Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi
Screen Screening 2
Platform Theatre, London, England
Thursday, June 11, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
A Dry Swim, by Jhin Zhang
REVIEW
A film which explores what paint would represent the colour of water amidst the story of love and the burgeoning queer identity of a young man. Therefore an expression and investigation of art and identity.
Throughout, the main protagonist runs his hands through the water, trying to catch it in his hands. He is trying to understand the basis of love as we learn from the story of the colour of the water and how his sister and her boyfriend got together, searching for the expression of its colour and visibility. A metaphor for how we try to find love in this universe, the yearning for love, the yearning to understand nature, to understand ourselves and our reflection in the water too. For the young man is a narcissus that looks many times into many mirrors of the water.
Why is the colour of the water love? Why does one want to represent love and the water, the water of love? The film says that this is the artistic spirit. It is the spirit of the creative, of the artist. These eyes are made to find love in this world.
There is an investigation of queer love as it is structurally connected to heterosexual love, as there is the love triangle between the artist, the sister and the brother (who is after the artist and not the sister). Queer love emerges from the heterosexual relationship between sister and artist. It is contrasted to heterosexual love which is accepted, while the queer love is kept secret, in the realm of fantasy. And therefore, this film is about sexual repression too.
SUMMARY
In a world shaped by near isolation, a boy grows within the intimate orbit of his older sister. The arrival of her boyfriend quietly unsettles this fragile balance. Between water and skin, gaze and distance, boundaries begin to soften. Sensations, desires, and a shifting sense of self drift in and out of form, like light across a surface. As proximity reshapes the space between them, the boy is slowly displaced — carried toward an elsewhere that feels both estranging and inevitable.
–
Cast: Xiaodao, Juanbin Lei, Xiaojun, Flora Wang, Tianye, Evan Feng
Director: Jhin Zhang
Assistant Director: Eros Shen
Producer: Haoxu Yin
DOP: Jhin Zhang
Gaffer: Holly Duan
Production Designer: Dora Zheng
Stylist: Zaha Zhang
Sound designer: Yutong Chen
Happy Birthday, by Yilun Zheng
REVIEW
This film explores the pressure to look attractive. The protagonist is told by her mother on the day of her birthday that she will never be promoted if she does not wear make up like everyone else. She protests. She asks why she has to be judged on her looks and not on how hard she works.
While the young woman’s mother tells her that (visual) difference cannot be tolerated in this world, the film explores the young woman’s body and appearance through dance and choreography. Other women grab her and move her body around, signifying perhaps how constructions of gender orchestrate the body and its performance throughout society. The helplessness of the body as it is subjected to order.
The young woman cries as she rebels against the dicates of her mother to wear concealer. Is this the fate of those that rebel against the standards of beauty? The mother rubs the concealer onto her face. The body is subjected to beauty standards by other women, by the powerful. Is beauty the demand of power? And what is beauty? Is it just the demand of power?
The young woman asks the question, can I be judged by work rather than appearance? Is this possible in the world? A writer can ask this. They are not seen. An actor can ask this. They are seen. The judgement belongs to the viewer – has the acting been judged, rather than the attractiveness of the actor? Can the two be separated in a fair discernment?
SUMMARY
Happy Birthday is an experimental film exploring how contemporary systems of visibility and judgement shape identity and self-perception. Set between everyday life and surreal spaces, the film follows a woman gradually internalising external expectations through work, family, advertising, and social environments. The project reflects on the pressure to become socially acceptable and worthy of recognition within a culture built around observation and display.
