"Playing with gun powder set me free" - Cai Gup-Qiang
Who doesn't like fireworks? He witnessed the Chinese cultural revolution launched by the CCP leader Mao Zedong during his tween to his early teen years. He had known fireworks as 'good thing', a part of celebrations before the revolution but revolution changes his perception. He saw gunpowder being used to make explosives to kill people. His father was a famous calligrapher. Art runs into his blood. His work includes taxidermy, large sculptures but he is known for the oil paintings that are swapped with post-immolation markings. The calligraphy explosion. Putting gun powder onto his own oil paintings and then blowing them off. High levels of smog and 16,000 dead pigs floating in Huangpu river inspired him to work on what he called The Ninth Wave named after a Russian painting by the same name about the ninth disastrous destructive tsunami wave. His passion for fireworks and his artistic virtuosity gave birth to artistic explosions such as Transient Rainbow, Elegy (biodegradable colored clouds), Remembrance (Holi like colors sprays), Consolation (colored weeping willow like shape) fireworks. But his best work ever was a Sky Ladder, a ladder shaped strand of fireworks stretching upward for more than half a kilometer in the sky. This documentary shows the passion and planning, the story and experiences, the hard work and problems and the moment of the Sky Ladder. A great watch.