Re:Framing The Topography

Stars Beneath the Waves
YAN Wendi, China, 2026, 30 min. Chinese (Mandarin and Shandong dialect) with English subtitles

My Lens, My Land
CHENKe, United States, 2024, 23 min. Tibetan (Amdo dialect) with English subtitles

越冬 (A Winter in the Winter)
LIUHaotian 刘皓天, China, Hong Kong, 2026, 15 min. Chinese with English subtitles

This House of Ours
Jay NGO, Estonia, Vietnam, 2025, 29 min. Vietnamese with English subtitles

A selection of short films and expanded moving image works from East and Southeast Asian and diasporic contexts, curated under the framework of Nearby and Opaque. Works are selected through an international open call for their capacity to hold proximity without resolution.

Across islands, grasslands, hometowns, and family homes, these four films explore how landscapes hold memory, belonging, change, and loss. Stars Beneath the Waves follows eight-year-old Li Jianan, one of only three students left on her island school, as she finds poetry and imagination in everyday life. My Lens, My Land follows Daze as he documents the changing grasslands of Amdo, gradually turning his camera from observation towards community action. In 越冬 (A Winter in the Winter), a return to a northeast Chinese hometown opens a conversation between two men that connects personal memory with social change. In This House of Ours, an elderly woman contemplates the textures of life in her family home following her husband's death, holding onto shared rituals while facing pressure from her children. Together, the films reveal landscapes as spaces where personal histories and social transformations meet.