When the scales tip

Directed by Chenyi Jiang & Yi wei. 7min 35sec

YIWEI
Director / Art Director / Screenwriter
Founder of FRONT-TOOTH STUDIO

Chinese independent director based in Shanghai, leading a dedicated team and independent studio. Specializes in fashion films, music videos, and cross-media productions. Drawing from her cultural heritage, Yiwei focuses on marginalized communities, showcasing strong feminist perspectives and Eastern-infused humanism.

Her background in fashion styling, makeup artistry, and fine arts has cultivated a distinctive aesthetic vision, informing her unique directorial style. Yiwei’s work embodies Gen Z queer cultural inclusivity – edgy, rebellious, and vibrantly stylized.

Selected Achievements:
・ Fine art piece 〈Spectacle〉(styling & body painting) exhibited at Grand Palais, Paris (2023)
・ Styling & body painting works showcased at Musée du Louvre (2023)
・ Makeup & Hair Design for 〈SCARMAZZA〉selected for 2024 Cannes Film Festival
・ Assistant Director for 〈No U Turn〉featured on Nowness Asia

Director Statement

I created “When the Scale Tips” to construct a visual allegory critiquing the very nature of patriarchy. This short film distinguishes itself by functioning not as a linear story but as a highly symbolic “model of power.” Drawing aesthetic inspiration from Bosch’s gardens of earthly delight and hell, we employ the core device of a “triply-nested scale” to materialize the abstract patriarchal system into a tangible, operable, and ultimately doomed physical reality.
The work’s most significant feature is its potent visual language and structural metaphor. We designed a color evolution—”monochrome → golden plague → pink void”—to visually chart the “decay curve of the power spectrum.” The desolate landscape in our film is directly inspired by our expedition to Heidu Mountain, a once-pristine national reserve. Our experience there became the film’s most poignant real-world parallel: just two years ago, its volcanic rock formations were a breathtaking, silent black; now, reckless tourism and profit-driven exploitation have scarred it with tire tracks, bleaching the black earth to yellow. This plunder of natural resources is the most visceral manifestation of what happens “when the scale tips”—where nature and the vulnerable become the first casualties in a skewed power struggle. Custom jewelry, created by invited artists, serves as physical manifestations of the characters’ desires and sins.
Audiovisually, we blend infrared photography, AIGC animation, and experimental costume design to create a surreal space that is both classical and futuristic. In terms of social value, I hope audiences can look beyond simplistic gender binaries to recognize patriarchy as an inhuman “quantifiable transaction system” and a logic of plunder that alienates and consumes nature, culture, and humanity itself. The final image of the empty scepter is a warning against all absolute power, suggesting a possibility for renewal after its nullification.