I am grateful to have spent this evening at the Showcase Cinema for the launch of ‘Electric Shadows 2024’, the third Leicester Chinese Film Festival.
Ahead of the opening film, ‘Leap of Faith’, there were speeches sharing commitment to and hope for the value of film in supporting cross-cultural connection between China and the UK. There was also instrumental music, song, and dance – as well as a tai chi fan form display (that for me personally, at an early stage of tai chi development, was a fabulous experience).
‘Leap of Faith’ is by Yang Lina, a director who here is filming the lived experience of her daughter, Zou Haolin, and her daughter’s friends, together engaging in equestrianism. Yang Lina is celebrated for her documentary work which often strongly centres women and girls.
The film demonstrates how horse sports and human-horse relationships provide windows into some universal themes about what it means to care about others.
And that this doesn’t always mean getting it ‘right’ (just as the horses don’t always make the jump). What is important is that there is depth in these relationships (between rider and horse, within families, in friendships, and with the coaches who make the team sport happen). There are bumps in the road but they are to be navigated carefully as everyone seeks to move towards participating within dressage and showjumping competition at the national Youth Games.
There are the different elements of the ways in which the horses present and connect – strength and softness/power and fragility – which we can also see in those who ride them. The early part of the film shows the devastation of colic, when U-Prova doesn’t respond to being chased around the school or treated with acupuncture. He is put to sleep a month before he turns 18. His death sets the stage for a (real) tale of these girls as they are becoming young women. They are making sense of themselves and the place of equestrianism in their lives. It was moving to see them relating to their horses (past and present), and managing the challenges and joys in and beyond their training and competition lives.
One of the horse stars, Wonderella, has some liberty inside the school when she rolls in the sand. There was a further sense of freedom at the very end of the film as horses are ridden outside a school across open landscape. The girls are offering to swap each other’s horses, and I suppose then learn through getting closer to each other’s experience. A beautiful film to launch the Electric Shadows 2024 Film Festival which is helping to bring greater understanding of Chinese lives and culture to Leicester.
A full list of films being shown 25 November – 1st December are here
Interspecies Insights 