The short animation Self Scratch captures a young woman’s anguish and fading confidence through her deteriorating relationship with her body. The mirror becomes a battleground as the woman’s perception of herself and grasp on reality begin to erode. She scratches her scalp, revealing dandruff; examines her armpits, finding hair. She tears at her broken fingernails, which scrape against her shrinking body. Shards of a shattered mirror find their way into her hands, but strange, small creatures that bounce along her skin, trying to piece the broken shards back together, hint at the part of her that seeks repair.
Self Scratch is inspired by the Chinese filmmaker Chenghua Yang’s personal experience of a breakup, during which she alternated between manic and depressive episodes. Reflecting on this period, she writes: ‘The fear of talking to others caused me to talk to myself a lot. The words accumulated in my heart but did not come out of my mouth.’ Yang found solace in exploring her suffering through drawing – and a way out of the darkness. Her emotive film sheds light on this journey, illustrating with raw emotion the impact of mental illness on the physical body and the many ways it can distort one’s worldview. Yet, Yang’s creation hints at hope: at the film’s close, the woman’s red hands gently, softly trace the contours of her body, as if feeling it for the first time.