A series of film screenings and special events exploring Chinese and ESEA diasporic identities, migration and lesser known histories. The programme will be presented from September – November across venues in London in celebration of ESEA Heritage Month.
The film season is composed of a selection of British Chinese cinema that have previously not received a big-screen reception in the UK, as well as documentaries that trace Chinese migration in other cultures including Canada, US, Costa Rica and Cuba. Juxtaposing cinema classics with contemporary voices of 2nd generation immigrant and mixed heritage filmmakers, Sine Screen hopes to highlight the complexities and nuanced dimensions of East and Southeast Asian diaspora experience.
Shorts programme 03: Ghosts of diaspora presents documentary and experimental films that trace lesser-known histories of migration and injustice still echoing today through archival gaps, urban myth and ghost stories.
PROGRAMME:
Tales of Chinatown 中国城轶事 Dir. Luka Yuanyuan Yang / US / 2019 /19min
The film opens with a walking tour in San Francisco Chinatown: walking into the last surviving theater following the scene from the 1940s film “Lady from Shanghai” directed by Orson Welles; wandering from “Shanghai Low” to “Forbidden City Nightclub” – the camera follows the pace of Chinese American nightclub dancer Cynthia Yee, historians Wylie Wong and David Lei onto a journey across time and space.
An Asian Ghost Story Dir. Bo Wang / Hong Kong, Netherlands / 2023 / 37min
A cinematic and conceptually inventive film that explores the haunting memories of Asia’s late 20th-century modernization through the large-scale export of wigs during the Cold War. Yet, in every wig resides a ghost from the imperial past. Departing from the moment of the communist hair ban, through stories of movement, diaspora and migration, this project examines the role of Hong Kong as a transient space that mediates the connection between different worlds.
In 1875 We Met At the Docks of Liverpool 1875 於梨花埠遇上 Dir. Yarli Allison / UK / 2021 / 19min
By the turn of the 20th century, Pitt Street near Liverpool’s lively docks saw a multicultural mix of migrant workers, the old Chinatown disappeared after the bombings of World War II and the sudden forced repatriation of Chinese seamen, leaving their British and Irish wives, partners and children behind. Using oral history, interviews, census data, digital mapping and virtual reality, and working with queer performers, Allison rebuilds the lost Chinatown of Liverpool as a digital landscape with imagined inhabitants’ daily lives: making visible these forgotten diaspora Histories.
Train Song Dir Zhao Yanbin / US / 2022 / 3min
Surrounding a hidden monument honouring Chinese migrant workers, alongside a railroad located in Canyon Country, California, Train Song uses reflective material to distort the image of the railroad as an approach to conjuring the unseen spirits of the seemingly tranquil landscape. calling for remembrance of Chinese-American works through a meditative audiovisual experience.
When the Sea sends forth a Forest 直到海里长出森林 Dir Guangli Liu / France / 2020 / 21min
“It was 1974, war had lasted for years…” So begins the memory of an old Chinese man who lived through the regime of the Khmer Rouge. Guangli Liu’s film is a collective imagination of that lost history based on propaganda videos and the disaster videos which spread throughout the world after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Narrated through the autobiographical voice, a tender, personal history unfurls as a virtual reality of an imagined recent past.
The full programme of Whose Homeland 2023 can be found here
Programme supported by Film Hub London, managed by Film London. Proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by the National Lottery. www.filmlondon.org.uk/filmhub
Tickets: General – £6, Concession – £3
Concession tickets are offered for those who might experience barriers in attending. To make participation in the event as accessible as possible, you won’t be asked for any proof or ID – we just ask that you are honest.
Here are the questions to think about when planning to purchase a concession ticket:
- I may stress about meeting my basic needs but still regularly achieve them.
- I may have some debt but it does not prohibit attainment of basic needs.
- I am able to afford non-essential expenses, such as dining out or entertainment activities.
- I am enrolled in an educational institution that offers access to equipment and facilities for developing work with analogue films.
- I have very limited expendable income.
- I rarely buy new items.
Auditory/Visual Access: We have hearing loops and magnifying glasses available in the space.
Sensory Access: Please note that the exhibition space is very dark, and the sound/noise volume is adjusted to a higher level.
You can find general access information here
If you have any access needs to attend our events, please contact us at +44(0)20 3141 2960 or [email protected]
