RPM Festival Presents Lost and Found: Lei Lei

Coming on March 9

Run Time: 90 min.

RPM Festival and The Brattle Co-present Lei Lei

Intro and Discussion with Lei Lei & Jinying Li

RPM Festival and The Brattle Theater are proud to co-present LEI LEI: Lost and Found , a comprehensive screening of seven remarkable films spanning from 2013 to 2025. Born in 1985, Lei Lei has garnered global acclaim for his unique method of collage and filmmaking, which fuses science-fiction & comic books and arcade games to create or recreate handmade, hand-colored universes. His compelling visual style often draws from a vast archive of found and ready-made images, including abandoned visuals, oral histories, fragmented online videos, commercial product catalogs, and folklore. By re-contextualizing these diverse sources, Lei Lei weaves together visual poetry and prose, turning everyday, historical artifacts and discarded materials into transformative cinematic experiences.

This program offers a rare chance to experience the evolution of his artistic vision over a decade. Known for his mastery of animation, film and video installation, Lei Lei’s works have been exhibited at prominent international venues, such as the UCCA in Beijing, Shanghai’s OCAT Art Museum, Tokyo’s TOP Museum, and the Rencontres d’Arles International Photography Festival in France. His video installations have been widely celebrated, with his works also collected by esteemed institutions and galleries across the globe.

Lei Lei’s films have been selected for prestigious festivals, earning recognition at the Berlinale, IFFR Rotterdam, New York MoMA’s New Films/New Directors series, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival, among others. His films often blur the line between documentary and fiction, stillness and movements, using humor, parody, and a deep understanding of visual culture to craft family oral history that are both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant.

Lei Lei, born in 1985. His works are based on the organization and research of ready-made and found images, combined with digital shooting and parody, weaving together abandoned images, oral histories, fragmented online videos, official documentaries, commercial product catalogs, myths or legends, etc., to create visual poetry and prose. Lei Lei’s art works include films, live music and drama. His video installation works have been exhibited in institutions such as the UCCA in Beijing, Shanghai OCAT Art Museum, Xi’an OCAT Art Museum, Shanghai MOCA Art Center, Tokyo TOP Museum, and Rencontres d’Arles International Photography Festival in France, and have been collected by important art institutions and art galleries. In addition, Lei Lei’s film works have been selected and won awards at important international film festivals including the Berlinale Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, New York MoMA NFND, Melbourne Film Festival, and Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Jinying Li is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She focuses her teaching and research on media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. Her essays on Asian cinema, animation, and digital media have been published in Film International, Mechademia, the International Journal of Communication, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Asiascape, Asian Cinema, and Camera Obscura. She co-edited two special issues on Chinese animation for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and a special issue on regional platforms for Asiascape: Digital Asia. Her first book, Anime’s Knowledge Cultures (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), explores the connection between the anime boom and global geekdom. She is currently completing her second book, Walled Media and Mediating Walls. Jinying is also a filmmaker and has worked on animations, feature films, and documentaries. Two documentary TV series that she produced were broadcasted nationwide in China through Shanghai Media Group (SMG). She is one of the co-writers of animated feature film Big Fish and Begonia (Dayu Haitang, 2016). She also produced an experimental VR documentary 47km (2017) in collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Mengqi at Beijing Film Academy.

Total: 74 mins

Please visit revolutionsperminutefest.org for more information.

Revolutions per Minute Festival (RPM Fest) is dedicated to short-form poetic, personal, experimental film, essay film, animation, documentary, video and audiovisual performance, and is co-hosted by Art and Art History Department and Cinema Studies at UMass-Boston, Brattle Theatre in Cambridge & Harvard FAS CAMLab.

Brattle Passes Not Accepted