Cao's House
13min 47sec
Cao’s House, part of the long term project Fire in the City, is a short documentary about my grandfather who recalls his memories of his father and his father’s houses. This process of documenting my grandfather’s daily life and returning him to the original site where his family’s houses were destroyed transforms the memory of his past into the present. This documentary explains how the mansion owned by my great-grandfather was burned down in the Wenxi Fire of 1938, as well as how my great-grandfather built a new house afterwards, which was also destroyed because of a subsequent invasion by the Japanese Army. The presence of the buildings in the documentary stands in contrast with the absence of the houses that feature in my grandfather's narrated memories. The history of the Cao family echoes the larger experience of the city that was burned down during the Wenxi Fire of 1938 along with the dramatic changes experienced afterwards.
