——“We are young, we are passionate, we are the masters of ourselves and the masters of our youth. We are the post-90s!”

So goes the spirit of China’s post-90s generation, as well as their portrayal in Transposed Life (换位人生), an original film now in production, writes New Express, by a crew comprised of post-90s kids in Guangzhou.

Small as it is, a sparrow still has all the vital organs

No studio, no professional producers, no famous movie stars, but with all the necessary components such as hair and makeup, photographers, stage managers, writers and directors, Transposed Life is an amateur work shot in and around the Huangpu Garden community in Guangzhou’s Huangpu district, with the stated goal of proving that China’s ‘brain dead generation’ can make a movie on their own—but also as a means to give viewers a glimpse of youth identity today.

As it goes, the post-90s generation is a rather unique group, both for coming of age at the turn of the century and as a generation profoundly influenced by a variety of fluctuating factors, such as the sharp upheavals in both economics and cultures brought about by years of development and reforms.

According to these filmmakers, what distinguishes them from those born in the 1970s and 1980s is their yearning for freedom, and that they have their own ideas about the new kind of lives they want to live.

To a certain extent, China’s post-90s generation are leaders in shaping a new ideology, one in which China is more esoteric, more shared and globalized. Based on this background, the funders of Transposed Life say they look forward to seeing these heated subjects touched upon through the medium of a film made by youth, by providing them with a platform and the encouragement to reveal and express themselves——to find their own “role” and “position” both in the movie and in their own lives.

Spoiler

Transposed Life tells the story, one morning, in which the the roles of the male and female protagonists are transposed, with each having to live the other’s life. Together, the swapped pair overcome obstacles, which they previously found insurmountable.

The leads, Luo Jiarao and Tang Xiaotong, are both juniors at the Guangdong University of Technology. Of her role, Tang says:

“As a daughter or a son, as somebody’s friend, or as a classmate of your peers, everyone has various roles to play in his or her life. How to play your role well is something everyone needs to try and figure out by themselves. What the fate of your role is is also something you need to experience by yourself. It’s your role, your life, so which road do you want to go down? What kind of life you want to live? These are all decisions you have to make by yourself.”

Shakespeare said that the world is a stage, and all men and women are merely players on it. We’ll see if this holds true in this post-90s film Transposed Life, the trailer for which should be released this coming weekend.

Is the post-90s so alien and worthy of independent observation? After a quick browse through Weibo, we noticed that KFC has also been active lately in reaching out to Guangzhou’s post-90s market, putting together this 43-minute-long original film about them…