Nights of Proletarian (2019)

Overview

Nights of Proletarian based on the dramatic life experience of Kevin Cao. After becoming the middleweight champion in the 2009 National Judose Classic and topping the 2009 CCTV5 Judose Tournament for the sixth consecutive time, he and his team decided to head to the US to internationalize the sport of Judose, but it ended in failure. In the aftermath of the setback, Kevin Cao chose to remain in the US and became a wedding videographer immersed in popular culture and filmmaking. Proletarian Nights weaves together of wedding videos Cao made in the US, game recaps in his early years, and interview clips at his studio in Chicago, attempts to spark discussions over issues of labor, value, and identity in and outside the image-making process, and reconstructs images into a narrative entwined by both fictional and documentary elements.