Lei Lei
Directing
Biography
Lei Lei (1985, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province) is a Chinese animator, filmmaker and artist. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 2009, with a master's degree in Animation. Since then, he has worked as an independent filmmaker and experimental animation artist. His animated short This Is Love (2010) was awarded Best Narrative Short at Ottawa International Animation Festival. From then on, many of his short films have received awards at festivals worldwide and he has been selected for many artist residencies. Since 2017, Lei has spent most of his time in Los Angeles, where he is a full-time faculty member at the department of Experimental Animation, CalArts. Ningdu is selected for the IFFR Tiger Award Competition 2022.
Known For

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Wipe Out The Bandits of Wulong Mountain

As Tang Sanzang and his disciples arrive at Lion Camel Ridge, they encounter villagers captured by demons. Wukong's attempt to rescue them goes awry, and he and Zhu Bajie fall into a trap set by the three demon kings. Overwhelmed by their enemies, Wukong seeks help from the Buddha and learns the value of unity and teamwork. With the help of his brothers and a Bodhisattva, they work together to save the villagers and continue their journey westward, stronger and more united than before.
Monkey King Fight Lion Camel

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Uncle Nine: The Curious Case of the Ancient Coffin

The young Chinese animator also known as “Ray” Lei crafts a hallucinatory short that follows a doe-eyed protagonist on a quest through an imagined world.
This Is Not a Time to Lie

A boy and his mother sit in a cardboard car in front of painted landscape. This postcard from his childhood is what triggers Chinese artist Lei Lei to go on a journey down the rabbit hole of memory. Put together with his signature style of melancholic collage, time jitters in and out of its usual flow as screenshots, found photos and propaganda images appear in succession as if pulled through an archaic machine to explore how truth is coloured by nostalgia.
A Bright Summer Diary
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Happy Year of the Rat 2020

After A Bright Summer Diary (IFFR 2020) and Ningdu (IFFR 2022) we once again welcome Lei Lei to Rotterdam with this compelling tribute to bygone images and memories. As always, the mundane comes alive through a conscientious montage of gorgeous compositions. A two-part quest for what has been lost through time, Break no.1 & Break no.2 fires the imagination.
Break no.1 & Break no.2.

Short animation about a running girl by Lei Lei
Ready to play

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A Gift for You

This story takes place in a city, in which all of the citizens have very big hands. One child, however, is special. He has tiny hands, and his head full of peculiar thoughts. The boy constantly talks to people about these thoughts, but they dislike his long-windedness and eventually ignore him. He is very lonely. The only he does is talking to the walls.
Big Hands Oh Big Hands, Let It Be Bigger and Bigger

The fragile materialities of Yangzhou wood engraving and analog film converge in Lei Lei’s fractal portrait of labor and craft. Exploring techniques of light and poetry, wood and celluloid, re-engraved montages demonstrations of expertise with a cacophonous electronic soundtrack and the personal histories of the women whose labor sustains these traditions.
re-engraved

With animation from Lei Lei and beatboxing from Eloi Dequeker, this is the story of "guy with a hat" as he heads to the cinema in the supercar.
Animafest Zagreb

The cutout patterns are from my father's book, Book Cover Collection in the West, which was published in 1988, when Chinese leaders launched their great "Reform" and "Opening Up" to embrace the world. Many leading concepts of book cover design were introduced in this book, which has had an eye-opening influence on the younger generation of Chinese designers since.
Books on Books

With Weekend, the artist and Beijing / LA resident Lei Lei not only displays artistic nostalgia, but also the constant quest for certainty regarding history, family and personal identity. His work can be seen as a type of “creative thinking” on the theme, an artistic strategy related to future imagination, and a contradictory position on emotions that cannot be returned to today. As philosopher and art critic Boris Groys pointed out: “Life can be recorded, but it can't be shown.” It is also because of the complexity of this contradiction, and the images that comprise the artist’s works that different images taken at the point of visual transformation and dialectical form between the calm and the energetic are shown, so that “nostalgia” becomes a truly contemporary medium in the practice of image art. Dong Bingfeng
Weekend

"What did you dream about and what was your daily life as a teenager?” An older woman recalls her youthful memories in China during the 1970’s while unfolding in front of our eyes the recreation of the modern times from the past. Until one day, the first breathless animal appears, a White horse…
Breathless Animals

Love – and ping pong - can be liberating in a world of sameness.
Magic Cube and Ping-Pong

What happened to Lupita after the frustrated attempt to get into the dance battle? And what's up with Huo now, the dancer that Lupita idolized? What remains of that life-changing afternoon in Lupita's best friend memory?
Lupita From Now On
Animated film by Lei Lei.
Rocket

An exhaustively created moving image mural of Beijing and her inhabitants, painstakingly extracted from an archive of half a million 35mm negatives.
Recycled
A happy planet of pear people is invaded by some mean reverse pear head aliens. A film about peace, tolerance and forgiveness. Drawn with pens on exercise books.