7 Beats Per Minute will leave you breathless
With a breath-holding capacity of over eight minutes, Jessea Lu can dive beyond 90 metres on a single breath. That impressive athletic ability earned her 15 gold medals competing internationally.
In the world of competitive freediving, Jessea Lu (born Jessie Lu Wenjie) is legendary. The Chinese freediving champion came late to the sport, vaulting to the top tier of talent with remarkable ability and a compulsive drive to challenge her personal limitations. But in the silence of the deep, it’s impossible to hide from oneself.
Award-winning director Yuqi Kang’s feature documentary 7 Beats Per Minute parallels Jessea’s physical and mental journey back from the depths, with intimate cinéma vérité camerawork, astonishing underwater imagery and raw personal interviews.
Set against the world of freediving, the film places the audience in the immediacy of the experience. ‘Otherworldly’ doesn’t do justice to the underwater environments that Jessea inhabits while swimming beneath Antarctic ice to overcome a fear of the cold; in the azure waters of the Bahamas to set a world record; or at home in Hawaii where she expertly spears red snapper for dinner. But despite its elemental beauty, the sea can be unforgiving.
With a breath-holding capacity of over eight minutes, Jessea can dive beyond 90 metres on a single breath. That impressive athletic ability earned her 15 gold medals competing internationally.
“I freedive just to learn about myself. And, then I find the joy of freediving and wanted to continue diving to enjoy the therapeutic benefits of freediving, but also to remind myself about what I have learned through this practice and to help myself to have a more enjoyable life,” Jessea states in the documentary.
Born in China, Jessea was the only child in an education-focused family. She completed an undergraduate degree at Peking University in Beijing before qualifying for a scholarship to the United States and earning a PhD in Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenetics.
In 2010, Jessea took a transformative trip to Hawaii. During that trip Jessea met spearfishing friends who introduced her to freediving igniting her passion for the sport.
As a scientist, Jessea takes an extremely analytical approach to freediving. She invests in rigorous training that includes breath control and meditation. However, the physical challenges are truly just the tip of the iceberg.
In the darkness of the deepest subconscious, surreptitious monsters dwell. When barometric pressure compresses the lungs and squeezes the vital organs, the mammalian diving reflex shifts blood to the core of the body, the heart slows and the pulse can drop to seven beats per minute. That’s when the power of the mind becomes critical.
In the descent of a lifetime, the ocean is a mirror reflecting back everything inside of you. In order to go deep, you have to let go.
In a deep dive when consciousness shrinks to a singular point, any mistake can prove disastrous. In 2018, while attempting a world-record dive of 93 meters, Jessea blacked out and was lifeless for a full four minutes.
That’s when Jessea’s personal demons resurfaced threatening her freediving career.
The boundaries between filmmaker Yuqi Kang and her subject grow increasingly fluid as Kang becomes Jessea’s main mental, emotional and physical support during her to freediving come back.
Kang and Jessea return to the site of the near-death experience in order to confront the traumas of Jessea’s past and to find a way back to light, air and, ultimately, human connection.
Kang first heard about Jessea while Kang was learning to freedive in Thailand. Other freedivers spoke about a legendary female diver who was extremely gifted. Jessea also happened to be one of a handful of young women and the only Chinese competitor in the sport.
“After only a few short years into her competitive diving career, Jessea was already consistently ranking in the top 10 in international competitions, despite being a successful full-time medical consultant who was training only part-time,” said Kang.
That inspired Kang to find out how Jessea was able to override her mind’s most primal survival instincts. It also drove Kang to discover who the person behind the diving ‘mask’ really was.
What Kang discovered was that Jessea proved to be unlike all the other world-class freedivers.
“Like many trauma survivors, having extreme control over oneself and one’s emotions allowed Jessea to survive her early life events. Jessea had to learn to let go of the survival instinct that she knows the best. Ever since her near-death accident, Jessea realized she had missed a large part of life that is shared,” observed Kang.
Kang admits the years spent filming 7 Beats Per Minute resulted in the pair unexpectedly witnessing their own personal growth in its rawest form.
“This process was life-changing, and for the first time, I also realized that for a large part of my life, I’d also missed out on connecting with people deeply. And therefore, missed out on the real experience of life as it happened,” stated Kang.
7 Beats Per Minute is literally a deep dive into who Jessea really is. But it is, in no way, a film for the faint of heart and reminds us that achieving our goals doesn’t always mean achieving international recognition.
Of note, John Godfrey, creative director of Chargefield, won the jury award for his brilliant playbill for 7 Beats Per Minute at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film and TV Festival in Austin Texas.
The jury cited the Hamilton native’s use of empty space, unconventional placing of the title and bill block as having created an aesthetically pleasing and thought-provoking visual narrative. Bravo John for tying together multiple facets of Jessea’s morphoses.
7 Beats Per Minute (2024) 1 h 40 min
Original English-Mandarin version, English-French subtitles
Distributor: National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
Watch 7 Beats Per Minute at Hot Docs TIFF Lightbox 1:
Friday, April 26 at 8:45 pm.
Thursday, May 2 at 7 pm.
Sunday, May 5 at 12:00 pm.
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Great review!