History

In the fall of 1986, Richard Fung made his first visit to his father’s birthplace, a village in southern Guangdong, China. This experimental documentary examines the way children of immigrants relate to the land of their parents, and focuses on the ongoing subjective construction of history and memory. The Way to My Father's Village juxtaposes the son’s search for his own historical roots, and his father’s avoidance of his cultural heritage. 

Long still frames, text, language, and sound are weaved together to unfold the narrative of an anonymous group who fill their time by measuring distance. Innocent measurements transition into political ones, examining how image and sound communicate history. We Began by Measuring Distance explores an ultimate disenchantment with facts when the visual fails to communicate the tragic.

Produced by The Sharjah Biennial Production Programme.

We Demand, 2016

The story of the anti-Vietnam War movement from the perspective of James R. Roebuck, the first African American president of University of Virginia’s Student Council. Over a ten-day period of unprecedented student upheaval in 1970, Roebuck confronted a series of political challenges and existential dilemmas. This budding activist and future U.S. representative was the quintessential militant insider whose cool temperament and ideological flexibility proved quite useful as UVA appeared on the verge of imploding from within.

We Demand, 2016

The story of the anti-Vietnam War movement from the perspective of James R. Roebuck, the first African American president of University of Virginia’s Student Council. Over a ten-day period of unprecedented student upheaval in 1970, Roebuck confronted a series of political challenges and existential dilemmas. This budding activist and future U.S. representative was the quintessential militant insider whose cool temperament and ideological flexibility proved quite useful as UVA appeared on the verge of imploding from within.

Five improvisers are asked to ‘channel’ the psyche of Tony Blair. George Barber asks questions, and also feeds the improvisers anecdotes from various sources about Tony Blair’s life and experience as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The work’s unifying themes are: Tony Blair landing in the Iraqi desert at night; meeting George Bush, and the regrets of his key decisions.

We will live to see these things... is a documentary video in five parts about competing visions of an uncertain future. Shot in 2005/06 in Damascus, Syria, the work combines fiction and non-fiction. Each section of the piece--the chronicle of a building in downtown Damascus, an interview with a dissident intellectual, documentation of an equestrian event, the fever dream of a U.S.

We will live to see these things... is a documentary video in five parts about competing visions of an uncertain future. Shot in 2005/06 in Damascus, Syria, the work combines fiction and non-fiction. Each section of the piece--the chronicle of a building in downtown Damascus, an interview with a dissident intellectual, documentation of an equestrian event, the fever dream of a U.S.

A Wet Finger in the Air, a single-channel video, assembles appropriated footage of bilingual weather reports from 1980’s through 1997-era Hong Kong TVB and Pearl broadcasting stations into a hypnotic, randomized loop that repeats every hour. While these reels may invoke a kind of nostalgia, Sia's interest centers more on locating atmospheric and weather changes as a metaphor for the similarly unpredictable and slippery turns of history. The artist metaphorically raises a wet finger in the air to judge the invisible direction of the times.

English and Cantonese.

What Farocki Taught is literally and stubbornly a remake — that is, a perfect replica in color and in English, of Harun Farocki’s black and white, 1969 German language film, Inextinguishable Fire.

What Rules The Invisible is a short film that upends archival travelog footage shot in Hong Kong. Spanning reappropriated amateur footage across the 20th century, the sojourner’s gaze—distanced, distorted and even voyeuristic—shows tropes and patterns. The same shots repeat across decades, from landscape to cityscape to street scenes. Sometimes the footage reveals more about the traveler himself, such as a sequence where the camera curiously tracks the hips and bare legs of women wearing cheongsam crossing a busy intersection.

In this video, drawing from Bob Dylan's song Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, layers of experiences circling loss and longing are overlaid between images of landscapes and movement. In the song, a stranger's listlessness and exhaustion are woven through and around Juarez, Mexico, and so too are these stories woven around original discontent and uncertainty as they move through an uneasy negotiation with the strangeness of the American pioneer spirit.

