The fragmentation of memory: Lei Lei the Chinese documentary filmmaker who breaks down and recomposes the audiovisual text

After the 1980s onward, what Lyotard calls the grand narratives came to an end: we are no longer faced with solid social-political structures that determine specific cultural products, but on the contrary it is the time of fragmentation, dematerialization that is interested in plurality and diversity, in which the author and the user connect in a new dynamic. This contribution will examine two documentary works by animation director and documentary filmmaker Lei Lei (1985): Breathless Animals (Dongwu Fangyan, 2019) and Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish (Di er ge he di san ge mama, 2022) both focus on personal biographical stories that are intertwined with one of the deepest social traumas in Chinese history: the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The goal is to think together about how the forms of storytelling, especially the creative reuse of archival material, operates in the culture of remembrance. Prompted by the works of Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney, I will explore the concept of the intrinsic dynamism of memory in the audiovisual medium that the author fragments, manipulates, and re-edits, as well as to reflect on multimediality when multiple channels and codes are operating on the culture of remembrance.