Oxhide I

Director: Jiayin Liu, Jiayin Liu

2005 / 110min / DCP

A key work in the 21st-century boom of Chinese independent documentaries, Liu’s totally assured debut offers a privileged glimpse into everyday life as lived by one working-class Chinese family crowded into a Beijing apartment. The disarming intimacy is explained by the fact that the family is Liu’s own, while the 23-year-old director plays herself in this deft nonfiction-narrative hybrid, which in 23 static shots confined completely to the apartment manages to encompass some vast truths about family life.