Last year, the 22nd Shanghai International Film Festival created a short video unit as the first step to create a ladder to cultivate new talents, in order to collect short videos to discover and encourage more young people to devote themselves to movies. Du Zhongkun, a young creative who participated in the submission, participated in the activities of the short video unit with the selection of his works, and also felt the enthusiastic encouragement of filmmakers and the excitement of the film festival. Last year, he began working on feature films. This year, he also used the iPhone 11 Pro Max to direct a short film with a movie theme, as a tribute to the 23rd Shanghai International Film Festival and filmmakers who overcame many difficulties and led to the reunion of movie fans and movies.
With the theme of "You gaze at the light, you are the light", the film expresses the mood of "when we watch the movie, we will also see ourselves in the movie", and looks forward to the audience who has been away from the screen for a long time to enter the theater and reunite with the "self in the movie".
The film boldly uses black and white tones, two men move a mirror into a silent wood, he lies behind the mirror and plays a harmonica, and all kinds of people come looking for sounds, whether it is the lover who takes wedding photos, the frolicking child, or the tourists, security guards, and gardeners in the park, all of them gather in front of the mirror and stare at the picture in the mirror. At this moment, the mirror seems to transform into a big screen, reflecting the world. In the nearly three-minute video, the author pays tribute to many film history classics such as "Two Men and a Wardrobe", "The Shining", "Labyrinth Tan", "Scenery in the Mist", "Night" and so on through clever techniques, showing his thick shadow complex.
Du Zhongkun believes that movies are one of the many mirrors in this world, and each mirror presents a different world, so when we look at the mirror, the mirror is also looking at us. Last year, his work "Going to Nojima" was specially recommended by the jury of the short video unit. He said that he will come to the short video unit of the 23rd Shanghai International Film Festival this year, because he can go all the way from here and enter the temple of film.