Hei’er

HD single-channel video, 20 minutes 48 seconds

The filmmaker and a mannequin explore the world through its solar terms. The mannequin embodies the soul of Lin Heier, the leader of the Red Lanterns who resisted and fought colonial invasions during late Qing Dynasty, China. Through poetry and performance, the filmmaker resurrects and unravels the many layers of Hei’er’s spirit. They relive a life of love and revolution.

Screenings:

Slip (group show), 205 Hudson Gallery, New York, NY; NYWIFT Screening Showcase at the SOHO International Film Festival, Village East by Angelika, New York, NY; UnionDocs, Queens, NY; International Moving Film Festival (finalist), Abadan, Iran; DOC NYC, New York, NY; Hunter College Film and Media Department, New York, NY; Prague International Indie Film Festival, Prague, Czech Republic; Maysles Documentary Center, Prismatic Ground, New York, NY; Toronto International Women Film Festival, Toronto, Canada; Sipontum Arthouse International Film Festival, Puglia, Italy; Amsterdam Short Film Festival, Amsterdam, Netherlands

To You
HD single-channel video, 9 minutes 14 seconds

A letter to the filmmaker's mom about daughtership and memories, To You frames their diasporic relationship with womanhood and daughtership memories. Using drawings, cyanotype, old photographs, live action, and stop-motion animation, To You provides a lens through which home can feel both close and foreign.

Screenings:

Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn, NY; UnionDocs, Queens, NY; Wrocław Audiovisual Technology Center, Timeless Awards, Wrocław, Poland; International Moving Film Festival (semi-finalist), Abadan, Iran; Prague International Indie Film Festival

To Grandma

HD single-channel video, 6 minutes 43 seconds

To Grandma is a shadow puppetry animation that centers around the filmmaker’s grandmother, Zhang Xiuying, who grew up in a village on the barren land of Loess Plateau, in Shanxi, China. This village has since disappeared. The film adapts Xiuying’s memory to re-imagine life there in the 1940s.

Screenings:

Animaze Montreal International Film Festival, Montreal, Canada; SPLICE Film Festival (honorable mention), Brooklyn, NY; Festival of Animated Objects, Alberta, Canada

 

The Death of Memories

HD single-channel video, 7 minutes 5 seconds

The Death of Memories is a visual intimation that reexamines the relationship between screens and memories. Digital imagery creates a concrete, easily accessible space for considering and retaining the past. Viewers become comforted by the certainty of memories compressed into never-varying images: a video clip on a cellphone, a family photograph, or an event played on the screen. Exposed to the repetitive conversion of people’s life stories to fit into the confines of a screen and its myriad apparatuses, the subjectivity of our memories is obliterated and replaced by the media’s visual language. Life is approximated. The screen rewrites our past.

Screenings:

Darkroom Film Festival, London, UK

Xun
HD single-channel video, 2 minutes 39 seconds

Xun (寻) means “to search” in Mandarin, without a purpose of finding anything, to drift timelessly and be lost in the world of disorientation. A surrealist journey of locality and time, Xun is an exploration of distance, home and invisibility. The film measures the distance of a lost past and the distorted present through the juxtaposition of paintings, animation, live action and still images. Xun has been screened at Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn.

Screenings:

UnionDocs, Queens, NY; 43rd Asian American Film Festival, New York, NY; Across the Universe, Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Integrated Channels Exhibition, Hunter College, New York, NY

The Monkey King

HD single-channel video, 3 minutes 9 seconds

An artist from China performs his favorite character, the Monkey King in Union Square, New York City.

Oasis Juice Shop

HD single-channel video, 2 minutes 30 seconds

Abdi is the owner of the Oasis Juice Shop in Harlem, New York City. He tells his journey from refugee camp to Harlem and starting a juice store hoping to support a community with access to healthy food.