Commissioned by Brianna Matzke for The Response Project, 2018.

Pat Ward Williams’s socially charged works confront issues of race, often dealing specifically with African American history and identity. Using a variety of photographic processes, video, audio tapes, assemblage and text, Williams layers meanings and images. Her subjects range from the autobiographical to the public, often combining documentary techniques with personal responses. “When I make photos about my family, I think my family is not a lot different than other peoples’ families, so that is a way people can access my work...

David Wilson is the founder and curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. His collection of found and contributed objects provides an astonishing array of materials derived from craft and nature. Interview by Rachel Weiss. A historical interview originally recorded in 1998.

An experimental documentary video project about individuals who have been transformed from so called “ordinary” citizens into activists, Witness To The Future seeks connections that unite people of all cultures, communities, races, and economic classes as they struggle for environmental and social change.

Ten thousand women marched down New York's Fifth Avenue on August 26th, 1970, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote. The march was part of a "Women's Strike for Equality" organized by veteran feminist leader Betty Friedan.

This video, shot in March 1970, contains raw footage from a Women’s Liberation event and discussion that took place in an art space. The tape begins with shots of the crowd mingling while music and speeches are heard in the background. Speakers address the audience, and the tape continues to record the discussion that follows. The main topics are abortion and contraception, and how they relate to power dynamics and the struggle for Women’s Liberation in general.

This video consists of raw footage from a Women’s Liberation Rally in New York City, shot on March 7th 1970, in celebration of International Women's Day. The first two thirds of the piece consist of footage of the crowd and speakers. Many issues are discussed including medical care, childcare, racial solidarity, Puerto Rican liberation, and imperialism. The final third of the tape includes interviews with male and female attendees of the rally.

Workers Leaving the Factory — such was the title of the first cinema film ever shown in public. For 45 seconds, this still-existent sequence depicts workers at the photographic products factory in Lyon, owned by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, hurrying, closely packed, out of the shadows of the factory gates and into the afternoon sun. Only here, in departing, are the workers visible as a social group. But where are they going? To a meeting? To the barricades? Or simply home?

In 1939, Westinghouse made a film about a small-town family visiting the New York World's Fair. Trapped inside that film was a completely different film that shows a mysterious alternate universe, revealed by Bryan Boyce’s own patented brand of narrative deconstruction and evisceration.The outcome is an absurd and chilling drama of a family transfixed by the technological wonders that would soon transform consumer society.

The daily life of the Hunikui village of Sâo Joaquim, on the river Jordâo in the state of Acre. Augustinho, village shaman and patriarch, and his wife and father-in-law, remember the fetters of the rubber plantations and celebrate a new era. Now, with their land demarcated, they can once again teach their traditions to their children and grandchildren.

Direction: Zezinho Yube

Photography: Zezinho Yube, Zé Mateus Itsairu, Vanessa Ayani, Fernando Siã, Josias Mana, Tadeu Siã

Editing: Mari Corrêa, Pedro Portella and Vincent Carelli

Year of the Spawn is an archival collage inspired by the synonymous song by the “gay church folk” band The Hidden Cameras. Wolf interpreted the song as an anthem for doomed youth. Having recently finished the historical film Teenage, Wolf collected over 100 hours of archival footage, featuring early 20th Century adolescents. Much of these historical newsreels feature bizarre and mysterious outtakes. These forgotten scraps became the fabric for this foreboding and melancholic music film.

You Are What You Are Born For features three blind sisters who sing for their survival on the streets of Campina Grande, Brazil. By providing personal testimony about the intimate details of their everyday experiences, these women bring into question the act of seeing and perceiving. The piece opens with a collage of abstract images, a sequence of rotated landscapes. As viewers, we are subject to what Berliner describes as a, "Vertigo provoked by vision," an alternative vision that invites us to consider how perception affects our identity.

For their first collaboration, artist duo eteam and the Hong Kong Puppet and Shadow Arts Center have developed a powerful opera-play that combines ancient stories and analog story-telling technologies with the digital tools and scripts we have available now.