Hi, everyone! This is the final version of my appropriation film “A Story of the Divorce of the Last Emperor”. Eventually I get the access to add the English subtitles to my video. Sorry for posting so lately on the blog.

At the beginning of the video, there is a silent video clip of the emperor and his concubine at the court for the suit of divorce. This clip is originally recorded as the last emperor, Puyi, acted as the witness in a military court for Japan’s aggression against China. Watching the video, I suddenly got the idea that maybe I could use some of the elements in this video in my appropriation film so that the viewers could see the scene in which the emperor and his concubine, Wenxiu, made their presence in the court for the divorce suit. That was the original idea of this project!

After some searching of lots of documentaries on the life of the last emperor and his concubines, I found a short video clip of Li Yuqin, the fourth wife of Puyi, also the last concubine of him as an emperor. This video was originally a short interview with Li Yuqin carried out in the historical museum of Manchukuo. I thought that maybe I could use it in another interview in which the hostess can asked this concubine some questions about the divorce of Puyi and his second concubine, Wenxiu. As to the contents of this appropriation film, I think I could use the contents of another documentary in which the hostess tells a lot about the divorce of the last emperor. So the hostess’s voice will be appropriated in my film as the voice of Li Yuqin, the last concubine of the emperor. I will play the part of the hostess in my interview and I will ask Li Yuqin some questions about the divorce. So I write all kinds of questions according to the materials of the documentary and then recorded my voice, appropriating it into my film.

With the audio clip of my film, I begin to edit the video. I try to make a match between the video and the audio so that the viewers can experience the real scene of history as they hear the voice telling the story of the past. I cut some related scenes from various sources and then combine them together to make the appropriation film. This process could be kind of challenging since sometimes we cannot exactly find the materials to match the real story. We have to fill the gaps of history by using some other materials related to the topic, though not exactly get to the point. Also as I am watching a lot of videos on the stories of last emperor, I see that there are lots of documentaries using the fragments from some historical films or TV series to fill the gap of history. These scenes are, after all, the fake ones. I understand that some of the programs intend to inspire the imagination of the viewers by doing that. But I do think that there exist the possibilities to use the real documentaries to represent history in a faithful way. What I am doing in my appropriation film is to use all kinds of real materials to tell the story of the past.