Stacy Hardy & Jaco Bouwer
Stacy Hardy & Jaco Bouwer - I Love You Jet Li (2005)
From IN/FLUX - Mediatrips from the African World (2011)

From South Africa and directed by Stacy Hardy and Jaco Bouwer, this is a haunting first-person narrative by a young woman with a congenital heart defect that she claims does not allow her to love anyone; even those she is attracted to lose their allure if they return the affection: a rebel in her school, a tutor, a writer, a musician, each of whom treat her with growing disrespect and violence. She becomes obsessed with her psychotherapist , a woman who finds her attentions absurd. Soon she does as well. She sits alone in her apartment watching all the movies in her local store, one by one in each genre, finally masturbating to fight scenes in the Lethal Weapon movies and developing an obsession for Jet Li. Initially attracted by the fight scenes in his films, she also is drawn in by Li’s more nuanced roles; maybe he will understand her. Now the visuals of this piece become clear: a random string of mundane airport scenes, a point of departure: literally, in the narrator’s flight to China to meet Jet Li, and figuratively, she finally becomes the lover whose object cannot possibly return love: a stalker.