• Project: Citizens’ Village 221
• Director: Gabriel Rendall
• Date: 2019
• Project type: Documentary
• Production: Sitting Ducks Production
• Role: Director
• Description: Soon after arriving in Shanghai is September 2019, I bought some Socialist Realism art manuals and taught myself this style of drawing. I liked its realistic focus on costume and posture, as well as its treatment of shade and light. While living in the Citizens’ Village 221, next to Jiaotong University, I documented my surroundings with sketches and photography.

My idea was to make a short documentary on the estate in the spring of 2020. With some difficulty, I managed to convince The Poet and The Matriarch to participate, but the coronavirus epidemic shut my university down and forced me in exile in Hong Kong. I didn’t return to Shanghai.