Short Film Studies - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2015

Loneliness forms the emotional core of The Chinese Wall. But rather than inviting empathetic identification with the main character, this film embodies the feeling by means of voice-over, mise-en-scène and the role of food (its consumption, tasting and sharing).

With the spread of social media and virtual communities rather than actual ones, The Chinese Wall could well be interpreted as a yearning for connecting with people in real time. However, at the same time, it seems to utilize social media strategies to bring relative strangers closer together, even though, curiously, the film was made at a moment in time when the first forms of social media were just emerging on the horizon.

Many film scholars equate ‘film’ with ‘moving images’. But knowledge of language and background information importantly influence a film’s possible interpretations. In this article I discuss how comprehension of Dutch language and culture affords subtle aspects of meaning unavailable to viewers who have to rely exclusively on the English subtitles.