The Memo

备忘录

Badlands Film Group

30 minutes | 2023 | Documentary | Mandarin, Guilin Dialect | English and Chinese Subtitles
Canadian Premiere

The 60th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival –– Best Documentary Short Film

Content Advisory: This film contains scenes of coarse language, violence, and may be triggering for the politically traumatized

7:15 PM, SAT, AUG 9
Innis Town Hall

Screening + Live Zoom Q&A

The filmmakers used every medium possible to document the 2022 Shanghai lockdown—the “Come and See” moments, where the screams of ordinary people, the humiliation, the crushing, the trampling, and the forced forgetting are laid bare. True history is never far.

The Memo is a documentary short made by Badlands Film Group, which was founded by YANG Xiao and CHEN Sisi. The film focuses on Shanghai’s citywide lockdown in the spring of 2022, when 24 million residents were placed under mandatory quarantine under the government’s strict “zero-COVID” policy. Filmed from within a tightly controlled community, the directors use everyday media—mobile phones, television, and online footage—to construct a portrait of absurdity that is at once surreal and deeply personal. Beyond documenting grassroots resistance to the chaos and psychological strain of the lockdown, the film also explores how individuals confront and mock the abuse of authority, through an experimental deconstruction and reassembly of official rhetoric. More than a visual testimony, The Memo poses a powerful question: who has the right to preserve memory? In an era when information is erased and history constantly rewritten, the film reminds us that some memories can only be carried forward through images.

Louis ZHOU

Director

Badlands Film Group was founded by YANG Xiao and CHEN Sisi as a doc duo. Their works focus on the activities and memories of marginalized communities, striving to explore the aesthetics of resistance behind them. For example, The Memo documents the video activism of migrant labourers during the Shanghai lockdown period, while The Mountain Sings focuses on the tradition of improvised singing by Zhuang people in the midst of ecological changes.

Credits

  • Director: Badlands Film Group
  • Producer: Badlands Film Group
  • Cinematographer: Badlands Film Group
  • Editor: Badlands Film Group
  • Sound: Bobo LIU
  • Music: The Shanghai Restoration Project
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