Oyster
Into the brackish waters of memory.
ABOUT
Oyster tells the story of a town facing the loss of its ancient coastal waters to high-rise apartments and a son who has lost his father to an accident in the shoreline reclamation project. As the son struggles to raise money to bury his father, he is confronted with visions of his childhood before the town’s changes. In the end failing to raise enough money, he buries his father at sea among the oysters also soon to be lost.
YEAR 2018
RUN TIME 17:21 Min
EMAIL jyao01@mica.edu Website: https://www.facebook.com/ziv.yao.9
CAST & CREW CREDITS
DIRECTED BY Jianfeng Yao
SCREENPLAY BY Jianfeng Yao
PRODUCED BY Jianfeng Yao
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Wang Hanyi
EDITED BY Jianfeng Yao
MUSIC BY Yuhan He
PRINCIPAL CAST
Zhang Haixin | Jiang Liming
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Oyster is set in director Jianfeng Yao’s hometown of Putian, located on the China coast across from Taiwan. The brackish waters at the mouth of the Mulan Brook had long been a fertile area for oysters to bed, but a large-scale shoreline reclamation project has recently begun to fill in these waters in the name of building apartments on the scenic coast. In doing so, the project has also disrupted the traditional oyster trade for which the town was famous.
The film is based on a true story caught up in these wider social and geographical changes, involving the tragic death of a father while working on the reclamation project and the struggles of a son to dispose of his ashes and pay tribute to his memory.
Capturing these oceanic themes, the film represents the lives of people in a rural area in a rapidly changing China. As the people lose these waters, Jianfeng hopes through the film to aid the citizens of Putian in maintaining the memories.
DIRECTOR BIO
Jianfeng Yao is a director and screenwriter who earned a bachelor’s degree in cinema and television from China Hong Kong Baptist University and is currently pursuing an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He worked on film crews in China for The Master (2015) and several small student productions.
FILM AND PRODUCTION STILLS
AWARDS
FULL FILM
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Jianfeng Yao is a director and screenwriter who earned a bachelor’s degree in cinema and television from China Hong Kong Baptist University and is currently pursuing an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He worked on film crews in China for The Master (2015) and several small student productions.
(Update provided in May 2018)