Unfolding Nai Nai, 2010

Unfolding Nai Nai is a 30-minute experimental documentary about my grandmother who lived to 103 years, Kuen-Jen Wang Lee or “Nai Nai.” The SD film unfolds her family’s emigration to Taiwan and ultimately to the U.S. as refugees from the Chinese Communist Revolution. Fleeing alone as a young mother with bound feet and four children in tow from Beijing to Shanghai and ultimately to Taiwan, her story is bitter and moving.

A combination of video montage with long-distance phone interviews of various family members in the U.S. and abroad in China and Taiwan, this short film lyrically unravels intimate snippets of Nai Nai’s life as told through the perspectives of her children and American granddaughter. 

The Sentinel, “Chinese-American Artist uses video to examine identity,” May 3, 2012