The screening on Wednesday the 25th of September was followed by a collective reading of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s magnum opus Dictee, a genre-bending masterpiece that addresses the fragmentation of language, image and memory, and a discussion with Cici Peng from Sine Screen, Dot Zhihan Jia from the Feminist Duration Reading Group, and Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha from Cinema Mentiré about the book and the film.
The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger explores ways in which trauma is passed on from previous generations to the present through a sense of being haunted.
Following a group of transnational adoptees and other women of the Korean diaspora in their 20s and 30s, the film unveils how the return of the repressed confronts and destabilises narratives that have been constructed to silence histories of pain and violence inflicted onto the bodies and lives of women and children.
The screening on Wednesday the 25th of September was followed by a collective reading of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s magnum opus Dictee, a genre-bending masterpiece that addresses the fragmentation of language, image and memory, and a discussion with Cici Peng from Sine Screen, Dot Zhihan Jia from the Feminist Duration Reading Group, and Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha from Cinema Mentiré about the book and the film.
More about the guest speakers:
Cici Peng from Sine Screen.
Sine Screen is a female-led emerging screening organisation dedicated to showcasing independent cinema, art films and documentaries from East and Southeast Asia, particularly the sinosphere. We aim to subvert the dominant gaze, challenge the representation of East and Southeast Asia as well as opening up discussions through curating diverse programmes of films by and about ESEA people.
Dot Zhihan Jia from the Feminist Duration Reading Group.
The Feminist Duration Reading Group (FDRG) focuses on under-represented feminist texts, movements and struggles from outside the Anglo-American canon. The group has developed a practice of reading out loud, together, one paragraph at a time, with the aim of creating a sense of connection and intimacy during meetings
Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha from Cinema Mentiré.
Cinema Mentiré is a film club that provides a platform for diverse voices from Latin America for UK audiences, by celebrating the work of classic and contemporary filmmakers and artists, while dismantling conventions usually associated with the region.Its name comes from the idea of ‘cinema mentiré’ (from the Spanish, ‘lying cinema’) crafted by Colombian filmmaker Luis Ospina in opposition to the celebrated term ‘cinema verité’ (‘truthful cinema’), to playfully disrupt the mores legitimised by Western Cinephilia.
This programme is part of Diasporic Threads, curated by Cheryl Ho and Eleanor Lu, which aims to gather communities in London to voice diasporic experiences in the creative and cultural industries.
The screening is supported by Birkbeck, University of London, and the Open Society University Network (OSUN) Experiential Learning Institute grant “From Communities into Audiences: Changing Lives through Film”.