About the Film
Director
Jenny Yujia Shi
Country
Canada
Year
2024
Program
Curated by
MAiFF Programming Team
Description
Synopsis | Red Star Alley is an experimental animated short that captures a disappearing way of life in Beijing. Using backlit cut-outs with delicacy and invention, the film brings the city’s alleyways to life through light, shadow, texture, and movement. As traces of an older Beijing begin to fade, Red Star Alley becomes an elegy for the places, rhythms, and communities that modernization leaves behind.
Programmer's note | A city disappears first in its smallest details, like a familiar alley, a shared doorway, or the rhythm of neighbours passing through the same narrow path. In Red Star Alley, the film turns these fragile, vanishing traces of Beijing into the shape of a world on the edge of fading. The film carries this sense of loss with its own tenderness, yet it does not remain in mourning. Its handmade textures hold memory with care, while its animation allows what is disappearing to move once more. Through this delicate play of illumination and silhouette, a changing city becomes both intimate and alive. In the end, it reminds us that the act of remembering is itself a form of endurance, even through transformation. Even as the city changes shape, the warmth of lived experience continues to glow through it.
