Short Sentence, Making a Living Use film to reflect the real society. Author Minjie Zhang
�Short Sentence, Making a Living� was created in April, 2006. This is a concept image work. It recorded a special community who makes a living only by some short sentence, such as beggar, street vendor, conductor, barber and so on. People of this community had different jobs, but each day they needed to say hundreds of same short sentence to make a living, for example, thank you; Beijing, Beijing; welcome etc.
�Short Sentence, Making a Living� is from daily life. It rooted in those cities� streets where I have been. All people in the film are small potatoes, whose facial expressions show their hard life. Their skins are lined with age; their eyes show the pressure which life brings. They have no idea what they can do. These small potatoes exist in each corner of the world. They are too common to be paid attention to. I made my lens to shoot them�those physical workers.
The film was just edited by collage film method. I did not use any advanced technology and tried to keep what they were, for their existing has already express my idea. The whole film did not have any complex plot and stunning special effects, but it shocked people deeply when their facial expression and language which did not be beautified recurred. Each person in the film stands for a specific job, using repeated short sentence to make a living. Those persons are typical examples, shooting from the streets in hustle and bustle cities. Short sentence is not only their way of making a living, but also the subject of my work. Those people are the vulnerable groups in the society. This work gives us an opportunity to concern the vulnerable groups from another point of view.
This work does not intend to show my humanistic care or other purposes. I did this work just by how I felt. Those vulnerable people are always found in our life. They teach me to be strong. They tell me to do reflections on life. Till now, each time when I came across the street vendor, I was deeply moved.
