A dream is about living in a chaotic life but still insisting on hope.

The Concert of Life 

Drama 2019

Nicholas Plasko

SYNOPSIS

INTERVIEW WITH LINA LI

Director Info and Background: 

Lina Yuchen Guan Li was born in São Paulo, Brazil, grow up in Beijing, China, and is living in Los Angeles,  the U.S. now. She starts her movie life as a film critic since 2010. In 2015, She was accepted by Cinema and Media studies, MA program in University of Southern California, Cinematic Arts School. In that period, she specialized in film encoding and decoding, which allows her to be familiar with audiences’ psychological cognition of a film. Her critical thinking provided her a unique vision of being a director and cinematographer. Her motivation of being a director was deeply influenced by philosopher Roland Barthes and the Gestalt Psychology, which is an interdisciplinary between cognitive psychology and iconology, to construct a model to analyze that how audiences decode a film. In 2017, her short film “Waiting for the Wind,” which under the context of 2017 California wildfires’ natural disaster, earned her Award of Recognition: Women Filmmakers in Best Shorts 2017, and selected into Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner and Bechdel Film Festival. This year, she was glad to present her new film “The concert of Life,” which represent a group of people‘ status quo including herself who are living in a chaotic life but still insist on their dream and hope. Meanwhile, she is working on her future short film “Cranberry Chorus” and a road trip feature “See You Again.” At the same time, she is the owner of Lina Joias (a jelwelry company). For each of her film, she will have a related jewelry series to express. For the Concert of Life, she presents a butterfly diamond series named "Break the Cocoon." 

Summary of the film: 

Scene Analysis for The Concert of Life

Living in a single-parent family, Steven, as the oldest son, shoulders the burdens of the family. He not only has to take responsibility for the family’s income but also has to deal with conflicts among his three younger sisters and placate his mom who has mild anxiety. He never had a chance to tell anyone that he has a dream of being a conductor. Harsh life, especially his needy family, forced him to face reality. It seems that there is no way he can make his dream come true. However, this dream has been regarded as a symbol of his aspiration for goodliness. I am excited that I can use my visual and aesthetic creativity to present The Concert of Life. Each scene has a oner, it's interesting to watch each character in each scene including background actor,  they represents a group of people‘ status quo including myself who are living in a chaos life but still insist on their dream and hope!