Sleep Talk
Arts
FILM 176: Feminist Experimental Filmmaking
This film is a personal study and exploration of my insecurities surrounding "Asian-ness" and racial difference within media, society, and myself. It asks many questions about what it means to fall outside the societal construction of racial binaries -- whiteness and blackness. The projects experimental form encourages a narrative and dialogue around my dream states, memories, and fantasies -- all of which strive to make sense of the cacophony of anxieties many of us (especially the forgotten, unseen, marginalized, and mistreated) experience in our most vulnerable state -- the realm between wakefulness and sleep. Something about the moment our heads touch the pillow, when our eyes flutter closed, and beyond illicits the most troubling questions. At least for me it does. "Is my partner attracted to me? Are my eyes too slanted? Did that old woman stare at me funny because I smiled at her with my buck teeth? Do my friends acknowledge me as an equal? Do people see me? What do they see when they see me?" These thoughts in turn manifest themselves through the images you will see on screen. However, in posing many menial and existential questions alike the film process conjures infinitely more questions than answers when examining the complexity of my own racial unbelonging as an Asian immigrant in a white, American culture.
My film, while deeply personal, is political. It is an analysis of how racial discourse works to define race and to encourage the reification of identity dissociation through the figure of the racialized self.
