The People's Forum Film Screening: May the Soil Be Everywhere

May the Soil Be Everywhere | 93 minutes | English Captions

In a remote Chinese village, a farming family survived wars, political upheaval, and famine. Persecution and hardship eventually forced the family to scatter. Against the backdrop of China’s rapid urbanization, the filmmaker sets out to unearth her family’s enduring bond with this long-forgotten village, hidden deeply in the vast mountain range of Loess Plateau.

Infused with performance, poetry, and animation, the film constructs a living archive of oral history and community theater. Summoning the past into the present, May the Soil Be Everywhere chronicles China’s history of war, famine, and rapid urbanization through the lens of four generations in one family. We invite you to gather and meditate on familial history, heritage, soil, and community liberation.

Followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Yehui Zhao and artist Walis Johnson.

“A powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit."

– Gugi Gumilang, Docs by the Sea

”A tender and poetic matriarchal ode.“

– Inney Prakash, Prismatic Ground

”With remarkable intimacy and care, Zhao threads together memory, migration, and matriarchal lineage into a quiet, moving portrait of belonging.“

– UnionDocs - Center for Documentary Art

Yehui Zhao is an award-winning filmmaker and artist whose work explores migration, decolonization, heritage, and regeneration, drawing from feminist legacies of the global south and community memory. Her films have been featured at True/False, Dokufest, DOC NYC, UnionDocs, Prismatic Ground, BAM, AAIFF, and more. She has received the IDA Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund, a NYSCA grant, and the New York Women in Film & Television Scholarship. Yehui holds an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College and an MSW from Columbia University, and she teaches as an Adjunct Professor at Marymount Manhattan College.

Walis Johnson is a Brooklyn-based walking artist and researcher whose work documents the experience and poetics of the urban landscape through oral history, artist walking practices, film, and installation. Her practice is socially-engaged as she works collaboratively with the public to create dialogue and creative work that is both personal and political. Her Red Line Archive Project is a collection of work that has been presented locally in New York and internationally. She holds a BA in history from Williams College and an MFA from Hunter College in Integrative Media and Advanced Documentary Film. She has taught at Parsons School of Design and a graduate course in oral history at Hunter College.

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