The Private Life of Fenfen

Where to Watch

DocAlliance Films

Overview

The Private Life of Fenfen is a documentary film experiment that tells its tragic love story as a video installation. In 2007, the filmmaker gave Fenfen—a feisty young migrant worker in southern China—a video camera with which to start filming her epic video diary. In the film, however, fragments of Fenfen's video life—constructed out of over 100 hours of footage—are broadcast "live" on TV in various migrant worker locations across China. Inside cheap restaurants, hole-in-the-wall cigarette shops, and alley hair salons, everyone is watching Fenfen and consuming her real life as would-be entertainment.