WATER ALWAYS GOES WHERE IT WANTS TO GO, 5min., Romania
Directed by Yiou Wang
“Water Always Goes Where It Wants to Go” is an ecoperformance CG art video of the body in synergy with the storied landscape of water. How can we go back to something we already have? We are born out of water, and water constitutes our body, our territories, and our myths. Mapping water through the body, in between transitory space for waters, the short film investigates the relationship between the self, its embodied and somatic dialogues, and these physical and symbolic waters, questioning how we can return to our first water, the common body.

http://yiouwang.org/
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Get to know the filmmaker:

What motivated you to make this film?
This short film is the natural product of a very rich and interesting conversation Alina and I have. Many of our ideas clicked and crosspollinated. Alina is an actress and performance artist, who expresses through her body; I am a visual artist who expresses through image and form. We are both empaths who share an intuitive, embodied connection to a larger, more-than-human world. Alina has been introducing to the world the method of ecoperformance for many years, where she embodies a forest, a river, a crow, or an ancient mythic being and shapeshifts in synergy with the consciousness of the embodied. We began to focus on water, as water is our first body - the amniotic fluid is where we come from, and our common body. In many precolonial cultures and epistemologies, the land is often also corporeal. In Tuva, the mountain peak is the heart of mountain ranges, where rivers are the aortas, the soil's blood vessels.

Alina and I wanted to create a branch of artworks embodying water combining her ecoperformance and my virtual filmmaking. She performs embodying water from our animistic perspective, and I do the motion capture, transferring her movement to the avatars of water. The scenography is designed with a root in theatre arts, where I put my 3D scanned natural environment pieces in the scene reminiscent of stage.

From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film?
It is hard to pinpoint the start of this project, since Alina and I have been communicating for a year and our minds grew into this rich constellation. Since the beginning, we agreed to draft some proposals to apply for certain live performance art grants. After that, we thought why not make a film to further illustrate our proposal? And the actual production and editing of this film was about three weeks. But it's hard to say it's only three weeks, because a lot of the models I put into the environment were from my longtime habit of 3D scanning in my forest hikes.

How would you describe your film in two words!?
Breathing, alive

What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?
I can't recall. I'm sure there were wtf moments but my trait is that I hardly remember the hardships already dealt with, since my ecstasy during creative work is so great that it floods all.

What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?
I'm really glad, fascinated, grateful to the chance to see audience reactions because I'm always interested in communicating with audience. I express certain message and affect, but I always strive to create works that are open-ended, and I'm really happy that different people gave different interpretation, sometimes not entirely our intention but eye-opening.

When did you realize that you wanted to make films?
I grew up drawing and painting surreal visions of alternate worlds, so I lean constructive. From a painting background, I construct every element of the full picture out of my imagination. I have long been fascinated by films and visual effects as mediums of surreal storytelling, and I would spend hours obsessed with mentally dissecting the scene, avatars, lighting, camera motion, in the joint space between art and tech.

I want to make painterly films, in techno-artistic craft and in sensoriality, to express humans' connection to nonhumans and to a larger world, which is not all "I love nature" kind of romantic, but awake, sensitive, primordial, beautiful, yet sometimes dangerous. The space we inhabit is full of life, and in film, nothing is empty; every space of every frame is full. There is a world out there. Characters and stories happen naturally in this world.

What film have you seen the most in your life?
My favorite films lean ethnosurrealist fantasy drama, a merging between ethnography and surrealism, with roots in mythology and folklore. You Won't Be Alone (2022) by Goran Stolevski and Stone Turtle (2022) by Ming Jin Woo touched me so deeply and are in line with what I create.

The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon (2023) by Wong Ching-po. Life of Pi (2012) by Ang Lee. The Great Buddha+ (2017) by Huang Hsin-yao. Almost all films by Apichatpong. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (2003) by Kim Ki-duk. All these are deep wells of inspiration and artistry that I can watch a million times and can still gain something every time.

My favorite short is Birdsong (2022) by Omi Zola Gupta.

Recently, I also see a huge lot of Asian, Indigenous and African horror films.

What other elements of the festival experience can we and other festivals implement to satisfy you and help you further your filmmaking career?
Adding IRL screening followed by creative mingling events would be awesome.

You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experiences been working on the festival platform site?
I honestly am not very familiar with FilmFreeway. I haven't used it a lot.

What is your favorite meal?
I don't have a particular favorite, anything warm would be a nice meal to me.

What is next for you? A new film?
Great question. Alina and I will further make our water-related work into a mocap live performance with real-time projection and a VR film. In both, she will be the choreographer and performer, and I will be the VR director, and the art director and live projection animation controller. We will push the boundary of performance arts to merge with digital technology and surreal imaging.