Lost Train Lost Days

Cathayplay: An online streaming platform dedicated to showcasing Sinophone independent films
A market-and-hit-driven film industry has been formed across the globe. As a result, there is less room to survive for independent films that grapple with tough social issues and reflect the fast-changing society from different perspectives. Despite the boom of Chinese films in recent years, Chinese independent filmmakers lack opportunities to present their works to a global audience under the restrictive environment.

Cathayplay is an online streaming platform dedicated to showcasing Sinophone independent films. It inspires to promote Chinese independent films through the streaming platform, advocating the spirit of independence, respecting the director-centered filmmaking style, breaking free of the mainstream film industry, and discovering more films merging arthouse style with social commentaries. Cathayplay was first launched in the beginning of 2019 and the platform’s slogan is: WATCH DIFFERENT. Cathayplay is making three short independent documentaries available produced by Chinese women filmmakers.

Lost Train Lost Days
Director: Shen Ruilan
Length of film: 7 minutes

Film synopsis:
I followed a two-day, overnight train ride to the depths of my memory, chasing a conductor who wanted to escape from the mundane life. He appeared briefly in my life, like the wind. In the constant retracing of his visions, the people and landscapes I encountered became a series of flowing and hidden...

Director‘s Statement
It is a film about the lost people and things of modern civilisation, and about their own fading and reincarnation. In the wider dimension of time, the person is destined to disappear (whether materially or spiritually), as are the memories associated with that person, and the images that record those memories are destined to be forgotten. Whether it is Xiao He in the film, the people he meets, or the film itself, it is something so fleeting, like a dream bubble, that one day it will not be here nor there. How should we face this ultimate loneliness, how can we place our tiny selves in the unending stream of time?

Screening sponsored by: Cathayplay. For more information on the streaming platform, visit the Cathayplay booth at the Exhibition Book Fair in the ASEEC Tower on Campus B, Airlangga University.