS & FESTIVALS

2023 Beijing Queer Film Festival, China

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

SHEN Jinghao

SHEN Jinghao

Director

The film is based on the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland. Judy and her character Dorothy are embedded in the history of sexual minorities. By playing a world-class gay icon from the West and combining my own life experience, I tried to trace the identity construction of the queer community in China. Perhaps in China, the discussion of gender is mostly written and spoken through Western discourse, transcoded through the transcoding of the translation and Lip Sync into a rainbow dream suspended over the head of every (probably just urban) queer person. Songs from the West provide a proud identity paradigm, but like Dorothy from Kansas belting out the dislocation and chaos of Sichuan folk songs, the “local” and “local” always imply confrontation and running-in. When the words of the East and the West are difficult to speak about themselves, it is better to sing, as Liu Sanjie sang: Folk songs are like spring rivers, not afraid of beaches and dangerous bays. And the dreams that you dare to dream, Really do come true. And the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true. Perhaps for Dorothy, the meaning of the rainbow, which disappears and disappears, is never to arrive, but to never stop running.