Family photos, propaganda images and grainy archival footage are manipulated, re-processed and overlaid with wonderfully simple and highly effective animation in “Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish.” Thi…
assembles striking imagery and deeply personal audio recordings to chart his family’s history in China from the late 1950s to the early ’70s. Though it runs a little too long, “Silver Bird” should have a bright future at general film festivals and those specializing in animation.
Mixing media and employing all manner of animation techniques from cel drawings to step printing of his own hands working with the raw materials of the film itself, Lei has fashioned an eye-catching picture of China during these dark times. A strong feature of his visual strategy is the application of psychedelic colors onto selected sections of black-and-white images of buildings and landscapes.
It’s immediately clear that Lei is not attempting a deep analytical study of Chinese domestic policies in days gone by, but he is vitally interested in how tumultuous events affected his family’s relationships and shaped its destiny. The linear narrative opens in the late 1950s, with Lei Ting as a young father of three in Ningdu County in the south-eastern province of Jianxi.
Later segments highlight Lei Jiaqi’s teenage years, when sisters Pearl and Jade joined the Red Guards paramilitary youth organization and severed ties with the family. Alongside memories of watching Romanian and Albanian films released in China, Lei Jiaqi remembers a dream about Mao Zedong coming to help his father. Because his father had worked hard and helped China, surely Mao would repay his efforts by proclaiming “Lei Ting is a good comrade.