It’s a pain shared by the two female protagonists, their families, and those newborns who never had the chance to grow up. In Step into the River, the river can be seen as symbolizing the pain of the past. In her animated short from 2015, The Same River Twice, Ma presents a touching tale of family and nostalgia, with the river in the film representing the generational divide between family members. The river even inspired her work prior to Step into the River, though the same motif represented vastly different themes in those works. A small river ran through the city, and some of her fondest childhood memories revolved around that flowing stream. Ma was born in Chaohu, a city on the rural outskirts of China’s Anhui province. One single fish has squirmed out of the confines of the composition, as if springing out of the water-a lone, lucky survivor. Several human hands reach out between what little space each fish has left behind, as if trying to escape from under their suffocating weight. On the poster, a school of fish seems crowds half the frame. There are many clear parallels between a goldfish’s existence and the experiences of many Chinese girls, and so, she thought it a fitting motif for the film’s poster. To her, it’s a curious practice even today-people don’t blink an eye at the thought of restricting another animal’s freedom. Ma kept a goldfish as a pet as a child, and looking back, she realized how cruel it was to confine it within a fish bowl. Even the poster is based on her childhood memories. Lu and Wei are based on real-life accounts and some of Ma’s own experiences. To Ma, the story is far more important than aesthetics. The fluidity of each frame and the gradient colors that have replaced the sky instill a sense of the fantastical, but the story and characters are unmistakably grounded in reality. The two quickly became close, bonding together over a shared resentment over being abandoned.ĭespite the air of melancholy that permeates the narrative, the film’s art style feels gentle and calming, defined by soft palettes that capture the idyllic lifestyle of the quaint village in faithful fidelity. Lu was adopted by a fishermen after she was discovered abandoned on the riverbanks as a toddler. In the village, Wei befriends Lu, a girl with a distinctive birthmark on her face. Wei is a “stay-at-home child,” a term referring to children left behind in the village while their parents pursued better job opportunities in the city. Step into the River is told through the perspective of Wei and Lu, two young girls living in the Chinese countryside. While gender equality has made great strides in the years since, the haunting image of newborn girls being abandoned in the river never left her mind. These experiences led her to come to a bleak realization: male chauvinism can come in extreme forms. As an adult, she met a number of Chinese adoptees, a disproportionate number of which, she noticed, were females. ![]() Most Chinese parents at the time hoped for sons, so when their newborn turned out to be a girl, they abandoned them. Ma, having grown up in a rural village in China, often heard tales of newborns being left in the river. This the most memorable scenes from Step into the River, an animated short by Chinese director Mǎ Wéijiā 马维佳 that examines the issue of gender inequality and societal change. ![]() Despite the girls’ longing to leave their small village, they find themselves back where they started. These mysterious newborns swarm the boat, pushing the girls back to their port of departure. In the blink of an eye, their boat is surrounded by similar figures. Looking towards the water, they see a baby emerge from the currents. A gust of wind blows the hat off of one girl’s head, and she reaches out to grab it, dropping her oar into the river. In the dead of night, two young girls row a boat through a downpour.
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