LOCATION: Landskrona Theater. The film is only on at the Theater from 6/-8/9. The film is 16 min long.
-Chang (elephant in Thai) forgets himself in his search for his cat called Bye bye. The only clue is the “elephant”.
The Elephant Vanishes questions the boundary of perception between imagination and reality, existence and disappearance, the virtual and the analogue. It is the surreal story of Chang (elephant in Thai), who forgets himself in the search for his cat, Bye Bye.
The elephant designates images. The Chinese philosopher Han Fei Zi, a scholar who lived in the third century B.C., remarked that “Humans rarely see a living elephant, but when they find the carcass of a dead elephant, they base themselves on this vision in order to imagine it alive.” Since then, the elephant has been used to designate anything that allows the human mind to form an idea of something, be it an emblem, symbol, or figure. Images, the intermediaries between sentient and invisible beings or symbols, are an evocation of reality.
And images are destined to disappear, just like the lost cat called Bye Bye and a robot that acts as a cat, carrying a stop sign on a pedestrian crossing.
Chuxun Ran is a Chinese visual artist whose work lies at the intersection of visual arts and cinema. Her work explores complex themes such as perception, imagination, reality, and the boundary between the social and intimate fields. Ran’s approach to filmmaking is to challenge the traditional narrative structure, transforming film into a surreal collage. Ran’s works span across video, photography, performance, and installations, and aim to blur the lines between reality and fiction. She graduated from Le Fresnoy, France’s national contemporary arts studio.
Filmstill © Chuxun Ran
The Elephant Vanishes
a film by
Chuxun RAN
With
Chayarat RITARAM
Director of Photography Juliette BARRAT
Assistant Camera Iris IBANEZ
Sound Pierre DERNONCOURT
Set Decorator Yue SUN
CG Animator Guangli LIU
Written and Edited Chuxun RAN
Music Composer Neniu
Colorist Baptiste EVRARD
Sound mixer: Lorenzo TARGHETTA
Produced by
Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains