The Chinese artist Xu Bing has made his first film, a 90-minute feature entitled The Dragonfly Eyes, pieced together from real footage taken from Chinese surveillance cameras. “It’s a reversal, filming before screenwriting,” the artist told The Art Newspaper China. “Based on the collected materials, we made up a plot, then we searched for more materials to match the plot.” The resulting story is based on the real case of a husband who sued his wife for producing ugly children after he found out she’d had plastic surgery. “Plastic surgery is a complicated issue, relating to women’s status in society as well as their complex relationship with men,” said Xu, who added that his film nods conceptually to both the film The Truman Show and the author George Orwell.
