Where is there to belong to? To not feel strange? To not ask permission? Ground. Home. A familiar land. Une Terre familière is structured as a series of long-take vignettes, each centered around a site purposing a collision of nature and artifice. Within highly manicured environments, these sites attempt to imitate natural processes and un-peopled ecosystems and to preserve and manage elements of nature. The figures in Une Terre familière struggle to do their best with what they have- to find their own sun at the tanning salon, their own clouds in the steam room- to improve, to connect, to find “home” in the world.
Filter Films
-
Using the voice as a metaphor for political voice, Stephen Chen traces his journey as a male mezzo, faced with prejudice and marginalization back in Singapore, and later in North America. The schooling and suppression of his voice becomes interwoven with his experiences of colonialism and exile. Playing with the biography documentary form, DOH! OH DEAR, A FEMALE TEAR! brackets issues of voice / gender / representation as Stephen traces his westernization, the discovery and silencing of his voice, and people’s reactions in Singapore and North America. Reflecting on the “unsettling” quality of his voice, Stephen decided to exploit the perceptual disconnect to expose boundaries and raise debates when he moved to North America, but “all they wanted me to do was play the King of the fairies” he laments.
DOH! OH DEAR, A FEMALE TEAR!
-
The accidental reveal of a burlesque dancer’s “true” identity leads to a moment of self-questioning for the audience, and for one voyeur in particular, some deeper self-exploration.
Mindtease
-
An experiment in solarization filmed at the Independent Imaging Retreat in Mount Forest, Canada.
Solarization
-
A troublesome, disabled fag hag absconds to London to find love and opportunity. But life deals her some unexpected twists when she winds up peddling drugs to the queer community and forms an unorthodox relationship with a washed-up gay male escort. On its surface, Little Devil is designed to be an entertaining, but controversial comedy-drama with some crazy and off-the-wall characters trying to get by, and ultimately find happiness, in a troubled and often unfair world. But scratch beneath the surface and it is a film that has a lot to say about perceptions of sex and disability while opening up debate about the nature of what constitutes an ‘unconventional family’.
Little Devil
-
My Father, Francis: a father and daughter collaborate. A comment on kinship, diasporic labour, devotion and the factory as a site of creativity.
My Father, Francis
-
Inside a drab middle school in 1992, a sexually-confused eighth-grader attempts to regain his dignity after being bullied by a sex-obsessed ‘cool kid’ whom he privately fantasizes about.
Kissing Drew
-
When a gay Asian man notices that many gay men are taking a ‘no-Asian’ stance, he tries a group he previously avoided – rice queens, men ONLY attracted to Asians. Gaysian is a comedy that explores how we all bring prejudices into the bedroom, and sometimes learn we were wrong…or not.
Gaysian
-
This is the official music video for the U.S. Girls song ‘Jack’, the first single off of the album Gem (FatCat Records, 2012). In the video, a sequined woman (played by Meghan Remy) sings from the perspective of Jack the Ripper, confounding the relationship between looker and looked at, predator and prey. This glam-inspired video was befittingly shot on a Hitachi FP-22, 3-tube vintage camera by an all-female crew. It plays on classic images of American femininity, and the lyrics of the song contribute a subtext of the misogynistic serial killer’s gaze. With references to Kenneth Anger’s ‘Puce Moment’ and David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks’, this film reclaims sensual imagery and then offers it back with dark and violent undertones.
Jack
-
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you X-rayed a skeleton at a dance club? This experimental cut-out animation offers something of an answer. Besides dancing between abstract shapes throughout the video, the skeleton character cuts out a pair of pants from some paper, tries them on and runs away. The footage is processed using a variety of analog video synthesizers, including a Paik-Abe Raster Scan Device (aka Wobulator). The electronic voltage of the soundtrack by LA’s Dva Damas directs the parameters of certain effects. Artwork, animation, processing and editing done by Emily Pelstring while in residence at the Experimental TV Center (an archive of early video systems), December 2010.
Skeleton Dance
