DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

​

Xian’er (Chinese Immortals) is a 14-minute stereoscopic 360° VR film that reimagines traditional Chinese deities navigating the disorienting landscape of contemporary China. The work reflects on pragmatic belief systems, shifting cultural values, and the erosion of social mobility through a speculative, photogrammetry-based cosmology.

In the film, immortals descend to the mortal world and compete to inhabit available statues—each one representing a distinct social stratum: sacred temples symbolize state power, office idols echo consumerist labor culture, village deities embody small-town resilience, and abandoned rural icons speak to those left behind. The struggle for symbolic space mirrors a broader critique of class stratification and the fading promise of self-determination.

The project employs photogrammetry and drone imaging to digitally archive real-world religious statues and their deteriorating environments. These assets are rendered in Unreal Engine 5, where visual glitches, fragmented textures, and collapsing geometries are deliberately preserved to evoke the instability of contemporary systems. The result is a fractured immersive experience, placing viewers at the center of a world where myth, memory, and modernity collide—not to preserve tradition, but to question what remains when faith is shaped by survival, and identity by stagnation.