S.H. Cinema + Hamptons Doc Fest Present, ‘Mistress Dispeller’ w/ Filmmaker Q&A, Dec 8th, 4:30 PM

SAG HARBOR CINEMA IN COLLABORATION WITH HAMPTONS DOC FEST

PRESENTS MISTRESS DISPELLER

Sunday, December 8th at 4:30PM

Filmmaker Elizabeth Lo will join the Cinema for a Q&A 

via zoom from Hong Kong following the screening  

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Sag Harbor Cinema announces a special screening of Elizabeth Lo’s 2024 documentary Mistress Dispeller, in collaboration with Hamptons Doc Fest. Lo’s award-winning debut feature Stray, which followed three dogs as they navigate life on the streets of Istanbul, was part of the Cinema’s virtual program in 2020. This year, Lo returns to the Cinema with a new documentary Mistress Dispeller, which held its world premiere at Venice Film Festival in September. The Hong Kong born filmmaker will join SHC’s Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, via zoom, for a live post screening q&a.

The film follows a new line of work in China’s love industry: the “mistress dispeller.” A mistress dispeller, often hired by a wife for tens of thousands of dollars, is an undercover professional who is hired to help repair marriages by breaking up extramarital affairs. By befriending the mistress under a false identity over the course of two or three months, the dispeller works to influence the mistress to end the affair on her own.

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“I came of age watching movies like A Room with A View, Notting Hill, Bend it Like Beckham, Moulin Rouge and Lost in Translation on repeat,” says Lo. “Like many around the world, these idealized visions of romance shaped mine. Yet my experience of love within my own family was markedly different from what I saw represented in these movies. In my home, love was bound up with sacrifice, duty and what’s left unsaid. As a director, I wanted to see this specific kind of love through my own camera, and use a crisis of infidelity as my entryway to discover how emotion is expressed and experienced in my culture.”

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Lo, a Hong Kong citizen, felt it was important to make a film that bridged the divide between cultures, particularly in an era of increasing polarization between the US and China. By investigating an experience that is at once universal and also uniquely specific to contemporary China, Lo created a documentary that speaks broadly to the human experiences with love, loneliness, and heartbreak in the 21st century. 

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“In its smart, elegant balance between the utterly foreign and the very familiar, Mistress Dispeller is a film as insightful as it is fresh and funny. Never condescending to its characters and yet illuminating their contradictions and paradoxes. I am very happy that our annual collaboration with Hamptons Doc Fest is represented by such innovative and thought provoking work,” says SHC’s Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.

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SHC will screen Mistress Dispeller as part of the 2024 Hamptons Doc Fest on Sunday, December 8th at 4:30pm. 

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ABOUT THE FILM

MISTRESS DISPELLER

Directed by Elizabeth Lo

China/USA, 2024; 94 mins, in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles

In China, a new industry has emerged devoted to helping couples stay married in the face of infidelity. Wang Zhenxi is part of this growing profession, a “mistress dispeller” who is hired to maintain the bonds of marriage—and break up affairs— by any means necessary. Offering strikingly intimate access to private dramas usually hidden behind closed doors, Mistress Dispeller follows a real, unfolding case of infidelity as Teacher Wang attempts to bring a couple back from the edge of crisis. Their story shifts our sympathies between husband, wife and mistress to explore the ways emotion, pragmatism and cultural norms collide to shape romantic relationships in contemporary China.

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ABOUT THE FILMMAKER

Elizabeth Lo 罗宝 (Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Co-Editor)

Elizabeth is a filmmaker whose documentary films have been showcased at Sundance, IDFA, SXSW, Tribeca, MoMA, AFI Fest, True/False, New York Times Op-Docs, Field of Vision and PBS’ POV. Elizabeth has been featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film, ”DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40,” and Cannes Lions ’“New Directors Showcase.” She is a recipient of artist fellowships from Locarno, New York Film Festival, Yaddo and MacDowell, and was selected for the Concordia Studio Fellowship and Gotham/HBO Documentary Development Initiative. Her debut feature, Stray, won Best International Feature at Hot Docs and received nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards, Critics Choice Documentary Awards and Cinema Eye Honors after premiering at Tribeca in 2020. A New York Times “Critic’s Pick,” Stray was released theatrically by Magnolia Pictures and is now streaming on Hulu. Her short films — including Hotel 22, Bisonhead, and Mother’s Day — have been acquired by colleges and libraries worldwide. Elizabeth holds a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA from Stanford University. She was born and raised in Hong Kong. 

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Sag Harbor Cinema

As a not-for-profit 501(c)3, community-based organization, Sag Harbor Cinema is dedicated to presenting the past, present and future of the Movies and to preserving and educating about films, filmmaking, and the film-going experience in its three state-of-the-art theaters. The Cinema engages its audiences and the community year-round through dialogue, discovery, and appreciation of the moving image – from blockbusters to student shorts and everything in between. Revitalized and reimagined through unprecedented community efforts to rebuild the iconic Main Street structure after a fire nearly destroyed it in 2016, SHC continues a long historic tradition of entertainment in the heart of Sag Harbor Village. 

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