In an experimental deconstruction of filmic history, a fictional ‘china girl’ confronts the medium and industry that produced her orientalist name. Contrary to the term’s racial connotations, these anonymous models, used for the calibration of exposure and colour in film since the 1920s, were largely white. Drawing from this phenomena, ‘China Girl’ transforms one of cinema’s most invisible yet essential figures through a speculative manifesto on race, visibility, and narrative.
Phoenix Tyler-Lee
the China Girl
Charlotta Öberg
White China Girl Model
Stephan Sinn
Technician
In an experimental deconstruction of filmic history, a fictional ‘china girl’ confronts the medium and industry that produced her orientalist name. Contrary to the term’s racial connotations, these anonymous models, used for the calibration of exposure and colour in film since the 1920s, were largely white. Drawing from this phenomena, ‘China Girl’ transforms one of cinema’s most invisible yet essential figures through a speculative manifesto on race, visibility, and narrative.
Through a series of flashbacks, four Chinese women born in America and their respective mothers born in feudal China explore their pasts.
Ming Wang is an impoverished Chinese prodigy who flees Communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. When tasked with restoring the sight of an orphan in India, who was blinded by her stepmother, Wang must confront the trauma of living through the violent uprising in his youth, the Cultural Revolution.
A Chinese-American lesbian and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations.
Mrs. Bakshi is eager to find suitors for her four unmarried daughters when a family friend introduces them to handsome American Will Darcy. A Bollywood-style modern adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel.
When Audrey's business trip to Asia goes sideways, she enlists the aid of Lolo, her irreverent, childhood best friend who also happens to be a hot mess; Kat, her college friend turned Chinese soap star; and Deadeye, Lolo's eccentric cousin. Their no-holds-barred, epic experience becomes a journey of bonding, friendship, belonging, and wild debauchery that reveals the universal truth of what it means to know and love who you are.
When the Emperor of China issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Chinese Army to defend the country from Huns, Hua Mulan, the eldest daughter of an honored warrior, steps in to take the place of her ailing father. She is spirited, determined and quick on her feet. Disguised as a man by the name of Hua Jun, she is tested every step of the way and must harness her innermost strength and embrace her true potential.
The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Rachel is a rambunctious girl from a polygamist colony in southern Utah. On Rachel’s 15th birthday, she finds a forbidden cassette tape. Having never seen anything like it before, Rachel plays the cassette tape, and finds glorious rock & roll thereupon. Weeks later, Rachel realizes a miracle has occurred - and the cassette tape must have something to do with it. She leaves her family and runs away to the closest city: Las Vegas. There she searches for the singer of the band on the cassette tape.
Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.