Zhou Tao shot Blue and Red in Thailand in 2014. It was a time when Thailand was experiencing rapid political changes, with antigovernment protesters and police violently confronting one another. The filmic outcome, however, is not a political or social documentary but expresses scenes of daily life in a poetic way. People’s faces stained blue by LED billboards in a large public square in the city and antigovernment protestors reveling all night take up a large part of the film. Wild, natural landscapes shot in South China are often inserted into the protest scenes, creating a contrast between the silence of nature and the loud confusion of the city. Zhou attempted to represent the emotional fluctuations he experienced in the filmmaking processes: “I wonder why I always submerge myself in a way of filming that’s like skimming the surface of the earth: leaving myself open to the shocks of the uncertain rather than following a script. I think of filming as a basic movement of our consciousness—at a time when everyone can take out his or her phone to film, we have all actually developed a new human reflex, along the lines of “thinking” or “seeing.” This act has become so ordinary that we almost neglect it: a new basic movement that allows us to evolve a new sensory antenna.”(Zhou Tao)
