Long Vacation In BK is a 26-minute diary. It is an ode to Taiwan and Asia written while I live in Brooklyn. The film opens with the news of a controversial and renowned Chinese photographer Ren Hang’s suicide, which drives me into my memories of my past life in Asia. During 2007-2017, I, myself, a female, me and my avatars, were traveling and searching, escaping from my family. Traveling the bittersweet road in search of understanding, this is my political journey and my history of growing up. The film toasts to selfishness, to the nature of melancholy and depression as my autobiography from first person perspective. Music is a main theme, an important element of the piece. Even without knowing the background history, the film can be viewed as an expressionistic musical-visual artwork. It uses my personal story to reflect the era that Taiwanese youth experienced. Through my transforming and my migrating, with my shifting viewpoints, and the discrimination I received and released, I re-created things from a different angle, like the twisted world I inhabit — fake oriental, Asian fever, yellow fever, fusion cuisine and mixtures of all kinds. Screened @ the 40th Golden Harvest Awards for Outstanding Short Films Best Experimental Film, Chiayi International Art Doc Film Festival, and 2018 Experimental Film Exhibition SHU.
Director: Doll Chao. 2018, 26min., mixed digital video, color, Taiwan/USA. Experimental/film diary. In English and Mandarin with English, Japanese, and Mandarin subtitles. Japan Premiere!
Screening Date/Time
Tokyo: Sun, July 29, 12:30~ (International Shorts)
Okayama: Friday, August 3, 14:00~ / Sunday, August 5, 19:00~ (International Shorts)
Doll Chao was born 1984 in Taipei, and has been living in Brooklyn since 2012. Through her experimental diary film – a collage of montage using all kinds of materials including 35mm stills, 16mm, super 8, digital cameras, she and her own avatars self-analyze their lives as a stranger, a foreigner and un unfamiliar friend. With stream of consciousness editing, her mind responds to family issues, dreams, emotions, and political and religious thoughts. Her past films have been screened in festivals in Taiwan, UK, France, Belgium, Korea, China, Macau and USA. She is also a musician and her first album with the same title “Long Vacation in BK” can be purchased on amazon.com and amazon.co.jp. One of its songs “San San” was used as the closing theme song at UPAF 2016.
Synopsis #2
Family history, devastating protests, frustrated politics, suicidal friends, contemporary love story, musician tour, migrating, dreams, time, era, roaming, murmuring, childhood memories, mixed Tape, super 8, 3gp, 35mm still, DV, HD, 4K, iPhone, digital cameras, animation, analog, tech, documentary, experimental, Internet, stream of consciousness, electronic, dance, post punk, hip hop, underground, nostalgia, Taipei, Beijing, Far East Asia, USA, Brooklyn, Ren Hang,[2] Ai Wei Wei, Zuoxiao Zuzou, Indie Taiwan, exile, paradise, metropolitan, tribe, road, flights, parade, movements, generation, war, stranger, foreigner, traveler, outsider, avatars, psychic ills, disease, sarcasm, democracy, socialist, communist, anthropology, psychoanalysis, postcolonial, religion, activism, ritual, left wing sucker, poem, notes, repetition, rhythm, spirits, beats, tempo, rhetoric, narration, dialogs, scenes, space, flashbacks, jump cuts.
Link:
https://spacemeowdoll.bandcamp.com/album/long-vacation-in-bk
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Vacation-Explicit-Space-Meow/dp/B076TWM18C
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/246