Film Format: Digital File

  • MY WOUNDED HEAD

    A transwoman puts on makeup. The makeup and her movements are a metaphor for her transformation, as well as the dialectical revealing and concealment of herself from the scrutiny of the outside world. Taking its title from Marc Chan’s composition, MY WOUNDED HEAD is an experimental short film that investigates issues of representation, preconceived notions and reflexivity. Marc’s music, featured in the soundtrack, is itself a reflexive reinterpretation of a set of chorales from Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” (“O Sacred Head Now Wounded”).

  • SPANKIN

    An anagram of “napkins,” SPANKIN transposes the gay hanky code of the 70s onto contemporary coffee culture. Although humorous in content, SPANKIN is an allegory for hierarchical relations within minority groups, consumerist co-optation of identity, and the collective historical forgetting of repression and resistance. The older man has lived through it, the middle-aged man has heard about it and needs to look it up, while the young man is oblivious. Inspired by the criminalization of homosexual behaviour in Russia, India, Nigeria, and Uganda in 2013, SPANKIN revives the handkerchief code formulated during a similar period of suppression in North America…

  • ANCESTRIES

    An anagram of “resistance,” ANCESTRIES is a layered piece that encodes the dialectics of colonialism, de-sexualization, desire and resistance. An Asian is seduced by, and in turn, seduces a Caucasian whilst simultaneously reframing and performing two arias from Samson et Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns. ANCESTRIES suggests possibilities for resistance vs. outright rejection by having the Asian turn the colonized culture against itself. At the same time, it brackets the Western de-sexualization and feminization of Asian males (and high voices), while simultaneously exemplifying and subverting the stereotypes of submission. The use of male bodies also calls out the worship of hard,…

  • DELILAH JUKEBOX

    DELILAH JUKEBOX (aka DJ) toys with the notion of loops, repetition, and dichotomy like the A-B sides of a vinyl record. Delilah is not just a woman, she is the embodiment and projection of fear and fantasy; her name conjures diverse images and prejudices of the lover, the traitor, the fallen woman, the temptress, the patriot, and the vengeful, etc. Through a series of repetitions of Delilah’s aria “Printemps qui commence” (from the opera Samson et Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns) in a series of domestic spaces, male mezzo Stephen Chen explores the representation of the feminine by deconstructing and re-imagining…

  • The Urge 2: It Lies Within

    During a bizarre series of events, a vampire discovers that harmless humans, forest creatures and even his own body have turned against him.

  • The Natural State

    Inspired by the writings and philosophy of U.G. Krishnamurti, The Natural State is a visual essay on why we have only the present and our bodies. Spirituality, fear and consciousness are constructed by the continuity of thought.

  • 7 LETRAS (7 LETTERS)

    Jesús has a secret and he’s about to share it.

  • The Lost World

    With the aid of a USB microscope and X-ray scanners, this time-based media installation peers into the surface structure of decayed and rotted 35mm celluloid film like a drone flight reconnaissance mission flying over unknown enemy territory. Inspired by electronic surveillance data and Second World War Allied bombing raids on Dresden, the microscopic camera behaves as the trained eye of the bombardier, looking manually into the active areas of the film frame.

  • Visual Music for 10 Voices

    In Barthes’ essay, “The Grain of the Voice”, the concept of the “genosong” was evoked to separate the sound of the voice from its language. Visual Music for Ten Voices distinguishes the physicality of the optical vocal track as having a unique identity from its actual resonance in sound films. Designed as a 10-foot black box projection loop, this film focuses on the rhythm and materiality of ten 35mm optical soundtracks. Each musical passage maintains its original length and linear harmony with the other tracks, collectively creating a new sense of motion and repetition.

  • The Age of Insecurity: Bed Buds

    After a night out, two buds talk where they’re most comfortable – in bed.