Screening on
26 Aug at Close-Up cinema
Tomorrow's History shorts 02 + Q&A
Tomorrow's History is a two-part shorts programme curated by Sine Screen, presented as part of Vulnerable HistorIes, an on-going series that explores the representation of historical trauma in East & Southeast Asia, bringing together experimental works from Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, China and Hong Kong that delve into a range of personal and collective narratives.
Working with alternative mediums such as animation, digital reenactments and reconstruction of archives, the artists actively question the validity and limitations of the indexical documentary image in representing historical events and its impacts. These visually inventive shorts not only portray historical narratives but also seek to document “history in the making” through highlighting contemporary moments of social change. From the colonial history in the Philippines, aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, the social movement in Hong Kong, to the White Terror period in Taiwan.
By juxtaposing the historical with the present-day, the programme seeks to examine how history comes to be documented, narrated, remembered and erased.
Total runtime: 100min
When the Sea sends forth a Forest 直到海里长出森林
Dir Guangli Liu | 2020 | France | 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.
Still on My Mind
Dir Jittarin Wuthiphan | 2020 | Thailand | 3min
In order to submit a school project to tell a story about myself in 10 pictures, I decided to reminisce about a traumatic event that happened after the 9th King of Thailand passed away.
To Pick a Flower
Dir Shireen Seno | Cambodia | 2021 | 17min
Shireen Seno’s video essay explores the transformation and commodification of nature through archival photographs from the American colonial occupation of the Philippines in the first half of the 20th century.
Love letters 情书
Dir Darren Lin | 2022 | Taiwan | 25min
Shi Yuexia, 26, is expecting a baby, but her husband is not here. Liu Yaoting, 28, was originally a teacher at the Kaohsiung Girls' High School, but he was in a different place: the Military Detention Center at 3 East Qingdao Road. Letters are the only way their lives could intersect. Nine months and 11 days, 80 love letters, bridge the gap between them, until that one "letter" returns everything back to zero. Through photographic reenactments, the film constructs a chilling yet emotional portrait of Taiwan’s “white terror” era.