–
Cast: Tianhao Wang, Hongyun Wang, Yiqi Gu
Director: Yilun Zheng
Assistant Director:Xiaofan Ying
Producer: Menglin Yang
Director of Photography (DOP): Yikai Yan
Gaffer: Shangjia Li
Production Designer: Simeng Yu
Stylist: Jingyi Huang,Briony Wang
Choreographer: Briony Wang, Yijie
Sound Designer: Yilong Liu
Editor: Yilun Zheng
Fallacy, by Kangqiao Jiang
REVIEW
I suppose the question of this film is that if a woman were a colour, why is she the colour red? And how can one colour signify everything that is feminine? When the feminine is multiplicity itself, as is colour with its millions of hues. The film shows this by exploring different dimensions of a woman who is presented as different women and the colour red through different scenes which relay the association differently every time. Red is itself explored in liquid form in bottles, perhaps a symbol for its fluidity and defiance of reification even while the arbitrary limit of glass is being put upon it to attempt to shape it.
My intuition is that the film may be implicitly about the Western feminisation of China, which is also associated with the colour red. And that the aim of the film is to counter the reductiveness of this equation by exploring the diverse nuances of the colour.
SUMMARY
Fallacy is a visually driven experimental short film that explores how femininity is constructed, performed and gradually internalised within contemporary visual culture. The film revolves around the protagonist’s sustained gaze and exploration of ‘red’—a colour that, within mainstream aesthetics, has been reduced to a symbol of femininity, yet which constantly shifts and transforms within the imagery, oscillating between attraction and violence, intimacy and illusion. Through this visual thread, the work poses a question: when an individual’s sense of autonomy has partially internalised societal notions, how should one coexist with such a self?
–
Lead Actress: Auguste Bartninkaite
Director/writer/editor: Kangqiao Jiang
DOP: Yuexiang Li
Art Director: Umi Shi
Producer: Luke Higgins
Gaffer: Vincent Liu
Sound Recorder: Ann Wang
Composer: Mavis Wong
She Who Writes Erotica, by Zixuan Wang
REVIEW
This was my favourite film of the night. It contained graphic descriptions of sex, postmodernist musings about the Mcguffin, about the fake and the real, the copy and the original, the reliable narrator and the unreliable narrator. It also explored themes of capitalism, friendship, writing and voice. Another major theme was about collaborative writing in an individualistic culture that seizes upon differences such as class and wealth to divide voices and representation.
The narrator constantly smoked throughout, perhaps to present herself as ‘a bad girl’. The rich woman is unable to partake of sexual pleasures while the woman with less wealth, we do not know whether she had any sex or not. So this could be interpreted as an investigation of female sexual repression and how it gives rise to erotica, fantasy, wish fulfillment and deception, while it destroys friendships and relationships in the process.
At one point, the protagonist says that financial struggle kills love. Whatever the audience may think of this statement, and I am sure that some will find it true for them, this epitomises the falsity of sexual repression and the thought of those in a capitalistic system. You can love without money. You can build a family without that much money. Nothing can kill love. Nothing can defeat love. And nothing can silence love. Love may be hard work, but it is possible. This is the philosophy of the poor from India.
SUMMARY
She Who Writes Erotica is a narrative short film exploring the shifting power dynamics within female friendship, desire, and class disparity. As novelist Lin and her friend Anna collaborate on a manuscript, the boundary between “raw” life and “refined” fiction begins to dissolve. When a luxury brooch exposes the economic chasm between them, their bond is tested through a game of intellectual mirrors. By utilizing the Female Gaze, the film deconstructs how consumerism alienates intimacy, ultimately questioning who possesses the true authority to narrate female pleasure.
–
Cast: Zixuan Wang, Ting Shu
Director: Zixuan Wang
Screenwriter: Zixuan Wang
Producer: Zixuan Wang
DOP: Tairan Li
Camera Operator: Jiang Shan
First Assistant Camera: Peiye Gan
Gaffer: Wuxingchen Zhang
Production Sound Mixer: Chenhui Tang
Makeup Artist : Yinuo Wang
Art Director: Zixuan Wang
Supervising Art Director: Ge Wu
Sound Designer: Zixuan Wang
Editor: Zixuan Wang
diary of a lone man 