Wake Li
Wake Li
By Jeanne Pope
Pre-production 2018
Chinese/English
Full-length documentary
I met Wake Li two years ago. This is the fruit of that meeting.
Wake Li performance artist, painter, poet, radical and filmmaker was a youth during China's cultural revolution where there were extreme repressed ideas on sexuality, and morality as well as art. However, artists all over China found ways to perform and create their artwork. Beijing being the hub.Today, Wake, 61, with the torso of a thirty year old, not far off the remarkable Iggy Pop - with a real lust for life - breathes some madness into this documentary film, a fast paced eclectic journey through China’s underground art scene, where his ideas merge with his performances. Rebellious, reflecting the artist's inner soul, and crisscrossed with sensuality, humor, darkness and delirium, taking the viewer to a multifaceted performer who is finishing his own documentary whilst trying to find the balance and not sell his ‘soul,’ for art.
By Jeanne Pope
Pre-production 2018
Chinese/English
Full-length documentary
I met Wake Li two years ago. This is the fruit of that meeting.
Wake Li performance artist, painter, poet, radical and filmmaker was a youth during China's cultural revolution where there were extreme repressed ideas on sexuality, and morality as well as art. However, artists all over China found ways to perform and create their artwork. Beijing being the hub.Today, Wake, 61, with the torso of a thirty year old, not far off the remarkable Iggy Pop - with a real lust for life - breathes some madness into this documentary film, a fast paced eclectic journey through China’s underground art scene, where his ideas merge with his performances. Rebellious, reflecting the artist's inner soul, and crisscrossed with sensuality, humor, darkness and delirium, taking the viewer to a multifaceted performer who is finishing his own documentary whilst trying to find the balance and not sell his ‘soul,’ for art.